Why Quicksilver¶

While Quicksilver is easy to use and very powerful, it's not obvious how to use it and it takes a little while to realize its power. As a result it's difficult to explain why Quicksilver is so great.

It took me about a week before I really "got" Quicksilver, and I think that's pretty common. And then it took months of writing the manual to understand all the nooks and crannies. You can start off small and add to your knowledge slowly. The real power (and difference from Spotlight) is that there are multiple actions you can choose from, not just "open".

The part that's hard to describe is this: On a Mac today you do a lot of different things and go to different programs to do them (e.g., Safari for browsing, Mail for e-mail, Messages for IM, Contacts for contacts, etc). Even though the Mac is pretty consistent, these are all different applications and depending on what you want to do, you do different things, click in different places, use different shortcuts, etc.

Now imagine using Spotlight a lot. You would activate Spotlight, type the name of the thing you wanted to work with and hit return to open it in its app. Maybe it's a bookmark that opens in Safari or a contact that opens in Contacts or a mail message that opens in Mail or a song that plays in iTunes. Once you do this, you use that app to do stuff.

With Quicksilver you have a consistent interface as with Spotlight, but with Quicksilver's actions you can get to the next step and often that's enough for the whole task. I can send a file to someone from Quicksilver alone. It will use Mail and Finder and Contacts to do the work in the background, but I just used Quicksilver. I can control Contacts with keystrokes to paste a friend's address, from Quicksilver, without leaving the task I'm working on. I can move or copy files without having to manipulate Finder windows or dragging and dropping. I can do a Google search (or IMDb or Wikipedia) from within Quicksilver and have the results show in my browser.

All this (and more) makes Quicksilver a consistent interface for my Mac and that has some psychological effect that makes things seem even easier than Quicksilver is making them. Quicksilver is my Mac to me, and that's hard to describe to someone who hasn't played with it.

Nick Santilli summed it up well:

It's Quicksilver. Don't ask questions, just download it if you haven't. Food will taste better, colors will be more vibrant, your computer will become something new and wonderful you never imagined.

You probably think I'm joking.

If you've been using Quicksilver for a while, you understand that he was completely serious.