Alfred¶
Alfred with the Powerpack is the launcher on every Mac.
Hammerspoon owns windows and hotkeys; Alfred handles everything typed: apps, files,
snippets, and the workflows below. The app comes from the alfred cask in every Brewfile
and updates itself.
Preferences¶
Alfred keeps its preferences in ~/Library/Application Support/Alfred/Alfred.alfredpreferences
on each Mac. That folder is not synced and is not in the dotfiles, so each Mac has its own
workflows, versions, and settings. The Dracula theme is imported by hand on each Mac; see
Theme.
Two folders under iCloud Drive, Alfred/ and Alfred Preferences/, hold preference bundles
from 2017. They are leftovers from an older sync setup and nothing reads them.
Workflows¶
| Workflow | Author | Keyword | Installed on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emoji Search | Jeff Triplett | emoji |
all |
| Sublime Text Projects | Dean Jackson | .st |
all |
| Backup Preferences | Alfred Team | start backups, restore backups |
studio |
| Alfred Justfile | Jeff Triplett | just |
studio |
Emoji Search is built from ~/Projects/alfred-workflow/alfred-emoji-search-git, a
Syncthing-mirrored project, and installed by hand on each Mac. The three Macs do not
have to run the same version of a workflow, and today they do not.
To install or update it, build the bundle and open it in Alfred, then click Import and let it replace the older version:
just bundle writes dist/Emoji Search.alfredworkflow after a smoke test. The workflow
needs Python 3.12 or newer and skips macOS's Python 3.9; Homebrew's python3.12 works.
Alfred Justfile is Jeff's own workflow, not yet published, that lists just recipes through a
script filter. Its source is ~/Projects/alfred-workflow/alfred-demo-git. Its script path still points at a pyenv shim, and pyenv is gone, so the keyword
does nothing until the path is changed to /opt/homebrew/bin/uv.
Backups¶
The Backup Preferences workflow on the studio makes a daily archive of the whole preferences folder. It is configured in the workflow's own settings, not in a file here:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Target | ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Backups |
| Time | 18:00 daily, through a launchd agent named com.alfredapp.vitor.backuppreferences |
| Versions kept | 8 |
start backups makes one now. restore backups lists the archives, restores one, and
restarts Alfred. The archive is a .tgz of the preferences folder, so it also serves as a
way to copy the studio's workflows to another Mac: restore it there, then remove the
workflows that do not belong.
Only the studio backs up today. To cover the other two Macs, install the workflow there from the Alfred Gallery and point it at the same iCloud folder; the file names carry the hostname, so the archives do not collide.