Quick Tip: Use Alfred to launch Chrome from Safari
When the iPhone shipped without Flash, it set off a long slow death for the technology. It was then expedited in 2010 when the iPad was released without support for it.
For a while, this meant that iOS users couldn’t access content (or even navigation) on many websites. For a long time, I ran a plugin on my Mac called ClickToFlash. It would stop Flash content from loading and I could click to load a specific video, etc. John Gruber pointed out that using ClickToFlash wasn’t sending a clear message to web developers about their visitor’s capabilities and desires.
They still saw that I had Flash installed (and still required it). I decided to take John’s recommendation and uninstall Flash completely.
My day to day browsing is done in Safari. However, since the Chrome browser ships with a sandboxed version of Flash, sites that require the technology can be viewed without having the Adobe software installed at the system level.
However, copying and pasting URLs from Safari to Chrome is time-consuming and error-prone.
Thanks to the fantastic Alfred, I have a very simple way to automate it. Whenever I come across a website that requires me to use Flash, I hit CMD + Space (my Alfred shortcut) and type Flash Free. You’ll need to install this Alfred workflow ahead of time. When you trigger that workflow, it will take the current Safari URL and load it into Chrome.
To install it, download the workflow, double-click it, and hit Import on the dialog box. You are then ready to uninstall Flash from your Mac. You can visit this webpage to download the most recent uninstaller.
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