Over the past few weeks, it's been fantastic to hear how quickly Alfred 3's snippets expansion have become part of your daily productivity tools. From creating your own speedy email replies and signatures, to URL collections and funny emoji sets, the snippets are getting some great use!

Can you see the teal blue colour running through my usage graph every day? This hints at how much time and typing I've saved thanks to snippet auto-expansion (and more!) during the Alfred 3 release, using Alfred 1029 times on the day after release. Amazing, isn't it?

New to snippet auto-expansion?

Snippet auto-expansion is a Powerpack feature new to Alfred 3, and is an evolution of the existing Clipboard History and Snippets features we already loved in Alfred 2.

Expansion allows you to set a short keyword (in this case, !star), a title and the text you want to paste when using your short keyword.

To paste it, type the keyword, which is magically replaced by the full snippet. Whether you're saving your most frequently used sentences, greetings, addresses, URLs or silly emojis, it's a brilliant time saver.

Find out more about getting started with Snippet Auto-Expansion.

Tips For Better Snippet Expansion

To get the most out of the expansion feature, your keywords need to be memorable but shouldn't be triggered by mistake. Here are some ideas to help you set useful snippet keywords.

• Use non-word keywords to avoid unexpected expansion; Don't use the keyword date to paste the date, otherwise every time you try to type it's a date!, you'll find yourself saying it's a 01/06/16! as your snippet auto-expands.
• Start all your snippets with the same non-alphanumeric character, such as an exclamation mark, colon or semi-colon. (e.g. !office)
• Use unusual capitalisation (Alfred will respect the capitalisation you set, e.g. officE)
• Use double characters (e.g. ttime)

Using Snippets from the Viewer

There's no need to use auto-expansion for every snippet you've saved if they're used less frequently, as you can also access your Snippets through the Snippets Viewer just like you did in Alfred 2.

Works beautifully with Clipboard History

Copied something to your clipboard that you know you'll need to use frequently? While in the Clipboard Viewer, press Cmd + S to save it as a snippet. The text will be saved as snippet and you'll just need to add a snippet name and keyword, and pick which collection it belongs to.

Exciting Plans Ahead

Those who've been part of our community for a long time will know that we've always got something new planned. We're already scheming some great new improvements to the Alfred 3 features for the coming months.

If you're an existing Alfred Powerpack user, you are eligible for a discounted upgrade to Alfred 3, and if you're a new user, you can buy a Powerpack license to get started.

Keep an eye on our tweets and be sure to sign up to our newsletter (here in the page footer or in Alfred's General preferences tab) to find out about future updates and sneak previews!

Two weeks ago, we officially released Alfred 3. Within hours of the release, we could see you'd already started making the most of it; Great workflows, themes and snippet collections are beginning to appear!

On Tuesday, we released 3.0.1 as a first round of improvements to the initial release; It's been an incredibly smooth release, but these improvements iron out the few small kinks you've encountered in the early days.

The update includes reliability improvements for the new Snippets auto-expansion feature, which you've been putting to great use right from the start. We've also made a few additions to Clipboard History, namely adding word count and character count to the text summary view, and further performance improvements.

You can see the full Change Log of updates here or in Alfred 3's Update tab.

Don't forget that existing Powerpack users are eligible for a discounted upgrade. If you bought in 2016, you're eligible for a free upgrade!

New users can also buy a license to start taking advantage of the many great features in Alfred 3!

After months of intense development, polishing and testing, Alfred 3 is here and ready for you!

It's been a thrill to add new features to Alfred, and improve existing ones. We already can't live without these new features, which add so much to our workday productivity; Amazingly flexible workflows, snippet expansion, multimedia clipboard and more.

You can download Alfred 3 to get started right away.

We've highlighted a few of the new features below. We also published a post answering some of the commonly asked questions for Alfred 3; upgrading your Powerpack, migrating your preferences and more, so take a look for details.

Workflows: More flexibility and new objects

Workflows are now more flexible than ever; Lay out objects anywhere and chain objects of all types to do exactly what you want!

Add notes to your workflow objects and assign colours to add clarity when revisiting your own workflows or when sharing workflows with fellow Alfred users.

We've added a whole new category of super useful utility objects, including Filter, Transform, Replace and more. We've also made it easier to configure objects dynamically using JSON, and arguments and variables.

You'll find Getting Started and Example workflows built into Alfred 3's Workflows preferences, and tons of documentation on our help site, allowing you to start playing with workflows right away.

Multimedia Clipboard

We gave the Clipboard feature lots of love in this release; As well as text clips, you can now also copy images, file lists and hex colours to the Clipboard History for quick access when you need them.

You can either search for saved clips by typing a few characters, or scroll back through your history until you find the right one.

Snippet Auto-Expansion

Type less, say more; With Alfred's new text expansion feature, type a keyword and a whole text snippet will appear in its place. It has become an essential part of our work day instantly!

Save your snippets directly from your Clipboard History with Cmd + S, and organise your snippets into handy collections you can share with friends and colleagues.

Overhauled Theming

We've also overhauled Alfred's theme editor; Theming is now quicker to use, with a simple dragging system to set sizes and the ability to use any fonts from your Mac.

Once you're done, share your theme to alfredapp.com and send the link to friends to show your true colours!

And so much more...

There are stacks of new features for you to discover; Improved file navigation, system commands, better support for accessibility and keyboard layouts, as well as huge performance improvements.

You'll find a more complete list of features in Alfred's Update preferences, and we'll be featuring tutorials and tips in the coming weeks to help you make the most of each and every feature.

A huge thank you to our beta testers for their help over the past few weeks, and to you, our wonderful and enthusiastic community. Your excitement and kind words are making the hard work totally worth it!

Cheers, Andrew & Vero

Alfred 3 is now available for you to download, so here's a guide to getting started with this new version.

We've also published a post highlighting the fantastic new features and improvements to Alfred 3 so if you'd like to find out what's new, go take a look!

Where can I download Alfred 3?

You can download Alfred 3 from our homepage, so grab the free version to get started.

Do I need to upgrade my Powerpack License?

If you'd like to use the Powerpack and don't yet have a license, grab buy a Powerpack license to join in the fun!

If you're an existing Powerpack user, you'll either be eligible for a discounted upgrade to Alfred 3 if you bought a license before 2016, or for a free upgrade (if you're a Mega Supporter or have purchased since 1 January 2016). Eligible Single User and Family license holders who purchased in 2016 will have received an email today containing their new license details.

Enter your license to activate the Powerpack features, or get in touch if you need a hand recovering your license. (Please bear with us during this busy week, we'll respond as quickly as we can!)

Can I import my Alfred 2 preferences?

Yes, as soon as you launch Alfred 3, you'll see the Migration Assistant, allowing you to import your preferences to Alfred 3. We've ensured your upgrade experience is as smooth as possibly, and all your preferences should be migrated.

Your workflows will be imported into Alfred 3, and should work perfectly smoothly right away. If you find a workflow that needs an update to work in Alfred 3, you may need to contact the workflow creator or pop a post on the forum.

Please note that we don't recommend using app cleaners to remove Alfred 2 from your Mac, as these apps can be over-zealous and delete files that are also essential to Alfred 3. Once you're confident that all your workflows work smoothly in Alfred 3, you can simply drag Alfred 2 from your Applications folder to Trash.

Take a look at our migration guide if you need help migrating your preferences.

Let's get started!

Time to have some fun with Alfred's new features; Take a look at our post highlighting the new features to jump in.

Between the new workflow objects, the brand new snippet auto-expansion feature, the much improved theming, the multimedia clipboard and more, there's plenty to discover.

We'll be posting guides and tips to make the most of each feature in the next few weeks, so be sure to follow us on Twitter (@alfredapp) and pop by the blog often!

It's with great excitement that we started rolling out the Alfred 3 beta today. The feedback so far has been fantastic!

Thousands upon thousands of you signed up to take part in the beta, and while we'd love to give everyone access at once, we need to do it in a way where we can manage the feedback.

The only way to do this fairly was to send to a random subset of users; The first wave was a random subset of our Mega Supporters. We'll be sending new waves of invites every day, so keep an eye on your inbox as the next wave will be going out around lunchtime tomorrow.

If everything goes smoothly with the beta, we hope to make Alfred 3 generally available within the next few weeks. Exciting times ahead!