Level up with Alfred

Level up your dev environment
An article from ComputerMinds - Building with Drupal in the UK since 2005
20th Nov 2018

Nathan Page

Developer
Nathan Page
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Ever wondered if you truly have the perfect setup going on your development PC (or mac!)? There are so many tools out there to make development life easier, but it can be hard to know what's out there. Follow along to hear our top tools and tips, see if there's something missing from your world - and let us know your best tools and tips too!

  1. Level up with PHPStorm
  2. Level up with a shiny shell
  3. Level up your dev environment - top tools and tips from ComputerMinds
  4. Level up with Alfred
  5. Level up with Dash
Read more

AlfredAlfredApp logo

OSX's Spotlight tool made searching files and starting tasks a dream. That dream, though, still had space for more. What if you could execute commands from Spotlight? Or do really clever things?

Cue Alfred, stage left.

Alfred is everything you wanted Spotlight to be. It can search anything, it can do anything and it's configurable. The more we learn about Alfred, the more we're glad we use it and the more time we save.

Clipboard history

Why don't operating systems have clipboard history? We don't know. It would be a killer feature. Fortunately, Alfred comes in and saves the day. Configure any amount of clipboard history, let it be searchable, let it be reusable and copy-and-pastable all with a few clicks in the preferences pane - then go back to work and save yourself tons of time.

This is a paid feature, and is totally worth it.

Customisable search

The winner with Alfred is that you just don't have to think about remembering how to find things. You can search system tasks, applications, web browser history (optional) and almost anything you like, and plugins make that world even more extensible.

There are plugins for things like Git that you can set up, or you can have shortcuts for searching websites.

For example, you might set Alfred up so that you can type "dp entityreference" and have it send you in your browser to drupal.org/project/entityreference

Or you could set up the Git plugin so that you can get fast access to projects or Pull Requests.

Or you could set it up with Dash integration.

The possibilities are endless!

Calculator

Every decent product has a calculator, surely! Alfred has a calculator, which lets you calculate things right right now. Super fast. Win.

Everything

Steven's favourite feature of Alfred is "EVERYTHING". We won't have time here to explain EVERYTHING, but will have to simply suggest you go try it!

Alfred have a free tier which offers a bunch of useful things, but you'll definitely find that the paid tier is worth its weight in gold. .

 

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