Tag Archives: alfred

Introducing Shh: An AppleScript and Alfred Extension to close all those noisy streams

August 10th, 2011

As the work day progresses I find myself with more and more “streams” open. Not long after I log onto my computer in the morning Twitter, Skype, iChat, Mail and other streams are open and active and at multiple points throughout the day they steal my attention.

However, there are times when I just want to focus on what I’m doing. Mac OS X Lion’s new fullscreen feature is designed to help me focus on a single application at a time. However, when Skype, iChat, Mail, or Twitter are open they will notify me (audibly or with bouncing icons) when they’d like my attention. They will inevitably pull me away from what I’m doing to see what is going on.

Skype, for me, is the biggest culprit because our team at Viddler uses Skype as the primary way to communicate. So even though Skype is notifying me that there is something new in Skype sometimes it is just some of the team members chatting about what’s for lunch and really isn’t meant for me and isn’t high-priority.

So there are times that I do not want to be distracted or even notified that something is going on in Skype. I want to be left completely alone and work on whatever it is I’m focused on. Enter Shh, an AppleScript and/or Alfred Extension (I love Alfred) that will quickly close these four applications. It is a dead simple script that closes all of these applications at once (rather than closing them individually).

I’m guessing that I will extend this script to include other applications over time and even enhance it in some way (perhaps by forcing the foremost application into fullscreen mode on OS X Lion or turning off Growl notifications) so if you’re interested in such things be sure to watch this project on Github or contribute to it yourself.

Alfred 0.9

May 15th, 2011

My favorite launcher application, Alfred, has been updated to version 0.9. I suggest buying the Powerpack but it is free if you want to kick the tires.

Calling it a launcher application is sort of limiting. Alfred can help you play music, give you quick access to your clipboard’s history, and even help you attach files to your emails. Its absolutely great and version 0.9 is packed to the gills with new features and updates.

The lesser known, consistent, keyboard shortcuts for Alfred’s iTunes Miniplayer

April 5th, 2011

I use the iTunes Miniplayer in Alfred (of which I have a Powerpack license and highly recommend that you do too) pretty extensively. One gripe that I had with the Miniplayer was that the keyboard shortcuts were not consistent as you used it.

This is what would happen. I’d envoke the Miniplayer by first envoking Alfred’s global keyboard shortcut, typing iTunes, and selecting the Miniplayer. Then, I’d choose one of the menu items it shows – here is an example screenshot.

This wasn’t good because the menu changes as you choose items from the list. Notice the keyboard shortcuts to play random albums or switch into Playlists, etc using CMD+2, CMD+3 and so on. The problem is that these menu items change as your context changes inside of the Miniplayer. In other words, CMD+4 would not always fire the same action. This got pretty annoying so I fired off a tweet to @alfredapp on Twitter.

And, wouldn’t you know, they responded, there is a better way! Alfred has a whole host of keyboard shortcuts that remain consistent regardless of what you’re looking at within the application. If you look at the list, scroll down to the iTunes Miniplayer section, you’ll see that you can use CMD+CNTRL+(arrow keys) to do many of the tasks that I do each and every day, and, they will always be the same no matter what.

Fantastic! Thanks Alfred. (I’ve always wanted to say that)