Alfred, an app I’ve used every day for years, is getting a big update in the coming months. Andrew Pepperrell, Alfred’s developer, just revealed a huge new feature coming to the application-launcher-but-so-so-much-more called “Workflows.”

It sounds similar to Automator workflows but built right into the Alfred’s friendly and simple search bar. Here’s the example that (obviously) caught my eye:

Should I watch this movie?

Movies weren’t created equal, so before I start watching a movie, I can search for “movie dark knight rises” to decide whether or not I should watch it. This will launch a YouTube search for the trailer in Chrome (because I don’t have Flash installed in Safari), an IMDB search using a default web search, and a Rotten Tomatoes custom search I’ve created.

That appears to be one of the simpler examples, but it gives a nice idea of what this thing will be capable of.

If you buy the Alfred Power Pack, which unleashes a slew of nerdy features like AppleScript and Shell access, for £15 ($24.21)¹ today you’ll get a free upgrade to v2 when it’s released next year.

As an added incentive, Andrew is offering purchasers of the Mega Supporter license early beta access to v2 in January. For £30 ($48.38) you also get lifetime updates to the app, so when v3 drops in 2016 you’ll be all set.

(via Stephen Hackett.)