Alfred Universal Actions

These are all fantastic. It took me a little while to figure out how to use the browser snippet one, as I don’t use snippets in Alfred, but after playing around with this, I could see myself using this all the time. Thank you sharing them with us.

I would add a previous tip on keyboard shortcuts for triggering quick actions. I’ve set mine to hitting ⌥ option key twice, mitigating the Brett Terpstra’s problem of too fewer keys to be combined for all the shortcuts we wish for!

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My favorite use of quick actions this far is that it allows for entering text into “Web” searches.

That can be combined with Keyboard Maestro Macros that can be triggered via URLs and will accept the text as an input parameter for their actions via the %TriggerValue% command.

Here’s how it looks on Keyboard Maestro:

Here’s how it looks on Alfred:

It has sped up things quite a bit for me.

Perhaps this will change your mind:

But the real power is in using Script Filters and List Filters, which let you do things you can’t do in TE.

One other unexpected but really nice addition with Universal Actions - if you use Ulysses and you are focused in the folder list or sheet list, calling the Universal Action trigger will act on the URL to the selected folder / sheet.

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just want to +1 on the frustration of Alfred documentation. I can’t decide if it is lacking, or if it’s just intended for programmers who are smarter than I am.

I took the sample trim text sample universal action and spent way too much time figuring out how to paste the reformatted text back out of Alfred.

it’s really powerful, but I really wish there was better workflow documentation for dummies like me, haha!

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Nice. Hopefully we’ll soon see a Brave version as well

Still trying to figure out UA on Alfred. Lack of proper documentation as most stated here makes it difficult to comprehend. Also not much actions out yet. Can’t replace PopClip for now.

This is the same as the long-press of ⌘ Space in Launchbar, right?

You can always use something like BetterTouchTool and assign a mouse gesture to the shortcut chosen to activate Universal Actions. That’s what I did and it works pretty well.

I’m always a bit at war with these, in my case, trackpad gestures, because I accidentally trigger them far too often. In the meantime, however, I have built a small PopClip extension and am very happy with this solution.

Thank you for the tip, I did not realize Alfred could do that.

Just opening Alfred Preferences > Features > Universal Actions and looking at the Actions tab is about all the documentation needed. The list of all the possible default actions, with the option to include your workflows and custom searches in the list, pretty much explains everything that Universal Actions does. Then go ahead and set a hot key, select some text somewhere in a browser or document, and away you go.

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Thanks. I might have to check it out, although I switched from TE to Typinator a few months ago, and am in love with it.

No offence but obviously did those before posting :sweat_smile:. Love Alfred app as indicated multiple times in different MPU threads. Point is that documentation is lacking on UA and at the moment also lack of workflows.

Call me stupid, but I have no clue what you’re trying to accomplish.

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Hey there. Any updates on how well universal actions have replaced Popclip for you?

I have removed PopClip from my Mac and haven’t looked back. Everything that could be done with popClip, can be done with universal actions. The only thing that’s different is that there’s no longer this pop-up thingy. But that wasn’t too reliable anyway. So not a huge miss.

I haven’t tried Universal Actions.

As a recent convert to Alfred, I recommend them. Kind of like “Instant Send” in LaunchBar. Select something and press ⌥ ⌘ \ (or the hot key of your choice) to bring that something into the world of Alfred.

I kept trying, but could never get the hang of LaunchBar. Finally gave up, looked around for something else, and fell in love with the Alfred app.

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