Quicksilver1.6.1

Formidable !

so powerful, simple, and FREE

Formidable !

v1.5.3 is out today

This is an app that I must have. It provides much more than what Spotlight has. A bit confusing at first when trying to configure for more advanced operations but excellent nevertheless.

The current version is 1.4.2, which is what downloads. As ever, if your installed version of Quicksilver is working, either DON'T update it, or backup the current version first just in case the new version throws bugs at you and you need to revert back again.

1.4.1 is available on their website - still the best Mac app ever

works but without the main developer who went to google, its development could just as well have ended

As usual: BEWARE updating Quicksilver. Every single time I've updated Quicksilver on my systems, it has CHOKED. I end up going back to the only version that I've ever found to reliably work for my setup: v1.1.3. Sadly, going back a version in Quicksilver can means your triggers are all screwed up with little "?" marks next to the, meaning you have to literally set them up from scratch all over again. And yes, if you complain to the project team, they'll get all defensive and denial mode on you. So don't bother. Just use the version that works. If you see a newer version, DO NOT UPGRADE until you've tested it out on some other test volume. Don't screw up your working Quicksilver setup for the sake of yet-another buggy update. And no, I won't honor rants in opposition to what I've said above. I've been through this damnable ritual too many times to bother going into flame warz over it. Just be glad if you figured out how to set up Quicksilver and have it working for you. What's wrong with version 1.3.0? It's activity simply drops dead without any notice or warning. Nothing programmed in it works any more. You have to reboot the thing and hope it now works again. Or better yet, go back to the version of Quicksilver that wasn't buggy for you. It's great that its free! But you get what you pay for. Headaches are not worth paying for.

been using this for close to 10yrs - first app I install whenever I update the OS; can do almost anything, and I find myself adding it to different workflows all the time.

Using QS since 10.5, now on 10.10. Great in many ways: first of its kind; super extendable; completely open sourced; maintained by capable developers.

Running Mavericks. Lots of crashes for me, and takes up quite a bit of RAM acc to Activity Monitor. Works fast enough but I find the interface a bit confusing, and so lean that I have trouble learning what to do. Stability is the biggest issue so far.

Lovely new version, lots of small but helpful improvements (remember the plugins all get updated with new features too which doesn't show in the main QS changelog). Still the most elegant and flexible power launcher for OS X...

The version for snow is awesome

Quicksilver was once My favorite Application and it did the job but now since I found Alfred few years ago i just use Alfred Application just for about everything including shutdown,Restart, Sleep< Launching Apps, search all.

I love this app. It would just need a much better calculator implementation.

This app was always the first app that I would install on any new computer that I've ever owned.... Over the past year or so I've notice that my iMac would start acting so slow and unresponsive that I would have to restart it. I never knew what the issue was until finally I notices in my iStat Menu Bar that QS was taking up a ton of memory but as the computer got more and more unresponsive... the QS memory usage would climb. At one point before it became absolutely unresponsive, the memory usage was up to 1.8 GB! It just keeps climbing and climbing right before my eyes. That issue is on my iMac 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, OS X 10.8.4. Since then I have a new Retina MBP that I've installed it on... I haven't seen the memory hog issue but the latest version is not stable. It constantly becomes unresponsive and I will have to hunt down the application and double click on it to open it again even though it's already open. That's the only way I can have it respond. I've put the icon in the menu bar and that helps but either way... shouldn't be happening. I don't know what the dev changed to cause these issue but please revert back. This app used to be the best in the business and I would have gladly paid for it.... if it worked properly. Hope if is fixed soon.

on my old 10.6.8 mac, it crashes upon launch. from the log: Dyld Error Message: Symbol not found: _OBJC_CLASS_$_NSTableCellView Referenced from: /Volumes/Quicksilver/Quicksilver.app/Contents/MacOS/../Frameworks/QSCore.framework/Versions/A/QSCore Expected in: /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/AppKit in /Volumes/Quicksilver/Quicksilver.app/Contents/MacOS/../Frameworks/QSCore.framework/Versions/A/QSCore 1.0 worked fine. I wonder if this means we're moving towards 10.7 Lion minimum?

Well, I'll be damned, Quicksilver at 1.0 A great program, the most indispensible program in years. Thanks for all the hard work.

Way back when, Quicksilver was the darling of the Mac cognoscenti. When Alcor went to Google to work on Quick Search Box for Mac, development slowed to a crawl for a while. The team of developers that's been working the project for the last few years has made QS faster, more robust, and fuller-featured. At its core, QS is a way of grabbing at ideas with snippets of words. First, you think of your sentence's subject: the words might be the name of a file, or a bookmarked URL, or an iTunes track, or an entry in Contacts. Then, you search through QS's list of Actions (your verbs) that you can apply to the subject. Some Actions provide you with a third phase, an object (like, what file do you want to attach to an email, maybe). Being able to string together commands with this sort of rudimentary syntax is extraordinarily powerful, and doesn't require that the user memorize a lot of hotkeys. (This is also good because a lot of good hotkeys are already taken.) For this reason, I strongly prefer QS to Launchbar, which also can do a lot of things, but which requires that I, in turn, remember all the keystrokes that I've assigned to those things. If you WANT hotkeys, the sentences you write can be assigned Trigger, and you can treat QS like Launchbar. Also, it is free. There's no reason not to download it, install it, and give it a try. It won't stop working after 30 days; it won't ever nag you to send a donation to anybody. You can just leave all that power sitting around, waiting to be set loose. It's great to finally be using a major release after eight years of using betas.

Went hunting because Spotlight was frequently locking up my computer as it indexed files. I tried removing some folders from Spotlight's indexing sweep, but it was still a problem. Tried a few apps, but Quicksilver's been the best and then some.

Because of this app, I switched from PC to Mac. It has changed the way I use a computer, completely. No longer do I fumble through folders, or even have to remember where a file was. I just type "ctr+space" and type a few letters and WHAMO! there's my file. You can also drag and drop into and out of quicksilver. For instance, I'll bring up quicksilver, type 'pho' and photoshop appears. I drag an image onto it, and the image opens in photoshop! There's no end to what you can do, though, this just scratches the surface.

I tried many different launchers over the years, but I always come back to Quicksilver. It's free and extremely powerful. A big thank you to the new development team!

Here is the blog post describing B71 in more detail: http://blog.qsapp.com/post/35966004492/quicksilver-delivers

This app is a very good launcher but it also does a lot of things with its Plugins which are excellent. I have to give it 5 stars.

ß71 build 3942 is the final release of ß71 and is now available for general download. A great changelog, lots of improvements, fixes and low-level plumbing work to make future QS versions even better!!! A massive thank you to the volunteer developers who are working incredibly hard on this...

Excellent!!!!

Just love QS. It's a terrific way to work on the Mac.

Very Fine Launcher. Excellent in design and easy house,

I'm so glad that development of QS has been picked up again. It is capable of a lot more than I use it for, but I'm happy with the launcher and clipboard aspects of it and it's stability in 10.6. I've introduced many people to QS. The ones that get it, dig it as well. The ones that don't, have a lovely slow & cluttered desktop. The new developers are extremely responsive to problems, even idiot ones. Think they're getting rich or have nothing else to do with their time.?

Thanx for bringing this legendary app back to life. QS is better than ever with these brilliant new coders. Luckily for the rest of us it was made open source and there are generous and talented coders willing and able to clean up the mess that this app was left in by its author.

Still some bugs here and there, but nevertheless the best app launcher in my opinion. And thanks to QS, I don't need to turn on Spotlight anymore.

I'm a user who lingered on the fence about buying Alfred's PowerPack or not. I found pro's and con's to each. I felt I liked Quicksilver's three panel approach better than Alfred's actions. I loved Alfred's speed and felt customizing it was a bit easier. But then there was the whole $20 thing for Alfred's PowerPack which I would need. Then version 67 came out and wow, it is so much faster than previous versions of Quicksilver. I didn't realize how important this was to me and I no longer find myself wishing I had Alfred. Quicksilver is an amazing piece of software, these new devs are crushing it (in a good way) with new features and speedy development. I'm giving it a 4.5 stars because I still think there's room for simplifying / improving the menu system but all in all I highly recommend!

I've already reviewed Quicksilver here before, but I'm coming back to it. This latest (b66) adds the ability to pop up a Quick Look window for any file (or URL) you enter. This makes it SO much easier to find things, it's just ridiculous (after all, don't almost all of us have a bunch of files with very similar names, where we'd like to figure out which one's which? Regardless of where they are in our directory structures?) It's simply a bad-ass piece of software. Not perfect, but bad-ass for sure. Oh, and they give it away. So at least TRY Quicksilver for a couple weeks before you BUY a "launcher" program. None of QS's "competitors" offer anything like the power of Quicksilver.

This used to be the best launcher out there, and I know there are still Quicksilver die hards that are glad it's back under development. I never took advantage of the really advanced features, though. Alfred makes those much more accessible to me.

Spotlight, I hardly knew ye. Honestly, I'd disable Spotlight indexing entirely, but Mail.app searches depend on it! (I have everything but /Users excluded, actually...) I use the terminal heavily, which probably helps as far as not needing Spotlight; I rarely use the Finder, preferring to use the terminal to move files and such for the most part. Combine that with Quicksilver, and hey, I can do almost everything from the keyboard! Yay! I think my favorite feature (hard to pick, from the thousands...) is the use of triggers to run scripts. I have a few f-key cobos bound to launch various terminals/ssh sessions/etc through the magic of Quicksilver triggers. For the average user, it's still a great launcher at the VERY least, and I'm guessing most users will get more than that out of it. Even on a pretty recent system with an SSD, I find results pop up faster and better with Quicksilver than with Spotlight... No, it doesn't index random documents as well as Spotlight does, but it's not meant to do that. The two co-exist just fine. :) The one negative is that for various features, you do need a good bit of advanced configuration. But, hey, it does a ton of stuff even without any advanced config. I've had several friends who used to be primarily GUI-happy but now use Quicksilver at least to launch stuff...and there are far more advanced features than that available, even to the novice. The iTunes, Address Book, etc, plug-ins are all worthwhile. Oh yeah, and it's free. For one of the very first things I install on any new Mac, I can't complain about that!

Download link takes you to a blank page, no matter what browser you use.

Quicksilver.app, will you marry me?

I have used this utility for years; even had purchased a copy of Launchbar, a fine application, but always have preferred QS. There's something about it's simplicity and functionality that makes it the choice for me. When I'm on another computer, it's the utility I miss the most, and even run it on this machine, my Lion Server. I highly recommend this to anyone using the Macintosh operating system. It's what I install first!

Great to see quicksilver finally being updated again. Easily the best launch utility ever and one of my top 5 favorite programs personally, maybe number one. The options for this thing are limitless and I'm always finding new ways to use QS that I didn't even think were possible. Will make a donation as an appreciation for the service.

QS is the best alternative to Spotlight.

I am not a guru but I have no problems whatsoever installing or configuring Quicksilver. I feel it should be incorporated into the Mac OS.

This is IMHO the most elegant utility app ever for the Mac. ... and it's free to boot. I'm donating for years of satisfaction I've had with QS. Thanks to the new QS team for taking this over.

Very pleased with the new updates. I'm back to using QS after about 3 years of LaunchBar. It's not that I didn't like LB; I just never liked it as much as I like QS.

Simply put: poweruser heaven ! Thanks for keeping this free.

Yay, we can finally donate to this utterly excellent project: http://qsapp.com/donate.php For me a massive thanks to keeping QS alive, whatever the future may bring. Even if the current devs stop here, I really appreciate their hardwork to keep such an essential ninja meets swiss-army tool working. The excellent blog and plugin updates are just icing on the cake!!!

I am still using PPC mac with Leopard 10.5.8, and B60 DOES NOT RUN on PPC mac! Someone has to change that info for B60. I believe the last PPC version of Quicksilver is B58.

ß61 is a fantastic update. The major problems with the plugin database is solved, which means plugins can now be cleanly updated and maintained. And a huge changelog of workflow improvements and fixes, plus some minor Lion fixes (ß60 was working fine for me already) is just rich icing on this mercurial wonder. A big thanks to the devs! See here for the juicy details: http://lovequicksilver.com/post/11814325098/quicksilver-roars http://lovequicksilver.com/post/11814320389/quicksilver-ss61-changes

This is like Christmas for my Mac! Thank you so much for the continued work on what is IMHO the most indispensable utility app on my mac. This is one of the most powerful applications for Mac giving you instant access, with just a few keystrokes usually, to almost everything on your Mac. And, that's just the beginning. You have to work with this app for a little while to appreciate how versatile, powerful and elegant it is. It's kind of like an iPhone or iPad in this way, you have to hold it in your hand to realize just how cool it is. I can't even begin to list how much functionality this app adds to my Mac in this little review. Apple should be providing this kind of functionality built-in! I know the learning curve for QS is steep but I promise you it is well worth your time and effort. Very glad to see MU has selected it as a featured application! Please join the lonely IRC chat channel for QS on Freenode, #quicksilver irc://freenode.net/quicksilver

I'm a keyboard addict and I'm working with many files, many apps (even though they're basic stuff). QuickSilver is THE launcher. I love it. Fast, reliable, clever (finds the most probable file you want and puts it on top of the result list). And free. I simply love it.

Brilliant summary of the changes in ß60 at lovequicksilver (check the other tutorials there too!): http://lovequicksilver.com/post/6206073866/quicksilver-grows

A Mac without Quicksilver just feels broken. I've been using Quicksilver for more than three years now. Tried some alternatives when development came to a halt, but luckily there soon were new betas to use. The single most important piece of software on my Mac.

When I installed B59 I couldn't deselect "Show icon is dock". Using "Reset preferences" in the Preferences > Application panel fixed the problem.

I am so glad to see it in active development again, I have been using it with Snow Leopard and it would randomly stop working, I look forward to great updates on one of the first apps I install on any mac I use!

Much as I tried over the last 2 years, I never did find any alternative app that changed, moved, copied, emailed, renamed, uploaded, compressed, revealed contents of and trashed data (and that's just for starters) as easily as Quicksilver. Big round of applause for the current developers keeping this software maintained.

Note, B58 worked on 10.5 and was a universal Intel/PPC binary. You can find it here: http://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/downloads

Simply perfect !

Thank God! b59 has been a long time coming.

Perfect app, wich makes my work faster and effective and must be on my Mac. It haven't crashed since I've started using it (somewhen in 2008/2009?) Till now I haven't seen better or equivalent app - to be honest I don't need to seek for other "similar"... ;-)

Never had it crash? Really? I LOVE QS and I can't say that. It's worth the issues, but the issues do exist.

Quicksilver is one of those apps where it's become so much a part of my workflow that any Mac I sit at that's not one of mine with QuickSilver installed, I feel like I'm working on a foreign operating system. Over time, I went from using it for a keyboard-based launcher to my keyboard-based everything: calculator, iCal event adder, alarm, iTunes controller, script launcher, and probably a dozen other things I can't remember. I'm knocking off 1 star because it sometimes beachballs on me for a while and I have to wait. I hate to wait, which is why I use QS to begin with. I applaud the developers who keep QS going, but that coveted 5th star will require some more work on stability.

First of all, many thanks to the developers who keep this fantastic app alive!!! I use Quicksilver as a launcher with very few plugins (address book and safari modules). B57 is very stable for me, no crashes, only the dropdown hangs once in a while and takes a minute to recover. B58, unfortunately, crashes all the time on my machine (Macbook C2D, 10.6.2), for now I will stick to B57.

i use this app since.... i don't know, guess ages! ;) fits perfect to My Workflow, launch an application, send a File via mail, do calculation, start browser with a special bookmark - great that all in one application can handle this on one interface - thats all!! without QS i'm lost, a must have on every mac...

If you organize the actions to what you need and not everything you won't have any problems with QS. I have tried LaunchBar numerous times but I can not get by the little quarter sized menubar that is the entire application. If you have the patience to learn all the commands then it can be effective but I continually come back to QS. I have not had any problems with it in a long time, and when I did have a problem it would just be a short delay... never actually had the app crash. QS is still alive and as you can see being developed. With thanks to the contributors whom keep this app alive I do not need any other sort of launcher. Many thanks to all of those who contribute, there should be a donation bowl somewhere... maybe at the official repo here: http://github.com/tiennou/blacktree-alchemy/downloads . QS from startup to shutdown, the only app that meets demands and is operating at all times. If you went away from QS, I recommend you revisit the app.

I really like the interface. I have Launch Bar but I now prefer to use Quicksilver.I like the large icons and it runs smoothly.I have had it for years but haven't used it.This iteration is excellent.