Quicksilver – Mac’s best-kept secret
A friend of mine pointed Quicksilver out to me about 2-3 months ago. It’s a nifty application for Mac OS X (10.4 Tiger) that extends the operating system by giving you quick keyboard control to an uncountable quantity of commands and actions. And this is nothing new boys and girls, if the forums are right, it looks like this has been around since April 2003! Want to send an image attachment via email to someone? Don’t open mail and send it manually, do it with Quicksilver in a few seconds! Break free of the mouse and get more actions and control from your keyboard.
To really understand and appreciate what Quicksilver can do, you need to see it in action. I would recommend watching this quicktime movie by the Apple blog to get you started.
If you’re impressed by what you see, you can download and quickly install Quicksilver and then I would watch another movie by Stephen from inserttitleblog who shows you how to set it up so you can get the most benefits from it and swiftly start learning how this clever tool can really help speed up your work flow. Once you start using it you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it and why it doesn’t come as default on the Mac OS X!
There are a lot of resources all over the net and Quicksilver is becoming more known slowly but surely. I wanted to post this article to spread the word and help Quicksilver get the recognition it deserves.
If you own or use a Mac, give Quicksilver a go and see how you get on. It took me a few days to remember to use it and break some old habits, but now I find myself typing and tabbing my way through tasks that I would usually use my mouse to do and spend a bit more time doing it. I hope you find it as intuitive as I and so many others do.
Oh and I forgot to mention… if you use Flickr you can upload pics in 2 seconds with Quicksilver! It’s amazingly convenient.
You know I WANT to love it and I know you have to suspend all old habits, but for me, I just can’t get used it. I’ve tried it on numerous occasions. I like the Clipboard history - but it seems buggy (Someone please resurrect iSnip!)
Maybe I’m not just geek enough.
hmm… you think it’s a step over the Geek edge? I love it mostly for typing in folder names and accessing them quick as I always have my fave shortcuts too full for folders I access a lot. And I do use the flickr one as I don’t even have to open my browser.
I would like to see some Facebook plugins please.
iSnip. What’s that then? Not heard of that one.
I’m forever looking for a really decent Clipboard history manager. I like to go back to what I copied 10 mins ago. Just text will do - great for copying colours etc. iSnip seems/seemed to be the best at this, but it needs an update as it’s not Universal and it crashed on one of the updates. The developer is doing something else I think, but it just needs picking up by someone else.
My next try is TextExpander. Quicksilver - in the nature of what it does, immediately sort of says - “What is all this about then?” Step over the geek edge. Maybe - it’s definitely looking over the edge!