dgbeecher Posted March 24, 2017 Share Posted March 24, 2017 I'd like to ask for help accomplishing the following: 1. select a file in Finder 2. trigger Alfred 3. search for the app I wish to open that file with 4. open that file with that app Is this possible? (I've searched the forums for "open with", which is the command I used to use in Quicksilver to accomplish this. I found ways to set up workflows to open a specific file type with a specific application. But that's not what I want. I want a more flexible way to, on the fly, search for the application I want to use with the currently selected file. Basically I am looking for a way to access, through Alfred, the functionality of the Finder's "open with" contextual menu item.) Thank you! Link to comment
Andrew Posted March 24, 2017 Share Posted March 24, 2017 @dgbeecher you can actually do this without any configuration using the file selection hotkey under Features > File Search > Actions > File Selection. I have set this to alt+f. I select a file in Finder, hit alt+f which shows Alfred's action panel. You can select "Open With" from there Cheers, Andrew mrchow19910319 and bivalvegruff 2 Link to comment
dgbeecher Posted March 25, 2017 Author Share Posted March 25, 2017 Oh, that's right! So easy. Thank you for the helpful response. Some follow-up feedback: I have Advanced > Apps Matching set to "Full fuzzy match from word boundary". But this setting seems not to apply when I'm searching for an app via the "Open With" action. So for example, I can open PDFpen with "pp" in Alfred's normal search pane. But if select a PDF, hit alf+f, and choose "Open With", I'm not able to select PDFpen from the list by typing "pp". Furthermore, searching *within* Alfred's action panel doesn't work as I expect it to: I keep trying to select "Open With" by typing "ow", but that's also not allowed. (I actually think that my confusion over how to search the action panel and the resultant lists is why I turned off the "File Selection" action long ago, forgot about it, and had to ask here in the forums.) Link to comment
Andrew Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 @dgbeecher which version of Alfred are you running? 3.3.1 should have addressed the full fuzzy match from word boundary when using "open with" and searching for applications. Link to comment
dgbeecher Posted March 26, 2017 Author Share Posted March 26, 2017 Seems I had accidentally turned off "automatically check for updates". Now that I'm on 3.3.1, this is working beautifully. Thank you again! Link to comment
cands Posted March 26, 2017 Share Posted March 26, 2017 (edited) Yes, fuzzy search for apps using "open with" works in 3.3.1. However, for me it is still not possible to access the "open with" command itself using fuzzy search "ow" (as dgbeecher also points out), and in general the action panel commands can not be accessed using fuzzy search. I find that this interrupts the logical flow of fuzzy search in Alfred. Can this be fixed? Edited March 26, 2017 by cands Link to comment
Andrew Posted March 27, 2017 Share Posted March 27, 2017 Alfred only applies fuzzy matching to Apps, everything else is keyword or word based throughout the rest of Alfred which is why the actions panel doesn't employ fuzzy matching. This has been by design in Alfred since the start (at a framework level), so is unlikely to change any time soon, but I'll make a note of this thread for possible considerations in the future. Cheers, Andrew cands 1 Link to comment
Voeltz Posted March 5, 2019 Share Posted March 5, 2019 Sorry to revive a dead topic, but is there a way that when I'm searching for something within Alfred (my shortcut is just CMD+Space to replace Spotlight) that I can hold a modifier key, like how CMD does "reveal in Finder" to have the open with... pop up? My example would be: I have .png files that I normally want to open in Preview, but every-now-and-then open in Adobe Illustrator. Thanks for the help! This thread was helpful already!! Link to comment
Luddite Posted March 28, 2020 Share Posted March 28, 2020 On 3/5/2019 at 7:05 AM, Voeltz said: Sorry to revive a dead topic, but is there a way that when I'm searching for something within Alfred (my shortcut is just CMD+Space to replace Spotlight) that I can hold a modifier key, like how CMD does "reveal in Finder" to have the open with... pop up? My example would be: I have .png files that I normally want to open in Preview, but every-now-and-then open in Adobe Illustrator. Thanks for the help! This thread was helpful already!! I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I set up a workflow like this: - when I activate Alfred and type the keyword “png”, Alfred will limit my search to only png files. - follow the keyword “png” with the space key, and then type the name of the png I want to open. - hit Enter, and the png will be opened with Affinity Photo, because the keyword “png” is connected to the Open File with Affinity Photo as below. If someone has a quicker workflow, please share. Link to comment
Jolly Roger 8X Posted January 4, 2023 Share Posted January 4, 2023 On 3/24/2017 at 1:06 AM, Andrew said: @dgbeecher you can actually do this without any configuration using the file selection hotkey under Features > File Search > Actions > File Selection. I have set this to alt+f. I select a file in Finder, hit alt+f which shows Alfred's action panel. You can select "Open With" from there Cheers, Andrew Just in case anyone else needs it, this setting has moved in later versions of Alfred. You can set Alfred Preferences > Features > Universal Actions > Selection Hotkey to take action on the current Finder selection in Alfred 5.0.6. Link to comment
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