The Alfred app for a Mac: what it takes over from the menu bar

Alfred has been the standard answer to "how do people work without touching the mouse" on macOS for well over a decade. It is made by Running with Crayons Ltd, the core app is free, and the paid part is called the Powerpack. Anyone arriving at it now has a harder decision than people did a few years ago, because Spotlight has absorbed a good share of what used to be the reason to install a launcher at all.

So the useful question is not whether Alfred is good. It is which specific jobs move into it, what the paid tier adds that nothing else does, and how much of the clutter on screen it actually removes. The last of those has a more precise answer than most reviews give.

The free app, and where the Powerpack line falls

The free version of Alfred is a launcher and a search field. It finds and opens apps and files, learns from use and prioritises results accordingly, searches the web with default and custom keywords, calculates and copies the result, checks spelling, defines words, previews a file when the Shift key is tapped, shows any text at large size on screen, keeps usage statistics, and runs system commands such as sleeping the Mac, emptying the Trash and starting the screen saver. That is a complete tool, and for many people it is where the story ends.

The Powerpack is where the things people describe as life-changing live. Workflows are the headline: a workflow editor with Workflow Objects and Automation Tasks, chaining hotkeys, keywords and actions together without writing code, plus thousands of workflows shared by other users. Clipboard history is part of it, covering text clips, images, file paths and colour hex codes, and it connects to snippets, so a clip can be saved into the Snippets Viewer straight from the clipboard history viewer with Command-S. Snippets themselves auto-expand from a short keyword. File search gains customisable filters for specific file types and locations, and files gain actions such as emailing, moving, copying and revealing in the Finder. Two newer workflow objects extend what a workflow can show: Text View is a scriptable, editable text window with Markdown and image support, and Grid View gives thumbnail-based browsing. A Universal Action called View in Alfred uses those to preview Markdown, images, PDFs and text files from the Finder or from within Alfred. There is also a Mini Player for the Music app, and Alfred Remote for iOS turns an iPhone or iPad into a control surface for the Mac.

The Powerpack is a one-time purchase. A single licence is £34, and a £59 tier includes free lifetime upgrades. Alfred 6 has been announced for this autumn, and the current listing states that buying now includes a free upgrade to it, which removes the usual reason to wait for a major version.

What Spotlight now covers for nothing

This is the comparison that decides the question for most people, and it has shifted recently. Spotlight opens with Command-Space bar and narrows with modifier keys: Command-1 for applications, Command-2 for files, Command-3 for actions and Command-4 for the clipboard. It previews a result with the space bar, reveals Quick Actions on a result with the Tab key, shows a file in the Finder with Command-R, calculates arithmetic and percentages in the search field, converts temperature, distance, weight and currency, and defines words without opening Dictionary. It also supports quick keys, which are custom shortcuts for actions used often.

Job	Spotlight	Alfred, free	Alfred with the Powerpack
Launch apps and find files	Yes	Yes, with learned ranking	Yes, with custom file filters
Calculate and convert units	Yes	Calculate, spell and define	Same, extendable by workflow
Clipboard history	Yes, Command-4	No	Text, images, file paths, hex colours
Snippets and auto-expansion	No	No	Yes, with a Snippets Viewer
Custom automation	Quick keys for actions	No	Workflows, with an editor and a gallery
Price	Free, built in	Free	£34, or £59 with lifetime upgrades

Read honestly, the table says that the free tier of Alfred now overlaps heavily with something already installed, and that the Powerpack is what is actually being bought. Anyone evaluating Alfred should test the Powerpack trial against Spotlight rather than testing free Alfred against Spotlight, because the free comparison understates the difference.

Setting it up without a key clash

Two search fields cannot share one key combination, and this is the first thing that goes wrong. Spotlight answers to Command-Space bar, and that shortcut is set in Keyboard settings, under Keyboard Shortcuts, where it can be changed or switched off. Alfred's own hotkey is set inside Alfred. One of the two has to move, and the choice matters more than it looks: whichever keeps the familiar combination is the one that will actually get used, because the muscle memory is older than either preference.

The usual arrangement is to give Alfred the shortcut that is already reflexive and move Spotlight to something else, rather than the reverse. The alternative, keeping both on separate keys, is defensible while the decision is still being made, and it makes the trial honest, since both are available for the same task and the one reached for instinctively is the answer.

Workflows install from the gallery rather than from a settings pane. Each gallery page offers an Install in Alfred button, which hands the workflow straight to the app, and a plain download for anyone who would rather inspect the file first. There is also a workflow for browsing the gallery from inside Alfred, so searching for something to install does not mean opening a browser. Workflows are third-party code running with whatever access they need, so the same caution that applies to any downloaded script applies here; the ones marked as featured and those published by Running with Crayons carry the least uncertainty.

What Alfred genuinely removes from the menu bar

The menu bar has two halves and a launcher affects them very differently.

The left half is app menus: File, Edit, View and the rest, drawn by whichever app is in front. Alfred can take these over, through a gallery workflow called Menu Bar Search. It searches the menu options of the frontmost application, triggered by the menu keyword or by a hotkey, with fuzzy matching, so typing menu cw finds Close Window. Prefixing a query with # searches by keyboard shortcut instead of by name. For anyone working in an app with deep menus, that replaces a genuine daily annoyance, and it does so without changing anything about the app.

The right half is status items: the clock, battery, Wi-Fi, Control Center, and every third-party icon. Alfred does not draw these and has no control over them. What it can do is remove the reason for opening some of them. The gallery carries workflows such as AirPods Connector and AirPods Pro Connector for connecting and disconnecting headphones, AirPods Pro Battery for checking their charge, and Bluetooth Device Battery for the charge level of connected Bluetooth devices. Each of those is a case where a status menu was being opened to perform one action, and the action can now be typed instead.

Where a launcher cannot help

Being clear about this is what makes the trade worth evaluating. A launcher answers questions that are asked. A status icon answers questions that were never asked, by being visible.

A battery percentage, a recording indicator, a VPN connection state, a build status, a remaining disk figure and the privacy dots that macOS shows when the microphone or camera is in use all belong to the second category. There is no keyword that substitutes for them, because the value is in noticing something without having thought to check. No amount of workflow building changes that, and treating a launcher as a replacement for a monitor ends with the monitor being reinstalled a week later.

Alfred also cannot reorder, hide or collapse anything in the bar. Its own icon is optional and can be turned off, which leaves the bar exactly as crowded as it was before, minus one. The set of icons that genuinely needed to be visible is smaller than the set present on most Macs, but a launcher is not the tool that sorts them.

Deciding whether to pay

One question settles it. What would be automated? If a specific, repeated, multi-step task comes to mind immediately, such as renaming and filing a batch of screenshots, opening a project in an editor with one keyword, or expanding a standard reply, then the Powerpack pays for itself and the workflow gallery shortens the build considerably. If nothing comes to mind, the honest answer is that free Alfred plus Spotlight covers the ground, and the £34 buys potential rather than a solved problem.

The clipboard history case is worth separating out. If clipboard history is the only reason for considering the Powerpack, Spotlight now searches copied text and files with Command-4, and dedicated clipboard managers cost less than £34 outright. The Powerpack version earns its place through the link to snippets, not through history alone.

What is left in the bar afterwards

There is a pattern to how this usually settles. After a launcher takes over launching apps, finding files, running menu commands and triggering one-off actions, what remains in the menu bar divides cleanly. A minority of icons report state continuously and are worth the space. The majority are launchers wearing an icon: click to open a window that a keyword now opens faster. Those never needed to be visible, and they are the ones pushing the useful icons off the right-hand end when an app with long menus comes to the front.

macOS gives limited help here. Menu Bar settings governs Apple's own controls, with Show When Active or Always Show for Focus, Screen Mirroring, Display, Sound and Now Playing, plus an Allow in the Menu Bar list for apps that supply items. For the rest, the only gestures are holding Command while dragging an icon to move it, or dragging it out of the bar to remove it entirely, which also removes access to its menu.

A menu bar manager for macOS is what handles the remainder: the icons that are only launchers move behind a divider and stay reachable, while the ones that report something keep their place near the clock. That is the configuration a launcher makes possible, and the feature list covers how hidden items are opened without the bar expanding again. How it compares sets out the differences between the tools that do this, and the pricing page states the terms.

What to change first

Install free Alfred, add the Menu Bar Search workflow, and use it for a week before deciding about the Powerpack; the decision gets much easier once the daily tasks are visible. Then sort what is left in the bar into things that report and things that merely launch, and put the second group behind a divider with Koffret.