My Entire Alfred Workflow: Supercharge Your Mac (for free)!
About this video
Jeff Su walks through his entire Alfred setup on Mac, covering the free version in depth and the paid Powerpack briefly. Foundation settings: uncheck both Spotlight shortcuts so Alfred owns the Command+Space hotkey, and note that Alfred uses your default browser for web features. He uses the command bar four ways: Command+Space opens any app or runs system processes (empty trash is his example); Command+Space then Space searches files and documents by name; Command+Space plus a keyword (such as yt for YouTube) runs a web search in the default browser; Command+Space then Command+Comma opens Alfred preferences. In Features > Default Results he deliberately leaves extra file types like folders unchecked so plain Command+Space stays clean — folders are reached through the file search instead — and he skips Apple Contacts. Under File Search he excludes emails, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, history, and messages but keeps files like images, and limits results to 30; under Navigation he disables the navigation shortcuts because he only wants to locate and open files, and pressing Command+Enter on a result reveals its location in Finder, which also works for apps installed outside the Applications folder. His learning advice is to force reliance on the command bar: pick one app used daily, one system process run daily, and one folder accessed daily, and open all three only through Alfred; he credits this with spillover habits like using Command+P search inside Notion. In the System tab he enables confirmations for empty trash, restart, and shut down, and disables the volume commands he handles from the keyboard. For Web Search he shortens built-in keywords (YouTube to yt, Google to g, Maps to m) and adds custom searches: copy the results URL from a site (Giphy in his demo), replace the search terms with the {query} placeholder, put the character the site uses instead of a space (a hyphen for Giphy, %20 for Google Podcasts) in the separator field, set a keyword such as gif, and optionally drag the site’s icon in. A custom search with no {query} becomes a pure shortcut — his ‘album’ keyword opens his Google Photos albums page directly.
Key takeaways
- Give Alfred the Command+Space hotkey (disable Spotlight’s), then learn its four modes: apps/system, file search (double space), keyword web search, and preferences.
- Keep Default Results minimal and route files through file search instead; limit file results to 30 and use Command+Enter to reveal a result in Finder.
- Shorten built-in web keywords (yt, g, m) and build custom searches with the {query} placeholder and the site’s own space character; a query-less custom search works as a direct URL shortcut.
- Force the habit: run one daily app, one daily system process, and one daily folder only through Alfred until it is muscle memory.
- Stay on the free version unless you need Powerpack clipboard history, snippets, themes, or workflows — he argues the free 20% of features delivers 80% of the benefit.
Episode details: published May 10, 2022 · 10:08 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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