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Migrate Alfred Snippets to Raycast

· 3 min read
wen

0. Background​

I have been using the snippet feature of Alfred 3, but the Alfred snippet feature is paid.

Recently, I discovered Raycast, where the Raycast snippet feature is free and open-source, allowing for personal customization.

Therefore, I plan to migrate my Alfred snippets to Raycast.

1. Migrate Alfred Snippets to Raycast​

The format of Alfred's snippet files differs from that of Raycast's snippet files. Hence, it is necessary to first convert Alfred's snippet files to Raycast's snippet files.

1.1 Get Alfred Snippets Files​

Open the Snippets feature in Alfred, click the Export button to export the Alfred snippets. Since collections in Alfred 3 do not support bulk export, they need to be exported one by one. 🐶

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1.2 Convert Alfred Snippets to Raycast Snippets​

Create a new folder and place the exported Alfred snippet files in it.

Then, create a file named convert-alfred-snippets-to-raycast-snippets.sh in this folder, with the following content:

convert-alfred-snippets-to-raycast-snippets.sh
#!/bin/sh -e
# Script for converting Alfred snippets to Raycast snippets
# Usage: chmod +x convert-alfred-snippets-to-raycast-snippets.sh; ./convert-alfred-snippets-to-raycast-snippets.sh
# NOTE: Install jq before running this script

# List up all *.alfredsnippets files and rename them to *.zip
for file in *.alfredsnippets; do
    mv "$file" "${file%.alfredsnippets}.zip"
done

# Unzip all *.zip files and get the folders name
for file in *.zip; do
    unzip -o "$file" # -o: overwrite existing files without prompting
done


# Merge all *.json files to one file for Raycast snippets
jq -s 'map(.alfredsnippet | {name, keyword, text: .snippet})' *.json > ./output.json

# Clean up all files except output.json
for file in *.json; do
    if [ "$file" = "output.json" ]; then
        continue
    fi
    rm "$file"
done

for file in *.zip; do
    rm "$file"
done

for file in *.plist; do
    rm "$file"
done

# You can now import the output.json file to Raycast

echo "Done! 🎉 You can now import the output.json file to Raycast -> Import Snippets"

OR download from Github gist: convert-alfred-snippets-to-raycast-snippets.sh

note

To execute this script, you need to install jq, which is a command-line JSON processor tool.

For Mac, you can install jq using Homebrew with the command: brew install jq. You can also refer to the official website for more installation options.

Run the following command:

chmod +x convert-alfred-snippets-to-raycast-snippets.sh
./convert-alfred-snippets-to-raycast-snippets.sh

An output.json file will be generated in the current directory.

1.3 Import Raycast Snippets​

Open Raycast, then click on Import Snippets. Choose the output.json file generated in the previous step to import the snippets into Raycast.

Reference​

Migrating Alfred Snippets to Raycast

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