I bid farewell to Quicksilver, welcome back to the party Spotlight

[GimmeSlack12]

I knew this day would come. The day when I realized that the lack of development of QS would finally push me away. I thought after installing Snow Leopard that QS would finally be dismissed, but I was scared to go without it and found a way to make it work. But now... I just can't drag the dead weight of the program anymore. Not when there is a faster, just as useful alternative built right into OS X: Spotlight.

Sure, Quicksilver "works" with 10.6, but it has acted strangely for the most part. The headers and information did not display correctly, certain features were marred for unknown reasons (i.e. mailing attachments, iTunes plug-in, etc.) and I dare not dig to hard to fix these problems because I was afraid of breaking QS further. Finally, after trimming the Catalog down more and more in hopes for speed gains I realized that I only had one option. Uninstall Quicksilver and move on.

In the days before Quicksilver I had begun using Spotlight. I liked it. It's fast, stays out of your way, and overall does make computing faster. But Spotlight left me yearning for a more powerful option, and this was satisfied with Quicksilver. Now, I return to Spotlight to realize that it has grown much faster and slightly more customizable (last time I really used Spotlight was in 10.4). This is part introduction and part re-introduction. The future is bright.

 

[r.j.s]

I tried QS out in 10.4, but never really got the hang of it. I just didn't use it for the right things apparently, so I gave up and just stuck with regular apps or Spotlight.

 

[Zortrium]

It should be noted that a common alternative to QS, LaunchBar, is still alive and well under Snow Leopard. It's unobtrusive, fast, and customizable, albeit not free (though you can try it for free).

 

[pyramis]

I haven't yet upgraded to Snow Leopard, so I don't know what's in store for a die-hard QS user like myself. It's hard to believe that Spotlight could ever fill the same place my heart, like the speedy transitive operations for copying/moving files from A to B with a few keystrokes. Maybe I'll have to give Launchbar another chance when I upgrade to 10.6. But say it ain't so.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

... say it ain't so.

Not to say that you might not get it working as normal on 10.6, but slowly things just weren't as they used to be and I've gotten tired of it.

 

[juliainor]

I'd recommend giving LaunchBar a try. I tried QS, but I'm on SL and it gave me fits, so I uninstalled before I could ever really appreciate it.

I downloaded LB over the weekend and watched the ScreenCastsOnline episodes on it. I LOVE IT.

In just a few days of using it, it's already become an integral part of my routines. Great app. Very unobstrusive, extremely customizable, very powerful and fast.

It has a free trial, so there's nothing to loose.

 

[RaceTripper]

+1 on LaunchBar.

I got tired of QS's flakiness and general not working well on SL. I started using LaunchBar, paid for it 30 days later, and have never looked back. I don't miss QS at all.