markjaquith/alfred-silent-mention

Alfred 4 Workflow to silently type @usernames, domains.com, or #hashtags without them being linked or parsed

Alfred Silent Mention

Alfred 4 workflow to silently type @usernames, domains.com, or #hashtags without them being linked or parsed by Twitter, Slack, iMessage, and more.

For example, you can type @stop on Twitter without poor Doug Bowman getting a notification. Or you could type WordPress.com or Amazon.com in Slack without a big annoying preview loading in.

Installation

1. Have Alfred installed.
2. Have the Alfred Powerpack installed.
3. Download the Silent Mention workflow file, and double-click it to add it to Alfred.
4. Customize the keyword if you want (default is silent).

Usage

Invoke Alfred, then type silent @username or silent amazon.com or silent #hashtag and hit return. The thing you typed will be pasted into the frontmost app, but will not be seen as a username mention, a domain link, or a valid hashtag.

How It Works

It works by inserting an invisible U+2060 Word Joiner character in a location that breaks the parsing. U+2060 is a special character that means “the things on either side of me should stay stuck together”. So, to Twitter, it looks like WordPress<U+2060>.com or @<U+2060>stop, but to a human's eyes, it is just WordPress⁠.com or @⁠stop.

Works On

• Twitter
• Slack
• iMessage
• GitHub
• And more

alfred-silent-mention's Issues

Use U+2060 (Word Joiner) instead of zero-width space

The problem with zero-width space is that it can cause your "word" to wrap, at the ZWS.

U+2060 (Word Joiner) (shown here between two dots: .⁠.) does not seem to have this issue, and seems to work on Slack, Twitter, and iMessage.