Quicksilver: “Your Wish is My Command!”
Ask any experienced Mac user what Quicksilver is, odds are they’ll tell you they can’t live without it. If they don’t know what Quicksilver is, they’re missing out on something really good. It’s like getting laid on your first date, that’s how good it is.
Quicksilver is like a genie on your Mac except that you interact with it thru text. No… It’s not a cybersex machine with AI that responds to your nasty pick up lines. It’s actually an app that allows you to do MANY - and I dare say, more than you can handle. Even myself has not mastered 10% of what Quicksilver has to offer.
Quicksilver is actually an app and when triggered by a keyboard shortcut (CTRL + Space by default), a box pops up and you can type stuff into it. The most basic feature of this app is launching apps. Quicksilver is the main reason why my dock is so clean. I don’t have more than 10 Apps on my Dock while my Applications folder probably has more than 140.
Upon triggering the keyboard shortcut, you start typing the App that you want to launch. For example, if I want to launch Firefox, I start typing… “F” .. BAM! Firefox has already appeared before I even type in the next character. As shown in the picture below, the first character “F” is underlined meaning that I actually typed in only “F”. Hit enter, and voila! That’s how easy to launch apps with Quicksilver. And of course, you can navigate thru other search results with the arrow keys but usually I don’t have to because I’d rather be typing more characters than browsing thru the long list of possibilities - it’s easier that way. It’d be a waste of my 200 wpm (words per minute) skills (OK - I’m just bullshitting cos I don’t really know my wpm).
You can do ALOT with Quicksilver. WARNING: Quicksilver can render many apps redundant. Another feature of Quicksilver that I often use is to quickly move downloaded wallpapers to my Wallpapers folder. What I do is I select the file(s) that I want to move, hit CTRL+Space to bring up Quicksilver, and then Apple+G (to let Quicksilver know you wanna handle the files that are currently being selected in Finder), and Tab, “M” “O”, Tab, “W” “a”. Walla!
That can be a little daunting if you’re not a keyboard warrior, but I rather do that than waste time opening up several windows or clutter up my Desktop - my Desktop only has ONE icon most of the time and sometimes three where two of them belongs to my external storage.
Sometimes, when I get too lazy I even use Quicksilver to quickly Google something. Even Wikipedia is supported.
You’ll be amazed of what Quicksilver can do for you. From time to time, there will be new plugins that you can download for Quicksilver that allows you to do more things.
Heck, I can even scale images with Quicksilver. You can do all these actions on multiple files too. If I were to list out everything Quicksilver can do, you’ll probably go blind reading it (no offense to people that are actually blind).
This is one app I can’t live without. It made me fantasize myself as a samurai - with the keyboard as my weapon. My name is Tze Chuen, and I’m a crack addict keyboard warrior.
Download Quicksilver here
my screenshots of Quicksilver are pictured with BezelHUD theme.
Any questions or comments are welcome.
