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jason2811

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 8, 2006
729
2
Can someone explain to me exactly what Quicksilver does? Everyone on this board raves about it and I want to know what it would do for me, the average user? Thanks.
 
It indexes applications, etc on your hard drive, much like Spotlight. It's essentially an application launcher with much more complex abilities. If you have it set up correctly, you can press a hotkey to bring it up, type 'mail', [tab], an address, [tab], a message, [return] and it will automatically open Mail, populate the message, and send it for you. You can navigate your iTunes library without actually having iTunes open. You can type 'Text [tab] st' and it will open Textedit and the document 'Story.doc'.

You almost never have to open your hard drive, because you can open anything from wherever you happen to be.
 
It allows for fast movement through your computers files no matter what you are doing.

Basically you activate it and a prompt comes up, and you simply type in, for example, a song title or artist, it begins listing all iTunes songs. Once you find the song you hit return and the song begins. Without moving to iTunes you have changed the song.

Or you can select a file in the Finder and activate QS and tell it to attach this file to an email to this person in your address book. Boom brings up an email ready to be written or sent immediately.

Oh, and it searches for files real easy. It is not a total replacement of Spotlight, as it doesn't do system wide searches. But I find it to be invaluable.
 
I just installed the application again today since I keep hearing people say they use it religiously. It massively expands OS X's keyboard shortcuts feature.
 
I installed Quicksilver sceptically one day, thinking I've got spotlight so whats the point? But I gave QS the benefit of the doubt and followed some tutorials on this page. Now I love it and can't be without it!

I love the plugins for it - I can search my del.icio.us bookmarks direct from QS. Awesome.
 
QS is, in my opinion, a superior alternative to spotlight (shock!). Much better at searching, and it means i can bring up the window, and within seconds be played CoD2 :D
 
Counterfit said:
Well, it is missing some stuff that Spotlight has, like live updating, and, erm, I think that's it...

Yeah, it reindexes every half hour. You can also tell it to index manually.
 
pulsewidth947 said:
I installed Quicksilver sceptically one day, thinking I've got spotlight so whats the point? But I gave QS the benefit of the doubt and followed some tutorials on this page. Now I love it and can't be without it!
That is how I started using it. I kept sticking my nose up to QS and everyone's praise of it. But I did the same (with the tutorials), and in about 5 minutes I was on my way to being a much happier Mac user.

It is not able to do the text searches that Spotlight does, but I use it a lot more than Spotlight. Before I used to use Spotlight a lot.
 
QS is much more than an app launcher even if that's what most people use it for.

You can use it to store 'copy' on a shelf, to send a file direct to someone in your address book without opening Mail, append text to a to do file all without moving your fingers from the keyboard.

I've got mine set up to use iTunes notifiers so the next song pops up as it changes with the title and album cover details.
 
merc669 said:
Does not Butler do the same as QS?

Bill....

I found Butler to be extremely slow on my PB, but the only effect QS has is an extra 5 second wait when I turn the computer on.

My most used command (other than launching apps) is bringing up the bar and pressing "." then typing in a web address, it launches Safari at that address. Oh, and "big text" is fun (again from pressing ".", but just type a word)
 
dang! u gotta use quicksilver before it lasts, because i heard somewhere that quiksilver the apparel company is gonna sue. lol.

anyway, im having only Finder and Trashbin in my dock, since all apps are accessed through quicksilver, so there is no need to put applications icons on the dock.

the dock looks dull but i really need the space for the minimized applications windows because i work with lots of windows opened routinely.
 
aleni said:
dang! u gotta use quicksilver before it lasts, because i heard somewhere that quiksilver the apparel company is gonna sue. lol.

anyway, im having only Finder and Trashbin in my dock, since all apps are accessed through quicksilver, so there is no need to put applications icons on the dock.

the dock looks dull but i really need the space for the minimized applications windows because i work with lots of windows opened routinely.


You should try VirtueDesktop then, it allows you to have as many desktops as you want to. You can easily cycle (Cube!) through them using the keyboard.

And yeah, Quicksilver is great. I too feel a religous attachment to that little program. OS X just wouldn't be the same without it.
 
well, dont really need the virtual desktops though since it will break my focus to remember which desktop i put windows to. thanks anyway, will try it later.
 
I doubt Quiksilver could successfully sue. It's not like Quicksilver are making surf clothes, or Quiksilver are making search software.
 
As for Quicksilver Surf suing, I want a source on that one too often do we get these claims of whoever doing whatever whenever.

As for using a Virtual Desktop it is not the same as using Quicksilver. A virtual desktop serves a purpose but it isn't a launcher and all around AWESOME piece of software.

And I'm bitter at Virtual Desktop because I never got the SmackBook thing working ;)
 
Does QuickSilver find apps to launch them as quickly as LaunchBar does? And can you do the short names.. like I type PS to launch Photoshop.. or FT to launch Fetch?

Thanks.
 
XIII said:
Does QuickSilver find apps to launch them as quickly as LaunchBar does? And can you do the short names.. like I type PS to launch Photoshop.. or FT to launch Fetch?

As you start typing, it brings up what it thinks you might want. I get Photoshop by typing PH unless I've been using iPhoto in which case if I get as far as typing PHOT, it tends to pop that one up first but a quick arrow down gets it back to Photoshop.
 
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