What's so great about Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ?

Nothing. I hate it just as much as the mac. Trash your toy and buy a real computer…......

The basic idea is that the keyboard is faster than the mouse. If I want to run a program, and I know what program I’m going to run, I shouldn’t need to go find it in applications, or have it take up space in my dock. I should be able to just type Command-Space and type a few letters of the program I want to launch.

There’s all kinds of extensions you can do for it, but mostly I just use the launching commands part.

Move arm to mouse, use hand to move mouse, then use fingers to click Safari is more difficult than cmd+space+s+enter. Quicksilver also stores my Safari history. This means that instead of clicking through my history trying to find what site I went to, I can just cmd+space then type something that has to do with the site/bookmark that I want Safari to open.

You can also click a file, open QS, type cmd+G, and you have a lot of actions you can perform. You can move the file to the trash, move it to a different folder, or email it as an attachment to one of your address book contacts.

Basically you don’t have to search for anything on your notebook because QS does it for you. If you watch tutorial videos you’ll see tons more features.

I personally prefer Butler but that is just because for me it was more intuitive to learn.

Much like queenzboulevard said but i use Butler, with a 4 keystrokes opens any program I want, keeps any number of pasteboars, safari history, It can have a menu or folder hierarchy appear when every you hold a certain key and click your mouse button.

I asked a question about why QS over Butler.

Any opinions ?

Quicksilver can do lots of different things. At the most basic level you can use it to launch applications, and it’s much faster than using the mouse or using Spotlight for that purpose. But there are other application launchers that do the same thing—Quicksilver’s advantage is that there are lots of plugins for it that let you do other tasks. For example, you can use Quicksilver to compose and send an email with an attachment.

I tended to use Quicksilver mostly as an application launcher, and it’s not necessarily better than Butler or Launchbar for that purpose. And there’s a steep learning curve to Quicksilver, but if you’re committed to learning it you will find that it’s extremely powerful and can make simple tasks faster.

If you want to see what it can do, google quicksilver tutorial and you can see some videos that can guide you through setting up plugins and performing basic actions.

@Bri L: I think if you’re a power user, Quicksilver is more powerful. But that’s just what I’ve heard as the general consensus. I stopped using Quicksilver when it stopped being developed—I don’t want to invest time in learning how to use a dead program.

@bob I am glad you told me that. I would have looked into it but, like you, I don’t want to invest the time learning how to use a dead program. Thanks for the input.

For those who are interested here is a link to Butler and a tour of what it can do

I’ve tried it and found no use for it. It really doesn’t take that long to type the name of a program in spotlight and press enter…

But how do you arrange for close programs like address book sand adium. In other words can you assign shortcuts less than the full name in spotlight?

You can’t—Spotlight is incredibly slow and doesn’t do a good job of guessing what you’re looking for. It’s not an application launcher. LaunchBar & Quicksilver are much faster — as, I assume, is Butler. Spotlight is slow. It even lags in recognizing my key strokes.

Also of note: the (former) developer of Quicksilver is now working on Google Quick Search, which has some Quicksilver functionality, including app launching.

@bob very good to know!

I have found spotlights function to be annoying. I don’t like it’s set up or indexing tactics.

Spotlight works great for me.. and really it takes next to zero effort to type

“Add” into spotlight instead of “adi” I don’t see the point in having more software running in the background that’s only used for launch applications… Maybe you are saving 2 milliseconds when launching the app but slowing down your processor in the interim.

@btko – I wonder if I have some settings wrong or something because it is very slow for me. I don’t believe that the variance in processing use is any greater than the variance in typing now that you point that out.

In any event I also use other features that I mentioned Butler has that spotlight does not.

And finally, I have essential tremors so typing is very difficult for me. The less I have to type the better.

after spotlight in leopard i find no use for it…

@wilhel1812 – so I assume by the absence of commentary on the problems mentioned with spotlight that you don’t encounter those issues nor do you use the other features of the program?

@Bri_L Fair enough, I can undertand that if you are trying to avoid typing then the less the better. Maybe an option is to have a folder in your dock with your favourite application shortcuts and then you just click it… and does the fan out thing.

More visual, no typing, and no extra program running in the background?

I’m not sure what would be causing your spotlight to be so slow. Maybe you need to delete the index file and reindex your computer? Could have somekind of corruption or error?

@btko AMEN brother! I have been wondering about that myself! Thanks much and lurve. Where would I look? Which library?

My experience with Spotlight is that it is slow on all machines, especially on PowerPC (G4 or G5) Macs. Using Quicksilver or Launch Bar saves me at least a half second every time I use it. This has happened across multiple computer and multiple fresh installations of Tiger and Leopard.

For me, the extra program running in the background is negligible system overhead compared to waiting for Spotlight. The trouble is that Spotlight doesn’t learn anything—it doesn’t remember that the last time I typed pho I ended up opening Photoshop. Quicksilver and LaunchBar seem to remember those things (and allow you to program in custom shortcuts)

That’s all to say that I’m skeptical that a Spotlight rebuild will do much. But let us know if it does. You can rebuild the Spotlight index manually following instructions on this page or, if you don’t want to mess around in the Terminal, by using a program called MainMenu.

Thanks! At the very least I hope itspeads up my searches.

That seems odd bob, that it’s not “learning” for you. I find it works for me… I type “a” and adium jumps up first, or “sys” and system preferences is at the top. Odd?

Yes… Maybe I’ll go ahead and rebuild the index on my machine. Seems like it works OK for applications (but still takes a little while) but it won’t learn for folders.

I don’t open Adium much, but when I type “a” in Spotlight the top hit is iTunes!

Quicksilver can prepare an email with a specific attachment to a specific person for you before you even open the mail app. Nice.