Butler and Quicksilver (simple question)

[JayQC]

I wondered, what is the status of these two apps regarding Snow Leopard compatibility ? I know that Quicksilver is supposed to work and am confused about Butler having issues.

I cannot test it, I don't yet have a mac, but since I will very soon and am very interested by these apps which seem wonderful, I wondered how the "supposed to" translates into "actually works well"

 

[zacharydz]

I don't know about Quicksilver, but Butler works okay. Actually, Butler works exactly as it did under Leopard with one exception. On stacks, when I click on a folder (ex Downloads folder) and drag a file from the pop-up to my desktop, the butler configuration screen will pop up.

 

[SHADO]

They released an update to Quicksilver that has SL compatibility built in, and it works great.

 

[JayQC]

Glad to hear they work, I found there's also Google Quick Search box (not to be confused with Google Desktop), but it's not quite up to par with Quicksilver yet it seems, although its development is going strong !

 

[JayQC]

They released an update to Quicksilver that has SL compatibility built in, and it works great.

I also wondered, do most plugins work fine for you?

 

[jedivulcan]

I considered Quicksilver a waste of resources when Spotlight offers the same basic app launching functionality (which is what I mainly use).

 

[JayQC]

I considered Quicksilver a waste of resources when Spotlight offers the same basic app launching functionality (which is what I mainly use).

Granted if you use it as an app launcher, but from what i've seen it's not all there is to it, far from it ! Spotlight seems like a great app launcher (I don't yet have a Mac)

 

[RaceTripper]

I dumped QuickSilver for LaunchBar. It is int' free but it's fantastic and & have never looked back. QuickSilver is just going nowhere fast, and I grew tired of the flakiness and failure to work properly under SL.

 

[Dale Sorel]

I don't know about Quicksilver, but Butler works okay. Actually, Butler works exactly as it did under Leopard with one exception. On stacks, when I click on a folder (ex Downloads folder) and drag a file from the pop-up to my desktop, the butler configuration screen will pop up.

I know this post is pretty old, but I've been Googling for a while and this is the only reference I've found to this particular problem. Does anybody here have any idea why the Butler configuration window opens every time I drag something from a stack? I already tried deleting everything from ~/Library/Application Support/Butler to reset Butler but the problem remains unchanged.

 

[iindigo]

Been using Quicksilver for years on both Leopard and now Snow Leopard... it's been pretty smooth. It might crash once every four months or something, at most - dunno why others are having so much trouble.

As for QS vs. Spotlight, yeah, Spotlight does the job, but:

• On machines running Leopard/older PPC Macs, Spotlight is MUCH slower than QS
• Spotlight requires me to first hit "Show All" before I can do anything with the results
• Spotlight searches everything, which is good in some cases, but annoying when it turns up every little random application tucked away in the dark recesses of your HD
• With a huge screen (27" iMac) I much prefer having my app launcher in the center of the screen


As for other alternatives:
- Butler: Don't like the way it's laid out. It's kinda like a weird Spotlight-QS hybrid. Also costs $20, which is a lot more than I'm willing to pay for this type of utility.
- Alfred: Much closer to QS and probably would be what I'd use if QS became unusable. Still prefer QS's icon-based look over Alfred's text-based one. Free (at least for now).
- LaunchBar: Haven't tried it, might be nice, but once again feels a little too much like Spotlight, based on screenshots. Another in the list that costs more than I will pay.
- Google QSB: Looks something like QS, but carries that same Google signature overinflated UI look. At least it's the right price.

 

[Dale Sorel]

I know this post is pretty old, but I've been Googling for a while and this is the only reference I've found to this particular problem. Does anybody here have any idea why the Butler configuration window opens every time I drag something from a stack? I already tried deleting everything from ~/Library/Application Support/Butler to reset Butler but the problem remains unchanged.

OK, since no one here seems to know anything I sent an email to the author at peter@manytricks.com. I still haven't heard anything yet, but if I do I'll be sure to let everyone here know. OK, I just found another email for Peter at mail@petermaurer.name. That's off his website so it should be good. In the meantime, I guess if I want to be able to drag stuff out of a stack I'll have to find something other than Butler to use as a launcher and pasteboard. I guess I can use Spotlight as a launcher, but what's a good pasteboard for the menubar. I'm currently using six of the most recent pasteboards.

 

[Dale Sorel]

OK, I finally figured it out. What you have to do is go into Butler: Preferences: Editing and deselect the top left corner. From what I can tell, that fixes the problem of the Butler: Configuration window popping up whenever you drag something out of a stack. Nice to be able to keep Butler and work with stacks the way I want to