Quicksilver won’t have the edge it enjoys over its closest competitors if it wasn’t for the plug-ins. There are a lot of plug-ins to choose from and the best part is that they are all free.
In the latest version of Quicksilver, you can install the plug-ins directly from the Preferences window. Pressing Cmd+comma will take you to the Plug-ins tab in the preferences window. Click on ‘All plug-ins’ and you will see a long list of plug-ins that you can install.
Let’s look at a few basic plug-ins that are useful for most users.
iTunes
Most people like playing music in the background while they work or surf the web and pressing Cmd+tab repeatedly to access iTunes in order to change a track or to rate a song can be annoying. This is where the iTunes plug-in steps in. This plug-in lets the users control iTunes without having to shift focus to the main iTunes window. You can change songs, add songs to party shuffle, and navigate through albums/genres or even rate songs using simple keyboard shortcuts (or what Quicksilver refers to as triggers). Triggers are nothing but keyboard shortcuts. After installing the iTunes plug-in, remember to hop over to the triggers panel in the preferences window and select the triggers to be activated for iTunes.
Safari/Firefox/Camino ModulesThese plug-ins are a must for users who spend a large part of their day online. Meant for the three most popular Mac browsers, these plug-ins let the users access their bookmarks and sites in their ‘history’ list from right within Quicksilver. Typing in the name of the website that exists in the bookmarks/history is enough for Quicksilver to pull it right up. No need to open the browser and go through the long list of bookmarks to find a site. Actions like opening a URL, Copying a website address or choosing what browser to use to open a URL can be done quickly using these browser plug-ins.
Apple MailMany users consider Apple Mail as just a basic utility till they start using it in combination with Quicksilver. The Apple Mail Module enables Email actions in Quicksilver. For example, there are times when a user might want to send a quick mail to someone without opening up Apple Mail. No problem. Invoke Quicksilver, press period to enable text mode and type in the e-mail message. Tab over to the next panel and type in ‘email to’. There will be an option that says, “Email to...(send directly)”. Tab over to panel 3 and type the email address or the name of the recipient and Finally Press enter.
To add a subject to a mail message, one needs to separate the subject and the body of the message with “>>”. For example:
The text below typed in Quicksilver will send a message with ‘Are we having lunch today’ as the subject and ‘Hey Jim, let me know when and where’ as the Body of the e-mail. The command option+enter is used to go to a new line.
‘Are we having lunch today >> [option+enter]
Hey Jim, let me know when and where.’
To make this trick work, the Apple mail and the Address book plug-ins have to be installed from the Quicksilver preferences window. If the ‘Email to...(Send Directly) option isn’t present in the Actions panel then it needs to be enabled by going to Preferences>actions>Email Support.
It's a good idea to go through the plug-ins list and find other useful and interesting ones to use. Once an effort is made to habitually use Quicksilver, it will save users quite a bit of time everyday.
