You are Quicksilver Ninja!

Recently, someone mentioned to me that Quicksilver was confusing and a bit intimidating. It’s true that at first glance it may be hard to get beyond Quicksilver’s main task as an application launcher to the more ancillary functions, but only at first glance. Though it may require some time and a little reading, anyone can become a true Quicksilver ninja.

To start off with, anyone interested in using Quicksilver would really benefit from reading some of the documentation:

• A great first tutorial – This will introduce you to the basics.
• Another great introduction – This one will really show some of the great features of Quicksilver
• The Tutorial List – Blacktree even has a list of a bunch of tutorials, including those mentioned above.

There are also a couple of MacBreak Episodes where Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann get into true Quicksilver ninjitsu.

Merlin Mann really explains Quicksilver well when he refers to the “functional sentences” that you’ll end up using in Quicksilver. They consist of nouns and verbs. For example you can use the noun “safari” and verb “open” to open safari:

1. Invoke Quicksilver
2. Enter your noun: “safari”
3. Press tab
4. Enter your verb: “open”
5. Press return

This idea of a noun-verb combination can be expanded to noun-verb-noun. For example you can move an item on your desktop to a specific folder. Let’s say I just downloaded a dmg and want to move it to my download folder. My first noun would be “desktop/myfile.dmg”. My verb would be “move to” and my second noun would be “downloadfolder”:

1. Invoke Quicksilver
2. Enter your first noun: “desktop/myfile.dmg”
3. Press tab
4. Enter your verb: “move to”
5. Press tab
6. Enter your second noun: “downloadfolder”
7. Press return

When you’re referring to a noun like a folder or document or even an application, you can get to it by it’s system path. In the example above, I used the noun “desktop/myfile.dmg”. If you type “desktop” when entering your first noun, Quicksilver will bring up an icon of your desktop, just like you’d see in Finder. The slash (“/”) in “desktop/myfile.dmg” tells Quicksilver to find an item on the desktop. Then typing “myfile.dmg” selects that item on the desktop. This would be the same as opening a Finder window and double-clicking the desktop icon and selecting “myfile.dmg”.

This idea of a noun-verb or noun-verb-noun combination is really only the beginning. It’s a great way to understand how to make Quicksilver work for you, but the docs and tutorials help expand your arsenal. After you tweak some of the settings, enable some plugins, and set some triggers, you’ll begin to unlock your Quicksilver ninja skills. Soon you’ll be wowing everyone with your noun-verb multi-combinations, or at least impressing yourself at how few keystrokes it takes you to chop off the your enemy’s head do stuff!