Silent Mention

From their README

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.

Screen Shot 2020-08-13 at 5 04 14 PM

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.com or @stop, but to a human's eyes, it is just WordPress⁠.com or @⁠stop.

Works On

  • Twitter
  • Slack
  • iMessage
  • GitHub
  • And more