Unlock greater productivity with Gaurav’s latest episode on the AppleVis podcast — the final chapter in a three-part series all about Alfred, the powerful macOS productivity app tailored for VoiceOver users. Alfred lets you breeze through tasks simply by typing, eliminating the need to dig through menus or complex interfaces.
In this concluding episode, Gaurav walks you through setting up custom keyword commands in Alfred, focusing on how to create a quick shortcut to empty your Mac’s Trash. Follow along as he demonstrates the entire setup, making it easy to automate this common task.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to launch Alfred using Command + Space
- Using Alfred’s search bar to run commands with keywords
- Customizing and creating your own Alfred keywords via preferences
- Replacing the default empty trash command with a shorter, faster keyword
- Discovering other handy system commands like activating the screensaver, adjusting volume, ejecting disks, and more
- Tips for prioritizing your most-used commands in Alfred’s suggestions
Episode Highlights:
- Live demo of emptying Trash using a custom Alfred keyword
- Step-by-step guide through Alfred’s settings and accessibility features
- How to enable and tweak system control keywords
- Practical tips for speeding up everyday Mac tasks
- Encouragement to explore Alfred’s full suite of system commands
If you’re looking to simplify repetitive Mac tasks with just a few keystrokes, this episode is packed with practical insights to help you work smarter and faster.
Helpful Links:
- Alfred App: https://www.alfredapp.com/
- Download Alfred on the Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/alfred/id405843582?mt=12
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.
Gaurav: Hello, everyone. Welcome to part two in our Alfred demonstrations and walkthrough series. In today's demo, I'm going to be showing you how you can go into the Alfred settings and set up keywords that you can type into the Alfred search bar, which can trigger certain actions on your Mac. Today, I'll be showing you how you can use a keyword to empty your trash. So just to demonstrate how this works, I'm going to show you how it works on my Mac right now.
Gaurav: I'm going to press command space to open the Alfred search bar.
VoiceOver: Application. Alfred system dialogue, Alfred search field, Alfred search.
Gaurav: I'm going to type my keyword, which is empty. E F T Y force empty trash empty. I've typed the word empty and you can hear it already said force empty trash. I'm going to hit enter. And you heard the trash emptying sound in the background there. So I just have to whenever I want to empty my trash, I just have to trigger Alfred, type in my keyword, hit enter and my trash can gets empty. Now I'm going to show you how you can set this up.
Gaurav: So I'm going to again trigger Alfred with command plus space.
Gaurav/VoiceOver: application Alfred system dialog emoji and applique I'm going to now press command and comma to get to the Alfred settings finder Alfred preferences Alfred preferences search preferences window
Gaurav: So I'm in the Alfred settings and preferences. I'm going to press VOFN left arrow to go to the leftmost part of the screen. Search preferences. I'm going to press VO and right arrow. Alfred sidebar. I'm in the sidebar. I'm going to press VO shift down arrow to interact. In Alfred sidebar, content is empty. I'm going to press, I'm in the general tab right now. I'm going to try to find the features tab. Features tab selected. Okay, I'm in the features tab.
Gaurav: I'm going to VO shift up arrow to un-interact with the sidebar.
VoiceOver: Out of Alfred sidebar.
Gaurav/VoiceOver: I'm going to VO right arrow to enter into the features content. Features list, row 13 of 16. I'm in the features list. I'm going to VO shift down arrow to interact with the features list.
VoiceOver: Mute contacts, default results, scope, types, fallbacks.
Gaurav: So now that we're in the features list, I'm going to just use the down arrow to scroll through all the features until I come to the one that I want to control.
VoiceOver: File search. Search. Navigation. Buff. Universal actions. Files. Text. URLs.
Gaurav: Down arrow again.
VoiceOver: Web search. Custom. URLs. History.
Gaurav: Down arrow.
VoiceOver: Web bookmarks.
Gaurav: Safari.
VoiceOver: Chrome.
Gaurav: Down arrow.
Gaurav/VoiceOver: Clipboard history. History. Merging. down arrow, snippets, snippets, clippings, down arrow, calculator, standard, advanced, down arrow, dictionary, spelling, definitions, again down arrow, contacts, viewer, email, music, mini player, down arrow, one password, system, commands, quitting, ejecting,
Gaurav/VoiceOver: system commands so this is the one we want so i'm going to vo shift up arrow to un-interact with the features list table auto features list and i'm going to vo right arrow to interact with the content of this specific window system help control mac os directly from your keyboard ejecting quitting and hiding apps
Gaurav: All right, so you just heard that you can control macOS directly from your keyboard using Alfred. V or right arrow. Screen saver. V or right arrow.
VoiceOver: Enable screen saver command.
Gaurav/VoiceOver: Check. So this is turned on. Screen saver is turned on.
VoiceOver: Screen saver. Content selected. Screen saver keyword.
Gaurav: So it says the keyword for me to trigger my screen saver with Alfred is screen saver. Okay. Let me go right arrow. Volume up. Volume up.
VoiceOver: Enable volume up command. Checked. Checked. Volume up. Content selected. Volume up keyword.
Gaurav: So the volume up keyword is volume up. V-O-L-U-P one word. So that's the keyword I can use to put volume up.
VoiceOver: Show trash. Enable show trash command. Checked. Trash. Content selected. Show trash keyword.
Gaurav: So I can see that the keyword for me to open the trash is just the word trash. I'm going to keep pressing V or right arrow.
VoiceOver: Volume down. Enable volume. Pull down. Empty trash.
Gaurav/VoiceOver: Empty trash. This is the one I wanted to get to. I'm going to V or right arrow again. Enable empty trash command. Check. So empty trash command has been enabled. I can hear it says checked. Empty. Content selected. Empty trash keyword. So it says the empty trash keyword is empty. I'm going to VO shift down arrow to interact with this text form. And edit text. Empty. I'm going to backspace. Selection deleted.
Gaurav: I'm going to just change this keyword to ET, which stands for empty trash. So it's a much shorter keyword. ET. Okay. Now it's done. So I'm going to VO shift up arrow.
VoiceOver: Out of edit text. Empty.
Gaurav: I'm going to just V your left arrow and then again right arrow to come back onto the edit text field to make sure I've typed the right command.
VoiceOver: Enable empty trash command. Add content selected. Empty trash keyword.
Gaurav: Okay, so the empty trash keyword has now been set to the letters E-T. I'm going to command plus W to close the Alfred settings now.
VoiceOver: Finder, desktop, desktop.
Gaurav: I'm going to VO, sorry, command plus space to open trigger Alfred and type ET.
VoiceOver: E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E-T-E- Perfect.
Gaurav: So I can see as soon as I typed ET, the first option it gave me was Ethernet. But when I pressed down arrow, right below that was empty trash. And the more I use this shortcut key and I keep selecting empty trash, after four or five times, it'll automatically show empty trash as the first option every time I type in this new keyword of ET. So there you have it guys, I've just showed you how you can use Alfred to do various things on your Mac.
Gaurav: On that same settings window which I just showed you earlier, You can actually navigate and explore there. And you can do various things. Like I said, you can trigger the screensaver, volume up and down, restart, shut down, empty trash, eject all connected disks, etc. So there's lots of actions you can trigger directly from the Alfred search bar. Check it out. Hope you enjoy it.