Quicksilver to the Rescue

I posted yesterday about how I've started using Quicksilver as an alternative to Mac OS X's built in Spotlight search. Spotlight is ok for simple document or media searches, but sometimes it doesn't dig as deeply or as thoroughly as I'd like.

At its most basic, Quicksilver is an application launcher for Mac OS X. You hit a hot key, type what you're looking for and it opens/executes it.

It can do a lot more than that though, including finding specific files and then allowing you to execute actions based on them. For example, I know that I have a file called "LDAP Notes" somewhere on my computer, so I fire up Quicksilver, do a search and it finds the Word doc with those notes. I can then immediately launch Word from that Window. You can also use it to say, launch a playlist -- I want to listen to The Cult, so I do a search on that, get the iTunes playlist list containing those songs and it launches. Through Quicksilver, or its various plugins, you can find a tremendous amount of information on your Mac, perhaps more than you might like. It can index keychains, command line history, recent items (from the Apple menu), Del.ico.us bookmarks, your Safari history and much more, increasingly geeky stuff.

I should note, however, that Quicksilver is beta software. I haven't had any problems with it, but as with any beta software, you need to keep an eye on it. Fortunately, Quicksilver has a "stable mode" which allows you to turn off a lot of the bleeding edge stuff. The software isn't particularly well documented, and I found this tutorial useful for understanding exactly what Quicksilver is good for.