Inspired by MrSquishy’s question and capybara’s response here.
People have been pumping this program for years and I still have no idea what it does, or how Spotlight or Find can’t do this. (Same with AppleScript/Automator.)
My time for learning new applications is limited… so can someone walk through why it’s worthwhile for me to install and learn to use it?
Yeah, I keep hearing about it, but I still haven’t felt the need to make my Mac experience easier than it already is.
Ok, I just really hate opening windows.
And there are a number of things I mentioned that Spotlight won’t do, but in terms of Spotlight: It’s faster than leaving the current application to open up a spotlight window and then close that window, and it learns what I do–if I type in “STA” in spotlight I get an enormous list of stuff with docs way down the list-- I can put in the whole file name but bleh. Quicksilver remembers what I did the last time I stuck in a query like that, and it also will only catalog folders and areas that I ask it to, so first on the list is the document I Really Want Right Now and I don’t get a lot of hits like “18D31900-31A8-11D9-9980-00039356BD92.webbookmark” (some safari bookmark? and I didn’t remember I still had Safari installed). If I type in “goog” I get some really strange shit rather then the google search option which is what I’d Really Like Right Now. And hitting a key to go to the next song is great, too. And I hate opening up the widgets thing. So invasive.
I don’t have stock in the company or anything.
I DO still use Spotlight to find, say, a bit of text when I don’t remember what file it’s in-- this is extremely useful and Quicksilver doesn’t do it.
cap, it sounds like it “remembers” what I searched for previously on my computer and figures out what I want. That could be useful but Spotlight is pretty quick, and I don’t really get a lot of weird hits.
Can it integrate with the web? Can it find CD or DVD covers via Google or something like that?
I have it catalog all my bookmarks, so those pop up in the search term box, and it also has a library of web search engines you can get it to use. The CD covers thing. . . are you just talking about starting an image search (yes) or, like, automatically downloading the correct one and sticking it into itunes (mmaybe paired with applescripts/automator and a quick-key trigger?
Aannnd. . . does no one else on the boards use Quicksilver?
It’s quite a lot quicker than Spotlight. Usually instantaneous, in fact – while Spotlight can take a few seconds to return any good hits. It integrates with bookmarks for all commonly used browsers, so that if I want to visit the SDMB I can type “sdmb”. Quicksilver can figure out that sdmb means Straight Dope Message Board and immediately I’m given the proper bookmark. I hit enter and I’m taken there.
But Spotlight doesn’t handle abbreviations, and when I type “straight dope” it takes a few seconds to search. Finally I’m greeted with a whole list of stuff, including lots of lines of “Webpages” that are all titled the same. Which one do I want? I click on the top one and it’s not even a link at all, it’s something with the extension .webhistory … so it’s not enough worth using Spotlight for bookmarks.
If I want to send an email to my girlfriend Colleen, I can do that. I hit the shortcut for Quicksilver, type “coll”; it’ll pop up with her contact. Then I hit tab and type “ce” for email, and hit enter. I’m given new mail blank email window prepopulated with her address.
If I type “colleen” into Spotlight, all I can do is have it open Address Book to the right place, which isn’t nearly as convenient.
And there’s a lot of other cool stuff you can do, too, like create iCal events. I can initiate all kinds of google searches. I can find and open up folders without having to navigate to them in the Finder.
Spotlight’s good for stuff like searching for out of the way files or particular strings of text. I use Quicksilver a lot more; it’s faster and gives results more relevant to what I want to do.
I’m not aware of anything like that. You can control iTunes with it, though. (“play” or “pause” or “ns”, for “next songs”, etc, all do what you think. If you don’t like to move your hands from the keyboard it’s very convenient.)
Mac user here and this is the first I’ve ever heard of it. Sounds interesting though, so I might try it.
I second doing websearches. You can add all sorts of them. I have Google, Google Image, Google News, Google Maps, Youtube, Wikipedia and a bunch more.
So when I want to look something up and firefox isn’t open (and also when it is) I just hit CTRL+SPACE and then “G” TAB and my search. It’s really fast.
That’s what I use it for most often. I also use it as an application launcher but now with the spotlight upgrades in leopard it can do that too.