Keep in Sync: Using Dropbox with Alfred

Last week, we celebrated Alfred's 4th birthday by giving away licenses and subscriptions for some of our favourite Macs apps. This month, we are featuring each one, as well as sharing the best Alfred workflows to make the most of them. Today, we're taking a look at Dropbox.

Over the past few years, Dropbox has become a fairly ubiquitous service; whether it's sharing work documents, syncing your 1Password keychain or sending photos to friends, it's the first port of call.

Dropbox to sync your Alfred settings

You know you're using a good syncing service when you completely forget about it because it's working so seamlessly.

If you're a Powerpack user with more than one Mac, you can sync your settings using Dropbox. This ensures you can use your workflows, snippets and themes on your Macs and take advantage of any customisations you make. Of course, certain settings are specific to each of your Macs, including your main Alfred hotkey, search scope, current active theme - so nobody at work needs to know about the Pikachu-yellow Alfred theme you use at home! ;)

You can set this up in Alfred's Advanced preferences; Start by setting up your primary Mac, letting your settings sync up to Dropbox. When setting the sync folder on your second Mac, wait until Dropbox has fully updated with the primary Mac's settings, then choose the same folder and Alfred will begin to use the same preferences file.

Dropbox workflows

File filter to search Dropbox only

If you use Dropbox to store backups of files that are also on your Mac somewhere else, searching can get a little confusing. This is where file filters come in handy.

This file filter workflow took me a few seconds to create; it simply limits your search scope to the ~/Dropbox/ folder, so that the only files returned are those you've stored on Dropbox. You can customise it to your needs by adding specific files types (e.g. only PDFs or folders) or choosing a more specific scope (e.g. your Public Dropbox folder only).

Download the File Filter to Search Dropbox Only workflow.

This workflow was created using one of the many templates you can find in Alfred's Workflows preferences by clicking the + in the bottom left.

Screenshot & save to Dropbox

This workflow is a very ingenious and handy one by Carlos A. Sztoltz. It allows you to take a screenshot on your Mac and immediately store it in a public Dropbox folder, all while creating a shortened URL and copying it to your clipboard. This is at least as awesome as riding your bike with no hands. While standing on your head. And juggling fire.

It requires a little more setup than the workflow above; you'll need to type "setupss" to tell the workflow which folder to save screenshots to, and add your bitly or Brb.bz details if you want to use URL shortening.

Once you're set up, you can use hotkeys or keywords to take a screenshot of your screen, a specific window or a selected area. The screenshot will be saved in the folder you've set and a URL copied to your clipboard.

You can download the Screenshots 1.1 workflow, and find out more about its features here.

You'll need the Powerpack to use workflows; You can purchase a license to get started with workflows like this one, and many more great features.