I've been hearing about Alfred for a few years (the way I was hearing about KM), but never really tried it. I feel that KM does pretty much all I need and since I also have BetterTouchTool for a few other things, is there anything else that Alfred would bring that KM or BTT don't do at all or as well as Alfred?
I don't want to install another app to then find out that it doesn't really improve my workflow that much that justifies having another thing running.
I tried it and found KM was the only app I needed.
You mean Alfred? Yeah I use it all the time and it's built into my muscle memory. It's like Spotlight search on steroids with a lot of other nice options. Might as well try the free version, as it's pretty powerful in itself.
Yes, Alfred. Just fixed it, thanks.
But is it a tool that you simply cannot replace with KM at all?
Some videos I saw seemed to show features that KM can easily replicate. Maybe with some extra steps, but the results end up being the same.
Can you share 1 or 2 examples of things that are super helpful that KM wouldn't be able to achieve?
That's what I think as well. Thanks for sharing your feedback
Alfred is the first thing I install on a mac. It's personal preference I suppose, but I love Alfred as an app launcher. Say I want to launch Logic. It learns over time which app you're most likely to want to open that starts with L, so after a few runs you only need ⌃Space L ↵.
There are loads of great workflows. One I use a lot is Recent Documents/Folders. ⌃Space rf and your recently accessed folders appear in a list. ⌃Space rd and you see your recent documents.
The clipboard history is great. Yes, KM can do it, but Alfred's is prettier.
It has a snippet feature. Handy for AppleScript or Regex (or any text you want to save to be reused.)
It automatically saves locations you've browsed to in its history so, for example, if I want to go to my Stream Deck icons folder:
Easy-to-set–up custom web searches.
Take a screenshot and automatically upload it to Imgur.
Search for and run Keyboard Maestro macros:
I could go on and on...
Thanks for the examples. I guess I need to watch some more videos and all that and see if I find something truly unique that justifies installing it, at least for my workflow.
I'm assuming you are part of their forum as well? If so, is it as active as this one, or more like BTT's?
I only go on the forum if something doesn't work, and that's hardly ever, so couldn't really say.
Just install the free version. Best way to see if you like it.
Will do. Thanks!
@iamdannywyatt You will be happy to hear that the Alfred community is quite active in the forum 
I know this because I have looked in often ... but Alfred never really convinced me. You are a well known BTT phobic ( 
just kidding), BTT has the advantage that almost everything is self-explanatory, so much help is not needed at all 
The new "palettes" are going to be great. Just like short/long press is great, the notch bar... I could go on and on...
@noisneil Have you seen that BTT now has a stream deck function? No idea if it is any good. But the users are talking good about it. 
Yeah! I saw that.
Most interesting thing to me is that it can perform a different action on button release. Can't believe SD doesn't have that built in.
Worldwide known! hahaha
I will keep BTT anyway because of the snapping feature, which is something I use every single day. Everything else, so far, doesn't seem to be worth the time to even bother looking. Maybe one day I will find something, but not yet 
Regarding Alfred, I will give it a try and see what happens. @noisneil seems to have some valid points there and I just need to try them and see what I get from it.
Good to know that the forum is active. That helps a lot!
Thank you for sharing that info!
Yes, this works everywhere in BTT. The manual says.
## Trigger on key-down / key up
BetterTouchTool allows you to select whether you want a shortcut to trigger on key down or on key up. This can be useful if you want to e.g. trigger one action on key down (e.g. middle-mouse down using the custom click predefined action) and another action on key up (e.g. middle-mouse up).
In such a case you would just configure two shortcuts with the same keys. Then you would check the "Trigger on down" checkbox for one of them.
Can't you reproduce this with one of your clever macro. You did it with your mulitpress macros after all
You are indeed a challenge. But I am patient and make it my sacred duty to put you on the right path. Exactly how to do that, I still have to figure out. 
If you can use KM and BTT for clever things then maybe try Raycast instead of Alfred.
I used Alfred since version one, but after getting the above apps, I found tweaking Alfred workflows one too many things to do.
Raycast is pretty new, and harder to extend, but you get a lot of the Alfred power pack features for free. The plug-ins for it are high quality, and easy to update.
I just downloaded it and watched a few videos. Seems to be a great tool indeed. Super flexible. And the fact that developers can contribute with extensions and all that, I can see becoming a super tool. I saw a video where he was even interacting with the Unsplash website and that showed me the potential of people relying less and less on websites directly, but using apps like Raycast as a quick way to get what they want from a source (website). Amazing!
Thank you so much for sharing this piece of valuable information!
I use Alfred as a replacement for KM palettes. Alfred's launcher style design affords more information per item in the listing and just looks a lot nicer.
In Alfred, create a workflow and give each item you want presented in the list the same trigger input keyword (you can also bind the keyword to a hotkey).
Then, I assign each input an action which uses AppleScript to call on the KM macros.
Now, when I trigger Alfred (or the hotkey assigned to this workflow–in this example, I double tap the control key), it presents a nice looking list of KM actions.
And to bring it full circle, I also use BetterTouchTool in a similar way to trigger both KM macros and Alfred workflows via trackpad gestures.
Long time Alfred user and never thought of this! 
The only downside is the amount of faff involved setting it up compared to palettes for which I now use this.
@jasoncarulli Ok, very well done 
, but isn't that a maintenance nightmare? If you don't like the KM palettes and you also use BTT, then you will be happy to hear that BTT is coming very soon with new fully configurable floating palettes. At least the configuration should be much easier then.
For this to be really useful I think it would have to call a different palette per application, and I can't see a way to do that within Alfred. I do love the idea though.
Here's a macro that will automatically create Alfred Palette entries. Change the hotkey in the green action to whatever you'd like the Alfred trigger to be. Select one or more macros in the KM Editor, trigger this macro and click in a blank Workflow space, when instructed.
