Alfred is great, and I prefer to use it with the PowerPack. However there is something to consider with every tool, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish with it?
The 1Password integration is a powerpack feature, and it’s definitely nice to have! I have several workflows set up which make life easier - like clocking me out at work and shutting my machine down all together 
Alfred Powerpack was the best investment I made for my Mac. Custom workflows, snippets, text expansion, advanced clipboard. If you’re going to buy anything, get this!
You reminded me of something I do everyday with Alfred that it is a built in feature: “ejectall” to eject all removable media. I have so many things I do with Alfred that have just because second-nature.
I think the best way to know if you need PowerPack is to take a look at some of the lists found here or on Packal. See if workflows stand out to you and make you say “I NEED THIS!” That was how I pulled the trigger on PowerPack. Similarly, on the other apps you’re interested in, it’s best to figure out the things you’d like to do and/or things you know can be done in a more automated way before buying apps to do so. That way you can really get your money’s worth.
Before there was Alfred, there was Quicksilver. Quicksilver’s free.
I gave Alfred a test run and all of the things I wanted to do required the PowerPack. Quicksilver is just free.
Another similar utility is Launchbar, but it is not free.
This might be a good thread too as I’m wanting to get more into automation as well
That was super helpful! Thank you! We’re definitely in a similar boat! Good luck to you!
@RosemaryOrchard would there be any possibility of starting a category for novices? I think it would be valuable to several of us “mac intermediate users” (just me?). Or should we just continue to ask questions throughout the forum in the various categories as they are pertinent?
Thanks, I’ll look into that.
I don’t think we should have a novice specific forum. Mac Power Users of all experience levels should be welcome here.
Exactly. “Novice” at what? Using the software that’s most often prescribed on the show? Because there are plenty of people on here who don’t have KM, Hazel, TextExpander, etc. Novice at knowing the ins and outs of what you can get just from settings/system prefs? There’s an episode or two every couple months that focus a lot on at least the settings specific to a topic.
@caitlin If you’re not using anything that you feel makes you a “power user,” the first thing I’d recommend is looking at your needs. I was using a handful of great apps before I discovered MPU last year, and there’s some tools I know I will eventually buy that I still haven’t picked up yet, because I don’t feel my needs at this moment warrant buying them.
With that said, Alfred is a great example of an app that you don’t know you need until you’ve used it, and I feel that the biggest parts of the functionality are locked behind the PowerPack.
I’d recommend rebinding Alfred to ⌘space and unbinding Spotlight, because Alfred’s file browser (and actions!) are SO much more powerful. I still need to open Finder for some file actions (though there’s many I accomplish all in Alfred), but opening Finder is easily done from an action (after pushing the right arrow key)
I wouldn’t be getting much out of custom websearches if I wasn’t using Safari to be honest, but the powerful file features and workflows are very much worthwhile on their own. It also has a good clipboard manager if you don’t feel the need to have one that syncs with iOS (I don’t) and a good starting place for text expansion if you don’t need something as powerful as TextExpander.
Workflows are where Alfred really shines for me though. I use it to add reminders, Fantastical events, add to Omnifocus, quickly add notes to and search in Bear, convert units, calculate dates, and pull up some more advanced links than the custom websearches are capable of doing. There are all sorts of other great uses for workflows beyond what I have running, and the best part it I just downloaded others’ code. I didn’t have to learn anything to use these. I have enough system shortcuts bound already, that I much prefer if I can pull something up or input something with Alfred, and many times I don’t have to even open that app to make my input.
Here’s a few sample snippets that you can use in Alfred. It’s a TextExpander substitute…
https://www.alfredapp.com/extras/snippets/
Alfred also has a forum to visit where users share some of their own workflows.
Here is another place to find workflows.
http://www.packal.org/workflow-list
As mentioned earlier, find a problem and then use Alfred to automate it. I use Alfred when I want to shorten a process that I repeat.
I can type an Alfred search term such as “movie lord of the rings”. My workflow will open a multiple window in Safari showing ‘lord of the rings’ in Amazon, Walmart, Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDB. I use this search when I want to check prices and see movie reviews.
I’ve been using Alfred for years, but I don’t really have any idea why. I’m pretty sure all I do with it is launch apps and feel cross that it isn’t loaded yet right after a reboot. I’ve built custom things to open all the sites I need to pay my bills, for example, but I haven’t found those to save the time it would take to keep them maintained, and I’ve never managed to train myself to use it for things like searching google since it saves no time over using a browser.
Granted, since I’m not using spotlight, it could be that spotlight does something irritating I don’t know about and I’m having an optimal experience, but I’m thinking of removing Alfred to see if I miss it. As much as I enjoy MPU, I’m sure it’s sold me on gadget apps which, like real gadgets, can turn into clutter if you don’t need them.
I’ve been a powerpack user for… at least 10 years… before the 1.0 launch in 2011. I can’t live without Alfred and when I use a non-alfred computer I’m LOST.
Main Alfred/powerpack features I use on a daily (or multiple times per weekly) basis:
A few workflows I downloaded from Packal/the Alfred community, but many I did myself – even the more complex ones are built out of relatively simple bits (e.g., the custom searches), and at a maximum a couple lines of AppleScript easily found on Google (e.g., my VPN ones are about 3 lines of AppleScript).
When I first started using Alfred I really just used it as an app launcher and for some built-in custom searches.
But over the last 10 years, as new features have been added and my needs have grown, the list of things that I rely on Alfred for has grown immensely, especially in the last couple of years.
I had been using textexpander prior to Smile changing it to a subscription model, but my expansion needs are fairly modest and couldn’t justify the increase in price (not a dig at Smile/Textexpander!), though I miss the more advanced features like being able to select different options within snippets, etc.
Alfred is as powerful as you want to to be. I don’t know if it’s better or worse than say, quicksilver or launchbar, but it’s the tool I use. It’s a bit of TextExpander, a bit of keyboard maestro, and a bit of quicksilver/launchbar/spotlight all rolled into one, so it is what you need it to be.
Strongly recommend even if you just want a slightly faster and less cluttered Spotlight. It won’t take you long until you start making use of its many other features!
I’ll just throw this question in here since it’s quasi-relevant and the feature is mentioned right in @davemacdo’s initial reply: while Alfred is a powerful spotlight replacement, can it be set up to do everything Spotlight can? For example, I use News Explorer as my RSS reader and all of its items are integrated into Spotlight; for example, if I have an article titled “Mac Power Users Launches New Forum”, if I open spotlight and search “mac power forum” it will pull up a link right to that article in News Explorer. Is this sort of deep content (and by association, metadata) searching exclusive to Spotlight, or can Alfred tap into it too?
Right. It’s so long ago that I first bought the PowerPack (and upgraded as appropriate) that I’m a little fuzzy on this…
… Doesn’t creating (if not executing) workflows require the PowerPack?
So, if automation is the category of use cases you’d want the PowerPack.
Indeed, you are correct. You would need the powerpack for some of the advanced features (snippet/clipboard etc) and all workflow-related stuff.
If it is a file on disk indexed by Spotlight, Alfred can find it. Depending on the file type, it may not be returned using Alfred’s default file search settings, which are easy to change.
Alfred can do deep linking and indexing. I use it to search my Pinboard bookmarks via the Spillo all the time. I believe for most things, Alfred is just searching the Spotlight index.
I think you need a workflow to search Spillo? From what I can gather, Alfred will utilize the spotlight index to search for files, but other types of data need custom workflows tied to the application.
Correct. But some applications expose their data to Spotlight already (like Airmail) and do not require a special Alfred workflow.