Alfred Web Search in Alternative Browser?

I use Safari as my default browser and love Alfred’s built-in Web Search function. I’ve even built a few custom searches. My issue is I would like to have Alfred search for YouTube videos in my secondary browser, Firefox. I have the Powerpack.

I searched the web and couldn’t find an answer. There was some discussion back in 2018 but I’m wondering what the simplest/elegant solution would be in 2022? Has anyone figured out a clean way to have Alfred do some searches in the default browser and others in a secondary browser?

Thanks for any advice.

You need to make a workflow like this. The action Open URL lets you set the browser. If you already have a custom search saved, Open URL can populate the same search to save time.

In my example I used a keyword input, and you can see the keyword giving me the option to use Chrome for the search using the above workflow, or my default browser for the search if I use my pre-existing custom search.

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I have different problems I was trying to solve (and I have the solution, so let me know if this interests you):

  1. I keep Sarafi as default. On days when I click on company emails with our intranet links, it opens in Safari but I really want it to transfer to Firefox. So, I have a Keyboard Maestro macro that copies the URL, closes the Safari tab and reopens in FF.

  2. I’d like to search FF bookmark from Alfred and launch it in FF. There’s an Alfred workflow for that.

Thank you so much! this is exactly what I was looking for and it worked. Now I’m I’ve really opened the Alfred box. Next step is to launch some Keyboard Maestro workflows, since my muscle memory is so trained on Alfred… I couldn’t find the exact YouTube transparant icon that Alfred uses, but I guess that’s ok as it will give me a visual hint on which browser to use.

Thanks again!

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You could also try the Mac app OpenIn. It’s in the Mac App Store.

OpenIn is also available as part of Setapp.

I’m thinking of adopting OpenIn as a replacement for Choosy. I’ve been using Choosy for many years and find that it works very well. But, OpenIn has some advanced functionality that my inner power user finds appealing.

For what it’s worth, I’m using OpenIn for a few bits and pieces and it works well for me.

It has quite complex rule options that would meet this use case. i.e. you could set Youtube URLs opened from Alfred to open in Firefox. (That should work even without the Powerpack. Though I know that’s not an issue in your case, it may be helpful to others.)

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