Event Triggers

Run triggers automatically based on system events.

Summary  
Available on macOS version 10.11, 10.12, 10.13, 10.14, 10.15, 11.6, 12.4
for Quicksilver build 4024, 4026, 4039

Event Triggers

With this plug-in, Quicksilver can run actions automatically as things happen on your system. For example:

(Some examples require other plug-ins.)

Quickstart

In order to create an example event trigger for experimentation:

  1. Open Quicksilver settings
  2. Install you have the Event Triggers plugin installed
  3. Go to the Triggers preference pane
  4. Use the + button (bottom left) and select Event
  5. In the pop-up interface, create the action you want to run
    • For example, Quicksilver is awesome! ⇥ Large Type
  6. Find your action in the list of triggers, e.g. Show "Quicksilver is awesome!" in large type
  7. Use ⌘``I (or the i icon bottom right) to open the sidebar
  8. In the sidebar, choose an easy to trigger event such as Switched to A/C Power (assuming you're on a laptop)
  9. Test it out: if on a laptop, unplug and replug your power cable and expect to see a text popup from Quicksilver appear automatically

Built-in Events

You can assign triggers for the following events:

Plug-in Events

Other plug-ins may define additional events. These are generally things that happen when running an action in Quicksilver, rather than on the system in general.

Events generated by Quicksilver should be marked with ☿.

Trigger Settings

Event

Choose the event you want Quicksilver to watch for.

Delay

When the event happens, wait a certain number of seconds before running the trigger. It doesn't need to be a whole number. For instance, 0.1 and 2.5 are valid values.

Ignore Repeats

Match & Ignore Items

By default, an event trigger will run for every occurrence of the event.

For certain types of events, you can control whether or not the trigger runs depending on the object the event was related to. (See below for more on the Event Trigger Object.) For example, you might want to run a backup script when a particular disk is mounted, but not every time any disk is mounted. These restrictions can be set up by adding objects to the match/ignore lists.

Select objects in the main Quicksilver interface and drag them to either the Match Items or Ignore Items list. Multiple items can be added at once using the comma trick.

Event Trigger Object

This plug-in adds a proxy object called "Event Trigger Object" to the catalog. It's only useful within the context of an event trigger.

When an event happens, it can pass something along. You can then use an event trigger to run an action on that thing. For example, the iTunes plug-in defines an "iTunes Track Changed" event. When this happens, the Event Trigger Object will refer to the track that just started playing. So, for example, you could create a trigger like

Event Trigger Object ⇥ Add to Playlist… ⇥ Just Played

To see what the Event Trigger Object refers to for a particular event, check the documentation in the plug-in that defines the event. For events that don't explicitly provide an object, the Event Trigger Object will just be text containing the event's name.

Known Event Trigger Objects

For the events defined by this plug-in, the following objects will be available.

Event Event Trigger Object
Application Launched The application that launched
Application Quit The application that quit
Disk Mounted The disk that was mounted
Disk Ejected The disk that was ejected
Disk Will Eject The disk that will eject

This plug-in uses icons from the Open Icon Library.