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Loving QuickSilver

tsice19

tsice19

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 16, 2008
703
0
I just downloaded and installed quicksilver. And I have to say, already, I'm changing iTunes songs and browsing the net without going near the dock.

It's a great program. However, I was wondering some things about it

  1. What are some good themes?
  2. What are some good plugins?
  3. Does QuickSilver use lots of System Resources?

Thanks
TS
 
Is Quicksilver really that great? I mean what does it do?

I keep hearing about it but I've been reluctant to try it cause I feel it doesn't do anything special.
 
I started using it a few years ago and have not stopped since. Once I tried to do something on my wife's mini and was at a loss how to do it (the old way without quicksilver).

If someone asks you for someone's contact info, you just press Contol-Space, type in a few letters of their name and press enter. Pulls right up in the address book (handy when you don't always have address book open).

I use it to launch apps. It always remembers the last program launched or the most used if they happen to start with the same few letters.

Find and email files easily, open safari links, etc.
 
Why is quicksilver better than spotlight? it has the same basic tasks, so i am not sure why i should get it.
 
I've had it installed for a few hours and haven't really felt it gives me much, if anything over what spotlight offers. Yeah, browsing my iTunes is handy but I've yet to find much more :( Still waiting for that A-HA moment.
 
deltaiscain said:
Why is quicksilver better than spotlight? it has the same basic tasks, so i am not sure why i should get it.
Click to expand...

Exactly why I stopped using Quicksilver once I got Leopard.

All I used Quicksilver for, was app launching and searching for songs to play, which Spotlight does. So no need to run another app when spotlight is always running. :)


Sure you can't get themes for spotlight...but meh.
 
Yes they can but quicksilver seems to be better at some things than spotlight. I still use spotlight for searching for files and emails, but quicksilver for everything else.

I just click on spotlight and it took a few seconds to show after spinning, then typed in my full name. After about 4 seconds it shows some stuff, then maybe 5 seconds after that is finally shows me as a contact in the list of stuff it found. I then have to move my mouse over and click my name to pull up my contact.*With quicksilver I just press Control-Space, type in part or all of my name, press enter and I am in address book looking at my info, or instead of pressing enter I right arrow to get other options like compose an email to.

Don't like it, don't use it. I kind of hated it at first until I read some of the hint and tricks and how-to's and now I love it.
 
jamesarm97 said:
Yes they can but quicksilver seems to be better at some things than spotlight. I still use spotlight for searching for files and emails, but quicksilver for everything else.

I just click on spotlight and it took a few seconds to show after spinning, then typed in my full name. After about 4 seconds it shows some stuff, then maybe 5 seconds after that is finally shows me as a contact in the list of stuff it found. I then have to move my mouse over and click my name to pull up my contact.*With quicksilver I just press Control-Space, type in part or all of my name, press enter and I am in address book looking at my info, or instead of pressing enter I right arrow to get other options like compose an email to.

Don't like it, don't use it. I kind of hated it at first until I read some of the hint and tricks and how-to's and now I love it.
Click to expand...

Really? My spotlight isn't that slow. Mine is almost instantanious. I have also never had to type more than 3-4 letters of what I was looking for, to find what I needed. And it's not like navigating with the up and down arrow keys is hard if it's not the top hit. :p

Also, I really liked the keybinding feature to bring Quicksilver up. I had it on Option+Space.
Now instead of Option, I hit the Apple button + Space. It's right next to it. :D You don't HAVE to click it. :p

PS. Don't get me wrong. While using Quicksilver, I did enjoy it. It's a great app. But everything I needed it for, I can do with Spotlight. :)
 
reclusivemonkey said:
Finding things is only one small part of Quicksilver. Its so much more but it will take a while to fully grasp everything it can do. It does the job of many other standalone apps/plugins you can get for the Mac.

The best place to start would be the quicksilver tutorials page;

http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/tutorials?DokuWiki=d62658fd7bf98fc64ce1ed506364cce7
Click to expand...


My two cents..Twice I've started using QS only to go "old school" after a few days. There are useful tutorials on youtube. QS does seem significantly faster than spotlight as a launcher, finding files, etc. There is MUCH more to QS though. From friends who swear by it, I guess it makes one much more efficient, but...learning it well enough to truly "get it" isn't easy...which makes seeing the value difficult imo.
 
Wow, i've just installed quicksilver, and i love it. Amazingly handy. I disabled spotlight, and now only use it. Awesome app.
 
Quicksilver is hard to describe and it took me about a week to get it. Here's the best way I can describe it briefly. Spotlight can find things on your mac and open them. Quicksilver can find things on your mac and open, edit, show, move, rename, email, play, pause, ff, etc. them.

I most use it for doing web searches in a variety of search engines, with one keystroke. I highlight text, and hit a key stroke to search google or a different key for imdb or a different key for wikipedia, etc.

It is easy to use, but alas it is not obvious.
 
I may give quicksilver another go. I guess the problem is that it was so similar to spotlight, I didn't really see the point to running another app. Finding contacts, web history, emails, files, applications I do through spotlight at the moment. I pause and play and do iTunes with my Apple remote (or now my iPhone) I use hotkeys for most applications as it is. I guess it'll save me an Apple+Tab.
 
See again, it's not just "finding" or "opening" it's taking the next step that you want to do with the thing you're looking for. Using quicksilver merely to replace cmd-tab is pointless.

I have a blog, I often want to resize images to 400 pixels wide to post. I do this by selecting the image in the first pane and using the Scale Image action in the 2nd and typing 400 in the 3rd pane (I could specify the height too but this will preserve the aspect ratio). I can do this in the Quicksilver interface with just a few keystrokes and a new image that's 400 pixels wide is saved to my desktop. I do this so often I've saved this command as a "trigger" and now can run it by selecting the file in the finder and typing control-command-i. The equivalent by using spotlight would be to find the image file via spotlight and opening it not in a viewer but in an editor (maybe you have photoshop configured to open images, maybe you have Preview, or maybe Firefox) and then using the editor to do the resizing. Spotlight got you to the file, QS got you through the next step.

Check out the Quick Reference sheet and Manual at the QS google group. The quick ref should give you a taste of the number of actions quicksilver can do, the manual is long but gives all the details.
 
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