Since the initial release back in November, I’ve put a lot of work into making Flashlight a more mature platform - building out the infrastructure and UI for installing plugins, building an API that lets developers do what they need, and documenting and supporting all that. 1.0 works well because it’s had a huge open beta. Dropbox did similarly “hacky” stuff with OS X until very recently - it’s just a matter of polishing the code-injection process and testing it widely (which the community has done a fantastic job with). We’ve made it faster, added more natural-language-processing smarts, added the ability to create calendar events, start calls, and a lot more Siri-type stuff - most importantly, we’ve got over 160 plugins online.įlashlight is still a “hack” in the sense that it hooks into the system without using undocumented APIs. People really liked it, so I (and many other contributors) have continued working on it. Tens of thousands of people have downloaded the app since it was launched as a “terrible hack” on GitHub in November. I spoke with Nate Parrott, who has been the main developer behind Flashlight, and he had this to say. Now, chances are much better that it will work in Spotlight, rather than having to switch to Alfred.) (I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve started typing something into Spotlight in Yosemite, thinking that I was typing it into Alfred because I had absent-mindedly triggered the wrong keyboard shortcut. Many people (myself included) will probably keep using Alfred (or LaunchBar) and Flashlight. Other users will find that they can get by with Flashlight instead. Power users will find things that those apps can do that Flashlight can’t. If this sounds similar to LaunchBar or Alfred, you’re right. Here’s a quick (and incomplete) list of what Flashlight can do with its built-in plugins, to give you a sense of its abilities: start a call (FaceTime or regular, assuming your iPhone is connected) search Wikipedia, do a quick web search, do an “I’m Feeling Lucky” search, search Wolfram|Alpha, search Amazon, DuckDuckGo, Twitter, Flickr, Google images, animated GIFs, IMDB, torrents, Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Evernote, and more check the weather add a calendar event or reminder with basic “natural language” parsing eject disks, shutdown/restart/logout/sleep/lock your Mac, or start the screensaver send an email or SMS check the spelling of a word reveal files in Finder email files from the Finder turn WiFi and Bluetooth on/off insert emojis speak text fast post to Twitter or Slack create a new note from the clipboard copy Finder paths, kill processes empty the trash show or hide desktop icons.ĭid I mention there’s more? Because there’s more, but you get the idea. Its plugin system also means that you can disable features that you don’t want or won’t use. It extends Spotlight to do a bunch of different things (there’s a list below) but even more importantly it offers an API for others who want to hook into Flashlight’s power to do new and different things. Today, Flashlight is being released as a 1.0, with much more polish, and much less of that first-draft smell. Late last year, it was released as a beta which even its developer described as a “terrible hack.” But the idea was great, and I remember thinking: “Imagine if Spotlight could do all of these things.” Sometimes we see “first drafts” released into the wild and we think “Wow, that’s a terrible idea.” Sometimes we see them and think “That could be great.” Flashlight is an example of the latter. First drafts aren’t meant to be good, they’re meant to be a starting point.
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