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Quicksilver Tricks

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Many have tasted the increase in productivity by using Quicksilver as their Application launcher. Some even built more Quicksilver skins to make it look nicer. But only a few realized that there are still more Quicksilver actions available for them to use.

As one of the Quicksilver's big fans, here I am with full enthusiastic, presenting default actions and cool tricks that you can do with Quicksilver.

Default Actions

Listed below, 40 default Quicksilver actions.

Files

1 Open Open Selected Item
2 Open With… Open Selected File with Selectable Application
3 Always Open Type With Assign Default Quicksilver Application for Selected File Type
4 Reveal Open File's Enclosing Folder
5 Rename… Rename File
6 Copy To… Copy File to Selected Destination
7 Move to Trash Delete Selected Files
8 Move To… Move Selected File to Designated Folder
9 Delete (Erase) Permanently Delete Selected File
10 Get Info Show Get Info Pane of Selected File
11 Get File URL Get Complete URL to the Selected File
12 Get File Path Get Finder Path to the Selected File
13 Get File Location Get Location of Selected File
14 Make Link In… Create Link of Selected File in Selectable Place
15 Make Alias In… Create Alias of Selected File in Selectable Place

Applications

16 Relaunch Quit and Open Application Again
17 Toggle Application Hide/Unhide Selected Application
18 Activate Bring Selected Application to Front Window
19 Quit Others Quit Other Applications
20 Hide Others Hide Other Applications
21 Quit Quit Selected Application
22 Hide Hide Selected Application
23 Open at Login Add Application to Start Up Item
24 Do Not Open at Login Remove Application from Start Up Item

Disk

25 Eject Eject Selected Disk

Folders

26 New Folder… Create New Folder Inside Selected Folder
27 Make New… Clone Item on Selected Folder
28 Get Info Show Get Info Pane of Selected Folder

Text

29 Large Type Display the Huge Text
30 Speak Text (Say) Echo Words in the Text
31 Create File… Create File from the Text
32 Type Text Type Text on Current Working Place
33 Run as AppleScript Run Text as AppleScript Command
34 Display Dialog Display Text as Quicksilver Dialog

URLs

35 Open URL Open Defined URL with Default Web Browser
36 Open URL With… Open Defined URL with Selectable Web Browser
37 Run Javascript Run Selected Javascript
38 Email Compose New Message to Defined Recipient (mailto:xxx@xxx.com)

Catalog

39 Show Entry in Catalog Show Selected Item in Quicksilver Catalog
40 Rescan Catalog Entry Rescan Quicksilver Searchable Items

Grab All Links

If you're one of the web addicts out there, you will find this trick very useful, which you can grab all the links on the designated site url by only typing several letters.

Quicksilver Link Crawling

Here's how to do it:

  1. Open Quicksilver
  2. Type . [dot] followed by the site url, e.g. www.usingmac.com
  3. Press Escape and you will see a big blue globe is selected
  4. Hit the → and wait a while for Quicksilver to generate all the links
  5. Use ↓ to see all the links

The Comma Tricks: Select Multiple Items

Quicksilver Comma Trick

Some Quicksilver Skins, such as Bezel and Primer, support selection of multiple items. After selecting one item, you can press Comma and you will be able to select other item. This will help you batch process several items at the same time.

Universal Trigger

Universal Quicksilver Trigger

For shortcut fans, there is a module inside Quicksilver to help you assign universal shortcut to perform your Quicksilver action with single keystrokes. Usually, I use this to trigger my Application, e.g. Command-Control-Option-P to open Photoshop.

Here's how to do it:

  1. Open Quicksilver
  2. Go to Quicksilver Preferences Pane by using keystrokes Command-Comma
  3. Select Triggers section
  4. Choose Custom Triggers
  5. Find the add (+) button near the bottom pane
  6. Add Hotkey and assign new trigger for it
  7. Your new trigger should now appear on the Custom Triggers Pane

Browse Hidden Items

When you're browsing with Quicksilver, you can hold down Option key to reveal all hidden items.

With these many Quicksilver tricks, I am pretty much sure that you will get a productivity boost in the very near future.

Categories: Popular, Quick Silver, Tips and Tricks
Tags: QuickSilver, Quicksilver, Tricks

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25 Comments

Alex 

Thaaaaaaaanks Wendy! This was very useful!

The "Grab all links" trick is preatty neat.. and the comma one is veeery useful!

hm.. I'm having a problem with a command though: The "Speak Text (Say)".
There isn't this option in the actions menu.. even for txt files.
How do I do it?

Wendy 

You're welcome, Alex. The Speak Text one can be used only with typed text (put . (dot) and type text to Quicksilver).
It's really fun to let your Mac speak the text, especially when you're inside public library. He he…

Alex 

Hm.. I still can't get it to work! I tried typing a random word (by putting dot before tping), then pressed TAB to go to the actions menu, and in that menu there isn't the Speak Text option... I'm thinking maybe it's a QuickSilver plug-in I'm missing... do you happen to know which one?

Wendy 

You need to activate it first by going to Quicksilver Preferences Pane, under Preferences section and then choose Actions from the sidebar followed by selecting Text as the type.



Then search for Speak Text (Say) and activate it. Hope this will work now :)

Matt 

My two favorite custom triggers (I think they require plugins for File Compression and Mail.app) are

Command-Option-Z: Create ZIP archive
Command-Option-M: Direct mail to someone in the Address Book

jason 

Matt, how do you get the Direct Mail one set up? I can't get it to work, it keeps wanting to mail Mail.app to my recipient...

Howard 

Great list. Check out the Quicksilver Quick Reference for more. The next version will list the Run Javascript action.

The Quicksilver User Manual has lots of tips. The Make New... action listed above works with templates and takes a little to set it up, search for it in the manual

Michael Wilde 

If you want to see some of the power of Quicksilver and many of the features Wendy is talking about, I did a cool video on "Mac Productivity with Quicksilver".. and to all your friends who don't know what quicksilver is.. people have told me this is a pretty effective tutorial.

Jay 

I love Quicksilver. It's like Photoshop in that you can use it for a long time and learn something new about using it everyday. My only complaint is that it crashes so dang often.

Alex 

It worked! Thanks Wendy!

Am 

How do I use these commands? I write "Open" but nothing happens.

ntopics 

These tips are great. I will start trying them out soon.
Love to get tips from the best!

Thanks from  tony

jonz 

isn't the 1-40 list sorta useless?  you can figure it all out by right clicking in QS.  makes me think this is all just SEO-bait.

Matt 

Jason, you have to use proxies. Set up a trigger that is set for the current object selected and use the direct mail action. It should use Mail.app by default.

Mark 

Thanks for sharing! :)

chad 

How about the colour combo for your QS interface?

 It's slick, and I'd love to bite your style.

chris 

I have heard lots about Quicklsilver's stability/instability in Leopard.  It was running really slow for me when I upgraded and so I have been hesitant to reinstall it on my new Intel Mac with Leopard although I certainly miss the functionality!  What is the most stable way to run Quicksilver on an Intel Mac with Leopard?  Would you recommend it?

Chris Cairns 

use B54 version build 3815
not as stable as a software should be but its the most stable on leopard

andy 

how come i don't have the delete option on my quicksilver i only have move to trash.
i'm using B54 3815 on a leopard macbook pro

Chris J 

I really love Quicksilver.. I use it all the time.. Its a real time saver for me..

Julie 

The say action is cool - I've recently been playing around with the command and this is much easier than booting up terminal(however quickly it loads!). Thank you!

Julie 

What do you mean Am?

If you want to use Quicksilver to open something, you must first locate the file/folder/application/etc. to open in the first panel, and then in the next panel(tab) select open.

Kailas 

Does anyone know how to make Quicksilver auto type today's date with a hot key trigger:  this is for data entry we want to auto key in Today's date  09-11-2009 or 09/11/2009  either will do.

Nathan Mylott 

None of these work. All I can get Quicksilver to do is launch applications. I use it for keyboard shortcuts and quick search, that's it. I type in all of those commands up there and not one of them works. It's so frustrating, it's enough to make me not use Quicksilver. For all the frustration and failed attempts at getting the app to do anything, it'd be easier to just do things the long way.

Hair color ideas 

For shortcut fans, there is a module inside Quicksilver to help you assign universal shortcut to perform your Quicksilver action with single keystrokes.

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