Quick start a new iMessage from Alfred using the new Messages app
I was looking around at the new Messages (beta) this morning and just because I’m curious, got to looking through the Info.plist. Yes, I’m that kind of nerd. :) Guess what I found… an iMessage URL scheme. I don’t know if this has been mentioned elsewhere yet..
So what does that mean? As of Alfred 1.1 you can set specific actions when selecting data in the Alfred contact viewer. So, if you want to quickly create an iMessage to a contact from Alfred, go to Preferences->Features->Address Book and on the Phone option, select Pass to URL Scheme, then set the scheme to “imessage:{query}”
Once you have that set, press your hotkey to bring up Alfred (mine is Cmd+Space), search for a contact, select one, press Enter, select the phone number that they can receive iMessages on, and press Enter.
If you use things like Google Talk, you can do the same thing with Google contacts. Go to Preferences->Features->Address Book and go to the Messaging tab. Find the Google Talk option, set the action to Pass to URL Scheme and set the URL to im:{query}.
There are also URLs for aim:, ichat:, and xmpp:.
