Better Dictionaries

Better search and live previews for built-in macOS dictionaries.

Features

IPA (phonetic) pronunciations: Press ⌘↩ to hear the pronunciation.
In-Alfred live previews with colors that automatically adapt to Alfred's theme:
Reverse search:
More relevant search results:
left: macOS/Alfred built-in search, right: BetterDict
If one word has multiple, unrelated meanings with different origin, they are showed as diffrent entries (in the above example, see "arm" has two entries at the top)
Import any compatible dictionary

Setup

After importing the workflow, type .setup-better-dictionaries into Alfred.

Importing a Dictionary

After setup, type .dict-import into Alfred. Select the dictionary you want to import.

Dictionary-specific Keywords and Hotkeys

After a dictionary is imported, a script filter and a hotkey trigger is automatically created into the workflow editor.

Freshly-installed workflow without any imported dictionaries:
Two hotkeys and keyword triggers each automatically added after importing two dictionaries. They come pre-labeled with dictionary names:
This allows you to assign hotkeys and keywords for specific dictionaries. For example, below you can see how I have manually assigned keywords thesaurus and defn to the thesaurus and dictionary respectively. In addition, I can trigger the dictionary search using ⌃⌥⌘D.

Word Lookup

You can use the hotkeys/keywords created above for directly searhcing specific dictionaries. That's the recommended way for dictionaries that you use frequently.

For the infrequently used dictionaries for which you haven't assigned any hotkeys/keywords, follow this:

Type lookup into Alfred. You'll see a list of all dictionaries imported into BetterDict.
Select the dictionary to search, and type the search query.

Notes and Warnings

Importing a dictionary could take as much as 30 minutes on old machines or if there's significant CPU activity from other apps.
After each mac restart, for the first time when you run the workflow, expect a comparatively slower search. Subsequent searches should be instant.

This workflow takes a LOT of space on disk. Take a look at the comparison:

# Built-in dictionaries
Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus:  7 MB
New Oxford American Dictionary:     36 MB

# After importing into BetterDict
Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus: 101 MB (html files)
New Oxford American Dictionary:     442 MB (html files)
Combined search index of these two: 730 MB (apart from html)

better dictionaries