Good show! I’ve tried Alfred a few times but I always fall back to using Spotlight and Keyboard Maestro for my launching needs. I didn’t know about Spotlight’s shortcuts to narrow searches before listening to the show. That was good info!
Good show. I’ve used Alfred for a long time and have not really used Spotlight.
I was thinking of stopping Alfred for spotlight but was talked out it. Good episode!
This was a great episode with a lot of actionable tips. I’m a former Launchbar user and overall been happy with Raycast but realized from listening to @beardfm that I’ve barely scratched the depths of what I can do. I think I can figure it when I downloaded the app and haven’t really played around with it since. I may actually look at the transcript of this for things to try.
Was somewhat surprised that Bunch was not mentioned, or perhaps I missed it.
Really great show, I enjoyed it! I have been a longtime user of Raycast for quite a while now. I do have an Alfred Powerpack but just feel Raycast gels a bit more for me 
I’m a long time Alfred user with powerpack, but this show piqued my interest in Raycast again… v2 was just released officially… Just taking a look, but I like what I’m seeing so far. I use Wispr Flow and love it, so curious to see how dictation is with v2. The feedback I’ve seen has been solid, but so far, it is not as good as Wispr Flow… While Flow formats emails with paragraphs decently, Raycast dictation not only doesn’t format with paragraphs, but when I say “new paragraph” it just types in “new paragraph”… I feel like I must be missing something!
Stephen mentioned he could not find a bear workflow for Alfred. Well, here is a great one!
I have been an avid Alfred user for years. This episode prompted me to revisit Raycast, which has come a long way since I last took an in-depth look at it. The TL;DR is that I’m now using Raycast alongside Alfred.
There are things in Alfred that I have come to rely on. For example, I make extensive use of Universal Actions (as far as I can tell, there isn’t an equivalent in Raycast), Custom Searches, and Workflows. I also find that Alfred is very efficient for locating and copying/moving files and folders.
Raycast has some excellent extensions. They’re especially helpful when tied to global hotkeys. I currently have hotkeys (⇪+key) configured for six of them (and I’m sure I’ll add more in the future).
What I like is that the search window is consistent across all of these extensions. For example, this is what it looks like for Anybox:
Here’s a sample search in Keyboard Maestro:
And here’s Notion:
As was noted on the show, Raycast also has a top-notch emoji picker:
The ⌘K menu is proving very useful. For example, I can use Raycast to search for a Keyboard Maestro macro, then press ⌘K and choose Edit Macro (or press ⌘E) to edit it in Keyboard Maestro.
I look forward to continuing to explore Raycast. At some point, it may completely replace Alfred. In the meantime, it’s working well to run these two apps in tandem.
Had not heard of it! Will look into it.
Will have to try v2! And will follow up on the next feedback ep
ah thank you for this!
I’ve been a long (LONG) time Quicksilver user, and to be honest, it completely meets my needs. (I remember Merlin Mann describing it as a neural interface for the Mac, and frankly, it feels like that for me.) It when through a pretty rough period when it wasn’t too stable, but it has been rock solid for me for quite a while now. However, this show made me want to give Alfred a try.
But I have a question: an action I use with Quicksilver many times a day is “Command Window with Selection,” meaning I have a file or folder selected in Finder, and then invoke QS with a modifier key, and the QS window opens with that item in the “noun” panel, ready for me to select the “verb” I want to execute. (My usual use case is Ctrl-Shift-Space with a file selected, then type M for Move, then Tab and start typing the name of the destination folder.) Does Alfred have a similar function?
Thanks!
Cheers,
Eric
In Alfred you have Universal Actions. You can define your own hotkey.
Yes. I have this sort of thing set to a double tap of the command key. I select the file in the finder, double tap command, select the action I want to do i.e. the “verb” (which can be done via type-ahead) and then start typing the name of the destination folder (which can be further navigated with right and left arrows if, like me, you have multiple named project folders with similarly named subfolders so that direct searching is ineffective)
Great! Thanks! That’s helpful.
This is the first launcher I’ve seen in a while that has piqued my interest. It might actually pull me away from Alfred.