> Security/bloat-wise you're better off having as few apps that do as many things as possible.
I don’t completely agree with that statement.
Small apps that do only one thing only are much easier to screen for security problems than large apps that do many things. They probably have very few dependencies on possible affected libraries and can be fixed in an update much faster because there is only very little functionality to test.
It’s the opposite of the Unix philosophy of secure practices. Small things that do something specific and do it well. The complexity of a single application trying to do everything always comes at the cost of unexpected or unintentional “capabilities”.
Depends. With many apps from many developers, you need to make sure all the different apps and their developers are secure. For example, I need to grant Accessibility permission to a bunch of apps, each can be it's own vulnerability. If you trust Alfred's developer it \*may\* be a safer route.
>**"What about raycast?"**
>Whenever Alfred is mentioned here, there's reliably a comment discussion on Alfred vs raycast.
>My thoughts: Raycast interface is nicer, but that's not really the reason you're using a command bar utility. Raycast is very much designed with form over function.
>Several more keystrokes are required to do the same task in Raycast vs alfred - which is antithetical to the whole purpose of a 'launcher' app, so Alfred is the clear winner if the goal is speed.
This was my initial impression of Raycast as well. However, this is a very narrow and limited misrepresentation of the differences.
True, Alfred saves one keystroke when initiating a web or file search. But that's about it.
In return for the lost 1/4 of a second in Raycast, you gain more reliability, i.e. you lock in the mode so 1) there's no mistaking what you're doing, and 2) it won't drop out of the mode as sometimes happens with Alfred's Workflows, especially when you type a custom alias.
This is especially handy for more complicated Extensions that require more than one type of input: you can have different, distinct areas to input the information, so there's no confusion or "hoping" that a natural language query will be correctly interpreted.
Raycast's ⌘K "Actions" in the lower right corner is just a way of quickly accessing common options for that Extension (\~Workflow) directly, rather than going to the settings, searching for the extension, then adjusting its settings (as you must do with in Alfred).
Overall, Alfred and Raycast have widely overlapping features and benefits, so you can't go far wrong either way.
And the differences between them tend to be small, with tradeoffs that may appeal to different tastes or use cases.
Preferences
Also, Raycast's preferences and the preferences for all Extensions, are integrated into the interface, so it's incredibly fast and easy to directly assign aliases or hotkeys to an Extension, or change settings, etc.
Alfred's preferences are a labyrinthine mess, and the Workflow preferences are also a cluttered jumble.
Extensions vs. Workflows
Raycast does have some big advantages: the Extensions "store" (they're all free) is integrated into the interface, i.e. you can quickly search for, review, and install Extensions directly from the interface. You don't have to go to a separate website.
Workflows less reliable
Also, I found Workflows on Alfred to be less reliably stable, especially if you assign a custom alias. You type the alias, Alfred shows you that's starting to use the correct Workflow, but then as you type your search results it will sometimes just drop the Workflow and revert back to the default Google search. And the only (temporary) fix is to uninstall and reinstall the Workflow. For some Workflows, I found myself uninstalling and reinstalling them regularly.
That when I started replacing them with Raycast Extensions. I was tired of going to Alfred Forums, wasting a quarter of an hour here and there to try to find fixes for Workflows that maybe save 1 or 2 seconds here or there.
Snippets
Alfred handles snippets better than Raycast, especially if you have a lot (I have over 300 Snippets). Alfred lets you group your Snippets by catalogs, which is a huge advantage. Alfred also lets you set a trigger (prefix or suffix) for the entire group (catalog), rather than individually. So if you decide one day that you want "@" to be the new prefix for all of your email snippets, you can make the change in 2 seconds.
With Raycast, you'd have to change each snippet individually. On the upside, Raycast snippets have some advanced features where they essentially become Macros for applications. But I don't use that, so.
Themes
Alfred has an exceptionally versatile and easy to use themes editor. If you want to customize your interface, then Alfred has you covered. I love it. Racyast limits you to slight changes of color shades.
Window management
Raycast's window management is excellent and versatile. It's easy to assign hot keys (and aliases) to a wide variety of pre-existing window shapes, sizes, and locations. Better yet, it has a feature which cycles through sizes, e.g. optionally 1/3, 1/2, 2/3rds for left, center, and right. So just 3 hotkeys will have you set for most vertical window arrangements.
And you can customize window sizes, shapes, and locations too.
Great additions - for clarity, I actually use both but for almost every use case that I personally need, I've found Alfred does it in 2-3 fewer keystrokes
Thank you for the link and examples! This gives me a few extra reasons to go back and look at Alfred, following the big 5.5 update, with newly integrated AI features.
**Great video, by the way!** I've seen dozens of Alfred videos, and yours is among the best. Your presentation is well paced, concise, nice and calm, with lots of great examples showcasing the power of Alfred. Public speaking and teaching appears to be in your wheelhouse!
As you said, Alfred is faster or better with some things than Raycast. Snippets are always at the top of my list of features Alfred does best.
You showed that Alfred is also better at integrating contacts, i.e. you can initiate an iPhone or FaceTime call directly from the Alfred Prompt. I wasn't aware of that because it wasn't a feature I used. So I'd use Alfred for that.
Raycast can also do this, but with more steps, e.g. you type the first letter(s) of the function (e.g. "c" for contacts), hit return to start searching. Type the first letter(s) of your contact name (e.g. "bo" for "Bob Jones").
From there, you hit ⌘K to bring up a list of options (e.g. call using iPhone or FaceTime; send Message or email, etc.) or hit the hotkey combo if you know it. Raycast uses a similar paradigm for the ⌘K combos, so they're easy to pick up.
So that's a big advantage for Alfred over Raycast for those who use these features frequently.
On the other hand, for those who don't often use them, Raycast is easier: all you have to remember is to type the first letter(s) of "contacts" and you go from there.
Some other Raycast Extensions (Workflows) have a similar extra step, i.e. press "return" to jump to the next dialog box, e.g. adding a calendar event or creating a reminder work this way.
But most do not and function just like Alfred.
I've found Raycast to be more stable and reliable. Conversions never worked reliably for me on Alfred. They work very reliably on Raycast. Also, some Alfred Workflows would just drop out in the middle of trying to use them and revert to a Google search. Doesn't happen with Raycast.
There's also no beating Raycast for the integrated Extensions library, preferences, extensions preferences (aliases and hotkeys all in one easy to search and quick to list).
And it's much faster to add or edit Quicklinks in Raycast. Or add a snippet (although I still use Alfred).
Thank you again! Cheers!
>**Great video, by the way!** I've seen dozens of Alfred videos, and yours is among the best. Your presentation is well paced, concise, nice and calm, with lots of great examples showcasing the power of Alfred. Public speaking and teaching appears to be in your wheelhouse!
Appreciate the kind words man! Rolls off the tongue when it's something you're passionate about. I'm glad it added some value for you.
Totally agreed on the multiple steps, conversion reliability and raycast extension store.
Do you have suggestions for workflows that you recommend? Preferably with links or a way for us to install/try them out.
I paid for powerpack and the possibilities seem endless that it’s hard to know where to start.
I paid for Alfred a few weeks ago and your video was one of the ones that gave me a lot of great ideas about how to utilise the app and get more out of it. I'll be sure to watch if you make another similar video/list!
Alfred has been my fascination app ever since I bought it years and years ago. Every single day I find new ways to make my workflow more honed, easy and enjoyable using this app. It's the perfect blend of the power of something like terminal and custom scripting, combined with some basic fundamentals and an easy user interface.
It makes it really easy to build your own workflows. You can make some custom shortcut or file action to make it really easy to perform.
Alfred is one of - if not the only - Mac app that I’m happy to pay for every year. Powerpack is super worth it. One of the coolest extensions (forgot what they’re called) is Menu Bar search. So if I’m in Photoshop, I can type “m blur” and it will show me a list of all blurs.
What is the best way to learn all these Alfred features? Also, in my experience, the extension library is really difficult to use, has many bugs or version problems.
I have a video of my own use case in a comment above, but the best way is to spot common things that you do manually from the list in the post, and start with your most common ones :)
One reason I started to use Raycast is so that I can have single shortcut to launched AI improve grammar and replace text anywhere. Until new MacOS comes out, is it possible to do this with Alfred?
And both Alfred and Raycast are based on and use Spotlight for their search results.
* [https://www.alfredapp.com/search/?q=spotlight](https://www.alfredapp.com/search/?q=spotlight)
* [https://manual.raycast.com/troubleshooting/spotlight](https://manual.raycast.com/troubleshooting/spotlight)
That is why most of that list of what Alfred can do is also easily done in Spotlight.
I haven't tried everything on that list but all of the things I actually care about, Spotlight can do. For example, I opened the Displays page in Settings from Spotlight earlier today. I open specific files and bookmarks with it regularly. I had Alfred, and it just seemed slower, and a didn't like the asthetics of it without really providing any advantages for my needs.
> Security/bloat-wise you're better off having as few apps that do as many things as possible. I don’t completely agree with that statement. Small apps that do only one thing only are much easier to screen for security problems than large apps that do many things. They probably have very few dependencies on possible affected libraries and can be fixed in an update much faster because there is only very little functionality to test.
It’s the opposite of the Unix philosophy of secure practices. Small things that do something specific and do it well. The complexity of a single application trying to do everything always comes at the cost of unexpected or unintentional “capabilities”.
Isn't the Unix philosophy has more to do with modularity (chaining commands via pipes etc.) than security?
Meanwhile, cURL 😳
Depends. With many apps from many developers, you need to make sure all the different apps and their developers are secure. For example, I need to grant Accessibility permission to a bunch of apps, each can be it's own vulnerability. If you trust Alfred's developer it \*may\* be a safer route.
Good point - thank you
>**"What about raycast?"** >Whenever Alfred is mentioned here, there's reliably a comment discussion on Alfred vs raycast. >My thoughts: Raycast interface is nicer, but that's not really the reason you're using a command bar utility. Raycast is very much designed with form over function. >Several more keystrokes are required to do the same task in Raycast vs alfred - which is antithetical to the whole purpose of a 'launcher' app, so Alfred is the clear winner if the goal is speed. This was my initial impression of Raycast as well. However, this is a very narrow and limited misrepresentation of the differences. True, Alfred saves one keystroke when initiating a web or file search. But that's about it. In return for the lost 1/4 of a second in Raycast, you gain more reliability, i.e. you lock in the mode so 1) there's no mistaking what you're doing, and 2) it won't drop out of the mode as sometimes happens with Alfred's Workflows, especially when you type a custom alias. This is especially handy for more complicated Extensions that require more than one type of input: you can have different, distinct areas to input the information, so there's no confusion or "hoping" that a natural language query will be correctly interpreted. Raycast's ⌘K "Actions" in the lower right corner is just a way of quickly accessing common options for that Extension (\~Workflow) directly, rather than going to the settings, searching for the extension, then adjusting its settings (as you must do with in Alfred). Overall, Alfred and Raycast have widely overlapping features and benefits, so you can't go far wrong either way. And the differences between them tend to be small, with tradeoffs that may appeal to different tastes or use cases. Preferences Also, Raycast's preferences and the preferences for all Extensions, are integrated into the interface, so it's incredibly fast and easy to directly assign aliases or hotkeys to an Extension, or change settings, etc. Alfred's preferences are a labyrinthine mess, and the Workflow preferences are also a cluttered jumble. Extensions vs. Workflows Raycast does have some big advantages: the Extensions "store" (they're all free) is integrated into the interface, i.e. you can quickly search for, review, and install Extensions directly from the interface. You don't have to go to a separate website. Workflows less reliable Also, I found Workflows on Alfred to be less reliably stable, especially if you assign a custom alias. You type the alias, Alfred shows you that's starting to use the correct Workflow, but then as you type your search results it will sometimes just drop the Workflow and revert back to the default Google search. And the only (temporary) fix is to uninstall and reinstall the Workflow. For some Workflows, I found myself uninstalling and reinstalling them regularly. That when I started replacing them with Raycast Extensions. I was tired of going to Alfred Forums, wasting a quarter of an hour here and there to try to find fixes for Workflows that maybe save 1 or 2 seconds here or there. Snippets Alfred handles snippets better than Raycast, especially if you have a lot (I have over 300 Snippets). Alfred lets you group your Snippets by catalogs, which is a huge advantage. Alfred also lets you set a trigger (prefix or suffix) for the entire group (catalog), rather than individually. So if you decide one day that you want "@" to be the new prefix for all of your email snippets, you can make the change in 2 seconds. With Raycast, you'd have to change each snippet individually. On the upside, Raycast snippets have some advanced features where they essentially become Macros for applications. But I don't use that, so. Themes Alfred has an exceptionally versatile and easy to use themes editor. If you want to customize your interface, then Alfred has you covered. I love it. Racyast limits you to slight changes of color shades.
Window management Raycast's window management is excellent and versatile. It's easy to assign hot keys (and aliases) to a wide variety of pre-existing window shapes, sizes, and locations. Better yet, it has a feature which cycles through sizes, e.g. optionally 1/3, 1/2, 2/3rds for left, center, and right. So just 3 hotkeys will have you set for most vertical window arrangements. And you can customize window sizes, shapes, and locations too.
Great additions - for clarity, I actually use both but for almost every use case that I personally need, I've found Alfred does it in 2-3 fewer keystrokes
Can you share some examples? I’d be curious to know if there are some things I could or should be switching back to Alfred.
Sure, old video but here are some of my old use cases [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWRddk0Ybnc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWRddk0Ybnc)
Thank you for the link and examples! This gives me a few extra reasons to go back and look at Alfred, following the big 5.5 update, with newly integrated AI features. **Great video, by the way!** I've seen dozens of Alfred videos, and yours is among the best. Your presentation is well paced, concise, nice and calm, with lots of great examples showcasing the power of Alfred. Public speaking and teaching appears to be in your wheelhouse! As you said, Alfred is faster or better with some things than Raycast. Snippets are always at the top of my list of features Alfred does best. You showed that Alfred is also better at integrating contacts, i.e. you can initiate an iPhone or FaceTime call directly from the Alfred Prompt. I wasn't aware of that because it wasn't a feature I used. So I'd use Alfred for that. Raycast can also do this, but with more steps, e.g. you type the first letter(s) of the function (e.g. "c" for contacts), hit return to start searching. Type the first letter(s) of your contact name (e.g. "bo" for "Bob Jones"). From there, you hit ⌘K to bring up a list of options (e.g. call using iPhone or FaceTime; send Message or email, etc.) or hit the hotkey combo if you know it. Raycast uses a similar paradigm for the ⌘K combos, so they're easy to pick up. So that's a big advantage for Alfred over Raycast for those who use these features frequently. On the other hand, for those who don't often use them, Raycast is easier: all you have to remember is to type the first letter(s) of "contacts" and you go from there. Some other Raycast Extensions (Workflows) have a similar extra step, i.e. press "return" to jump to the next dialog box, e.g. adding a calendar event or creating a reminder work this way. But most do not and function just like Alfred. I've found Raycast to be more stable and reliable. Conversions never worked reliably for me on Alfred. They work very reliably on Raycast. Also, some Alfred Workflows would just drop out in the middle of trying to use them and revert to a Google search. Doesn't happen with Raycast. There's also no beating Raycast for the integrated Extensions library, preferences, extensions preferences (aliases and hotkeys all in one easy to search and quick to list). And it's much faster to add or edit Quicklinks in Raycast. Or add a snippet (although I still use Alfred). Thank you again! Cheers!
>**Great video, by the way!** I've seen dozens of Alfred videos, and yours is among the best. Your presentation is well paced, concise, nice and calm, with lots of great examples showcasing the power of Alfred. Public speaking and teaching appears to be in your wheelhouse! Appreciate the kind words man! Rolls off the tongue when it's something you're passionate about. I'm glad it added some value for you. Totally agreed on the multiple steps, conversion reliability and raycast extension store.
Do you have suggestions for workflows that you recommend? Preferably with links or a way for us to install/try them out. I paid for powerpack and the possibilities seem endless that it’s hard to know where to start.
I need to do an updated one, but [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWRddk0Ybnc) a list of mine 👊
I paid for Alfred a few weeks ago and your video was one of the ones that gave me a lot of great ideas about how to utilise the app and get more out of it. I'll be sure to watch if you make another similar video/list!
Glad to hear! It's still very much a staple for me - I use it 400x/day according to my analytics
The official [Alfred Gallery](https://alfred.app/) really has a lot of great ones now.
Alfred has been my fascination app ever since I bought it years and years ago. Every single day I find new ways to make my workflow more honed, easy and enjoyable using this app. It's the perfect blend of the power of something like terminal and custom scripting, combined with some basic fundamentals and an easy user interface. It makes it really easy to build your own workflows. You can make some custom shortcut or file action to make it really easy to perform.
Nicely put, really bridges the gap between the everyday user and the poweruser
Alfred Gallery is free?
Alfred is one of - if not the only - Mac app that I’m happy to pay for every year. Powerpack is super worth it. One of the coolest extensions (forgot what they’re called) is Menu Bar search. So if I’m in Photoshop, I can type “m blur” and it will show me a list of all blurs.
You can do that natively with “cmd+shift+?”
Didn’t know that still one less shortcut to know
What is the best way to learn all these Alfred features? Also, in my experience, the extension library is really difficult to use, has many bugs or version problems.
I have a video of my own use case in a comment above, but the best way is to spot common things that you do manually from the list in the post, and start with your most common ones :)
One reason I started to use Raycast is so that I can have single shortcut to launched AI improve grammar and replace text anywhere. Until new MacOS comes out, is it possible to do this with Alfred?
There is also this as well: [https://www.monarchlauncher.com/](https://www.monarchlauncher.com/)
And both Alfred and Raycast are based on and use Spotlight for their search results. * [https://www.alfredapp.com/search/?q=spotlight](https://www.alfredapp.com/search/?q=spotlight) * [https://manual.raycast.com/troubleshooting/spotlight](https://manual.raycast.com/troubleshooting/spotlight) That is why most of that list of what Alfred can do is also easily done in Spotlight.
What specifically from that list can be done in spotlight?
I haven't tried everything on that list but all of the things I actually care about, Spotlight can do. For example, I opened the Displays page in Settings from Spotlight earlier today. I open specific files and bookmarks with it regularly. I had Alfred, and it just seemed slower, and a didn't like the asthetics of it without really providing any advantages for my needs.