The double-tap

I use Alfred because I believe that my computer should be practically unusable to other people who try to use it. My goal is to put the things I use frequently close at hand. Conversely, the things I use rarely should be accessible without cluttering my most common workflows.

Last week, I came up with a way to bring the two or three applications I use all the time very close to hand. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the double tap:

Alfred Preferences

Since I use VIM inside a terminal several hours a day, I want really quick access to iTerm 2. My thumb just happens to sit near the command key all day. Ergo, assigning a key to quickly switch to the terminal makes a lot of sense.

But it gets even better! Alfred knows about double-taps of the control, alt, and command keys. So you can assign an application to each of those keys and really quickly switch back and forth between them. It’s pretty rad.

My experience is that this works exactly how I’d want it to 80% of the time. A couple times a day, I will start to chord a different key combo and mysteriously end up in iTerm. It’s not disruptive, just a little odd at first, and I keep going about my business.

If you use Alfred with the Powerpack and love your keyboard, you should definitely start using double-taps.

Adam Keys @therealadam