I'd find macOS unbearable without Alfred. It's easy to forget what "clean" macOS was like, because they've been shipping features that replace or complement what was a separate app, back in the day.
I use this instead of Spotlight. I use it with a Pomodoro timer script that someone wrote and I just grabbed in <5m. I use it for all my keyboard shortcuts, because it's much faster than cmd+tabbing or anything similar. I use it for expansions for boilerplate code and LaTeX. I'm sure there are other, fancier features, but I don't use those.
Alfred 4 was worth the money. The upgrade to 5 wasn't super worth it for me, but I did so to support the creators anyway.
