How Quicksilver Streamlined My Computing Experience

Quicksilver is definitely my favorite add-on to Mac OS X. Since I discovered it’s power only a bit more than a year ago, I can’t think of using my Mac without it. But it took me a while to convert to it. What’s so great about this quite mysterious application?

No Love At First Sight
Once, somebody told me about this program called Quicksilver and how wonderful it was, so I downloaded it (it’s free!), installed it and tried to use it. I’m saying ‘tried’ because it really wasn’t a great success. Now looking back I think I just didn’t get it. You might say “What’s there to get, it’s just an application launcher, right?”, and I think that’s exactly what caused my struggle with it. I thought it was ‘just an application launcher’ but it seemed so complex to me, especially to set up in the way I wanted it. For just an application launcher there were too many preferences I didn’t get the first time I looked at it, and so I didn’t really take the time to dive in it any deeper. So Quicksilver didn’t get a lot of love from me the first time, I judged as being way too strange and obscure and I threw it in the trash, confused and disappointed.

A Few Years Later…
Searching for a way to optimize the Mac OS X interface I stumbled upon a few posts by Merlin Mann about his love for Quicksilver and all the great things he is using it for. After reading a few of those stories I started to realize that I had been overlooking some of the key features of this program and, convinced by Merlins sheer enthusiasm, after not looking at it at al for a long time, I was finally willing to give it a second try.
After downloading and installing it again I was puzzled by the Quicksilver preferences window, but this time I wasn’t willing to give up so easily. So I watched every single Quicksilver related screencast I could find, read all posts and started to get into the magic world of streamlined workflow.

One of the first things I discovered was that I wasn’t using my Dock anymore. I used to open my applications by clicking on the icons in the dock, but this wasn’t necessary anymore because I there was no need to take my fingers off the keyboard. By simply having my thumbs type ‘command-spacebar’ (default for invoking Quicksilver) and then typing the first few characters of the applications name, it pops up, I hit the return key and it opens the application for me.

Especially for people typing with ten fingers this is much faster than grabbing the mouse, navigating to the dock, locating the icon you need and clicking on it. So since that day I removed the whole list of applications from my dock. Now the only icons that are present are the ones of the applications that are open, but I don’t see them because I keep it hidden at all times.
I’m very happy that I gave it another chance. I spoke to various people who tried it out briefly and decided that it wasn’t for them, just like I did in the beginning. It’s learning curve is its weakness, but when you take the effort to get to know it’s functionality you will definitely not regret (I promise)!

5 Of My Favorite Quicksilver Actions:

1. Opening applications
   Ok, so it really is an application launcher too
2. Opening any file or folder located on my harddisk.
   When you know the name of the file you’re looking for you just have to type in the first characters and hit return.
3. Open a bookmark in my browser
   It recognizes your Safari bookmarks and using the social bookmarks plug-in I have all my del.icio.us bookmarks at the tip of my fingers.
4. Looking up words in the Dictionary
   You can select any word, invoke Quicksilver and make it grab your selection, and use the ‘Look Up in Dictionary’ command.
5. Browsing my harddisk
   You can even use it as a finder replacement. By digging into the folder structure you can find and open any file you have on your computer.

If you do a little Google search you will find a lot of information about the best way of using this great little piece of free software. You can download Quicksilver here.

I love it. Are you using it too? I would like to hear your opinion, remarks and tips. Please leave a comment!

Screenshot by caius