If you own a Mac and are not familiar with Alfred, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Like Spotlight, Alfred puts all the files on your computer at your fingertips, never more than a few keystrokes away. Likewise, you can launch any app without reaching for the trackpad or mouse. Also like Spotlight, Alfred works as a calculator and dictionary, just like Spotlight.

However, you can force start the screen saver, quickly empty the trash folder, log out, put the computer to sleep, lock it, and restart or shut down the Mac, all without ever reaching for your mouse or trackpad. If you need to execute shell commands, you can do that from Alfred, too. And to boot, all of this is available without the Powerpack, which if you consider yourself a Mac power user, is absolutely essential.

Some of the features the Powerpack unlocks are the ability to begin composing an email to a specific contact without your default email client being open, a clipboard and snippet manager, and 1Password integration. You will also have a contacts manager, more themes to choose from, and most importantly, Workflows at your disposal.

And that is where the true beauty of Alfred lies – user-developed workflows that can add tons of functionality and unofficial third-party integration to Alfred.

In the below video, you will find just the tip of the iceberg for Alfred Workflows – all the ones I personally use almost every day. There are hundreds of workflows, if not thousands, in the Alfred forums and scattered across GitHub. They’re highly adaptable and you could even create workflows for yourself, if you understand basic scripts.

If you use Alfred and have some favorite workflows I missed here, be sure to tell me about them in the comments below!