Five of My Favorite Quicksilver Tips

Quicksilver is beloved around the Mac-o-sphere, and I am no different. Today I want to share five of my most frequent, non-application-launching uses for the app that never ceases to surprise us.

1. Moving items around in Finder.

   Invoke Quicksilver with selection. (This varies across setups. For me, it’s ⌘+⌥+/.) Type “Move.” Tab to the last pane, type the name of a directory, press enter. Presto! Your file is moved with no spring-loaded folders, window juggling, or even Exposé or Spaces.

2. Uploading Images to Flickr. [Requires Flickr Upload plugin.]

   For screenshots and other items I don’t want crufting up my iPhoto library, the Flickr Upload plugin for Quicksilver is lightning fast. Invoke Quicksilver with selection and type “Flickr”. Tab to the last pane, enter your tags, and press enter. Your image is uploaded with the tags you specified. Of course, this method doesn’t organize your images into sets, collections, or add them to group pools, but it’s a great way to get your images uploaded fast. This can be expedited by setting a trigger. Doing so will put you into the tag entry pane so you can invoke, enter tags, and upload.

3. Adding and Removing Login Items

   Invoke Quicksilver. Type the name of an application, tab to the verb pane, and type “Login.” You’ll see your options: “Open at login” and “Do not open at login.” Choose one. This is much easier than opening System Preferences and drilling down and a quick fix for rogue apps that have added themselves to your login items.

4. Resizing Images. [Requires Image Manipulation Actions plugin]

   Sometimes, I just need to resize an image quick and dirty. To do this, select an image in Finder. Invoke Quicksilver with selection. Type “Scale” to bring up the “Scale image” action. Tab to the final pane to specify your scaling. Here you have some options. Enter a single pixel dimension such as 100px and Quicksilver will scale your image’s longest side to that dimension, maintaining the proportions of the image. If you enter two dimensions such as 100X100, the image will be distorted if the proportions are not the same. You can also enter percentages here. So, 50% will shrink the image by half, maintaining proportions.

5. Launching URL’s

   This last use of Quicksilver might seem unnecessary, but bear with me. I have a trigger set up at ⌘+^+SHIFT+u. In every app but Safari, this takes the currently selected text and opens the URL. Quicksilver automagically recognizes the URL format. This is useful when trying to open an unclickable link, mainly in plain text situations. So, why doesn’t that trigger apply to Safari? In Safari, this key combo takes the current web page in Safari and opens it in Firefox. I like having the same key combo because they are semantically linked in my mind. In both cases, I want to open the URL, but when I am in Safari, I already have it open and need it open in Firefox. Handy for sites that don’t allow Safari and for browser testing when working on a website.

These are just five of my favorite Quicksilver tips. Of course, I use Quicksilver for much more than this, but I wanted to give a sampling of my uses that would be useful for a wide range of users seeking to wei wu wei. If you have a particularly beloved use for Quicksilver, let’s here it in the comments. Or if you just want to write Quicksilver a sonnet, that’s cool too.