Alfred

Mac users may be familiar with a free productivity tool that is available in the App Store called Alfred.

Alfred is a powerful tool that allows you to launch and search apps and web sites in a couple of clicks.

For example, you can open Alfred (by pressing 'alt' and 'space') and then carry out a calculation, search your contacts or start typing the the name of an application and launch it.

If you are a Mac user and journalist, you probably find yourself carrying out a number of site searches a day to find previously published content.

For example, I have carried out a number of site searches today to find previously published content on Journalism.co.uk. I could do this typing the Google advanced operator site:journalism.co.uk into my Google search box followed by the query (for example site:journalism.co.uk "tip of the day"). As I have Alfred set up to perform this site search I can run the search in 21 fewer clicks.

Here's how:
  • Open Alfred and go to 'preferences' (the shortcut is 'Apple' and ',')
  • Go to 'features' then 'custom searches'
alfred-custom
  • Type the following into the first box, replacing 'journalism.co.uk' with your site URL.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:journalism.co.uk%20{query}
  • Fill in the other fields, choosing a shortcut for your site. For example, I picked the letter J so when I open Alfred ('alt' and 'space') I can type 'J' and then my keyword search. Alfred launches Chrome and displays the search results.
Alfred-search

That saves me typing site:journalism.co.uk every time I need to search.

There is more on Alfred's custom search here.

 
Tags: Click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).

Related articles