Launcher
Super Shortcuts vs Alfred: a ready-made alternative
Alfred is the most configurable launcher on the Mac, and with enough Powerpack workflow building it can reach much of what Super Shortcuts does out of the box. The difference is the building. Super Shortcuts ships as the finished layer, adds website-level scoping and on-device voice, and shows you what's bound instead of asking you to remember.
Updated
At a glance
| Super Shortcuts | Alfred | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 one-time | Free core; Powerpack £34 one-time, £59 for free lifetime upgrades |
| What it is | A ready-made hyper-key and voice command layer | A keyword launcher plus a workflow builder |
| Primary idiom | Press a chord; the action fires in place | Summon the bar and type a keyword - or build a workflow with a hotkey trigger |
| Setup to get value | Install; the layer is already bound | Build a workflow per action in the Powerpack editor |
| Scoping | Per app, per website, per window | Per app, via a workflow hotkey's Related Apps setting |
| Seeing what's bound | Hold the hyper key; the cheat sheet appears | Open Alfred's preferences, or the docs cheatsheet for defaults |
| Voice | On-device voice commands | None |
| Best for | Repeated actions you want instant, scoped, and pre-built | Deep, bespoke customization and a fast keyword vocabulary |
What Alfred is
Alfred is one of the oldest and most respected productivity apps on the Mac. At its core it’s a launcher: press a hotkey, the bar appears, you type a keyword, and it acts - opening apps, finding files, searching the web, doing arithmetic, controlling music. The free version covers that core forever.
The Powerpack is where Alfred earns its reputation. It adds clipboard history, snippets with text expansion, and workflows - a visual editor where you connect triggers, inputs, actions, and outputs into whatever you need, without writing code. Over a decade of community workflows exists because of it. If you want a Mac that behaves in a very specific way that nobody else has thought of, Alfred is one of the few tools that will let you get there.
The core difference: a vocabulary you type vs a position you press
Alfred’s organising idea is a vocabulary. Its power comes from keywords you learn and type - em for email, dn for downloads, whatever you define. Even Alfred’s hotkeys usually resolve to running a workflow you’ve named and built. You navigate your Mac by recalling words.
Super Shortcuts’ organising idea is position. There’s no vocabulary and nothing to type: you hold one key and press another, and the meaning of that chord changes based on where you are. You navigate by muscle memory rather than recall.
Neither is better in the abstract. A typed vocabulary scales to thousands of things and handles the case where you don’t know quite what you’re looking for. A pressed position is faster for the fifty things you do constantly, and it doesn’t degrade when you’re tired or the thing you want has an awkward name.
Where Alfred genuinely matches us
Comparison pages usually skip this part. Alfred can do more of what Super Shortcuts does than a quick look suggests:
- It can fire without showing a window. A Powerpack workflow’s Hotkey trigger can perform an action directly, with no bar and no typing.
- It can scope a hotkey per app. The Hotkey trigger’s Related Apps setting can make a hotkey active only when specific apps have focus, or ignored in them.
- It’s a one-time purchase. The “no subscription” argument works against some rivals. It does not work against Alfred.
- It goes further than we do on breadth. Clipboard history, snippet expansion, file search, and a full workflow builder are real features we simply don’t have.
If you already own the Powerpack, are comfortable in the workflow editor, and only need per-app scoping, Alfred can be configured into something quite close to what we ship. That is a fair reading and we’d rather say it than have you discover it.
Where Super Shortcuts is different
- It arrives finished. The distance between installing Alfred and having a scoped, hotkey-driven command layer is a series of workflows you build one at a time. With Super Shortcuts that layer is the default state.
- Scoping goes past the app. Alfred’s hotkey scoping is per application. Super Shortcuts scopes to the app, the website you’re on, and the window - so the same chord can mean one thing in a Gmail tab and another in a Linear tab, inside the same browser.
- You can see what’s bound. Hold the hyper key and the current bindings appear over your keyboard, for the app you’re in right now. Alfred’s cheatsheet is a documentation page of defaults; your own customisations live in preferences.
- Voice, on device. Say the command instead of pressing it, processed locally. Alfred has no equivalent.
- Nothing to maintain. No workflow files to keep working across updates, and no editor to relearn when you want to change a binding.
Which should you use?
If the appeal of Alfred is the building - if you want a Mac configured exactly your way and enjoy the editor - Alfred is the better tool, and Super Shortcuts will feel constrained by comparison. That’s a real preference and a legitimate one.
If you want the outcome without the project, start with Super Shortcuts. And if you’re already deep in Alfred, the two sit fine together: keep Alfred for search, clipboard, and snippets, and let a chord handle the things you do fifty times a day. See also Raycast, which competes with Alfred directly, and Keyboard Maestro if the workflow-building part is what actually appeals to you.
Feature by feature
| Super Shortcuts | Alfred | |
|---|---|---|
| Works without summoning a window | Yes | Partial |
| Ready to use with no configuration | Yes | No |
| Scoped per app | Yes | Yes |
| Scoped per website or window | Yes | No |
| Hold-to-view cheat sheet of current bindings | Yes | No |
| On-device voice commands | Yes | No |
| One-time purchase | Yes | Yes |
| Keyword-driven search across files, web, and apps | No | Yes |
| Clipboard history and snippet expansion | No | Yes |
| Visual workflow builder for custom automation | No | Yes |
- Built in
- Possible with setup
- Not available
Frequently asked questions
Can Alfred already do what Super Shortcuts does?
A lot of it, if you build it. With the Powerpack, an Alfred workflow can use a Hotkey trigger that fires an action without showing the Alfred window, and that hotkey can be limited to specific apps using the trigger's Related Apps setting. So the honest answer is that the capability overlaps more than most comparisons admit. What differs is that every one of those is something you assemble in the workflow editor, one action at a time, whereas Super Shortcuts ships with the layer already built - plus scoping by website and window rather than app alone, and on-device voice, which Alfred has no equivalent for.
Is Alfred free?
The core app is free forever - app and file launching, web search, calculator, dictionary, system commands. The features people usually mean when they talk about Alfred are in the paid Powerpack: workflows, clipboard history, and snippets with text expansion. The Powerpack is a one-time purchase at £34 for a single-user v5 licence, or £59 for the Mega Supporter tier which includes free lifetime upgrades - the standard licence is tied to a major version, so a future Alfred 6 would be a paid upgrade.
Which is cheaper, Alfred or Super Shortcuts?
They're close, and neither is a subscription. Alfred's Powerpack is £34 one-time (£59 if you want lifetime upgrades); Super Shortcuts is $39 one-time. If you want the ongoing-cost argument, it doesn't separate these two - it separates both of them from subscription launchers. Pick on how you want to work, not on price.
Should I use both?
That's a reasonable setup, because they're strongest at different moments. Alfred is excellent when you don't know exactly where the thing is - searching files, the web, your clipboard history, or expanding a snippet. Super Shortcuts is for when you know exactly what you want and don't want to type anything at all: the same chord, scoped to where you are, firing instantly. Nothing about running both conflicts.