Start Quicksilver With Keyboard Shortcut.

[CakeFace]

Sometimes, for one reason or another, QS isn't running. I feel a deep sense of loss when I try to activate it and nothing happens. The main problem is that I want to use QS to launch QS. Navigating the applications folder seems creaky and lame, and QS has made me a shortcut man. Frustrated, I came up with a simple solution to allow me to start QS with a keyboard shortcut. I'm fairly sure that this has been covered before, but on the off chance that it hasn't, here's my solution:

1. Open Automator, and select 'Service' when it asks you what kind of workflow you'd like to create.

2. Change the 'Service receives selected' menu to 'No input'.

3. Drag the 'Launch Application' action onto the workflow.

4. Under the drop-down menu, choose 'Quicksilver'

5. Save your workflow with a name like 'LaunchQuicksilver'

6. Close Automator, and open up the 'Keyboard' preference pane in System Preferences.

7. Click the 'Keyboard Shortcuts' tab, and select 'Services' from the sidebar.

8. Scroll down until you see the 'LaunchQuicksilver' service that you created.

9. Make sure that it's checked, and then double-click on the empty space to the right of it, and you'll be able to choose a shortcut.

10. Voila! A makeshift trigger that allows you to open QS.

I used command-control-q, because the command-control key combo is what i use to open all my programs, so it feels natural. Quicksilver will supercede any keyboard shortcuts that you've made in the preference pane, so don't worry that it'll interfere with another QS trigger that you've got set up. Cheers!

[Patrick Robertson]

Great tip!

I have tweeted this tip, so as to share it with as many users as we can.

Typically, if Quicksilver isn't running I use spotlight to launch it. But that is still quite slow and I often launch QUICKtime instead by accident.

[Lucas Garron]

There are times when Quicksilver is hangs on me... and I can't kil; the process  it using itself. So I actually have an Automater application that just does "Run Shell Script" with these two lines:

killall Quicksilver

open /Applications/Quicksilver.app

Once the workflow is saved as a .app, it can be placed in the Dock or launched with Spotlight (which is usually quick enough for me). I've called mine "Relaunch QS.app" so that Spotlight will return it for "QS" (it seems to be pretty stubborn about learning what "quick" means).

»Lucas Garron

[Patrick]

I've just set up the service, with the shortcut being ⌘␣ (Command
Space). Now, I never even have to think "Is Quicksilver running?" I
just type my normal Quicksilver shortcut (⌘␣ of course) and
Quicksilver will open if it's running or not.

Thanks

On Mar 12, 8:34 am, Lucas Garron <creasepatt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are times when Quicksilver is hangs on me... and I can't kil; the
> process  it using itself. So I actually have an Automater application that
> just does "Run Shell Script" with these two lines:
>
> killall Quicksilver
> open /Applications/Quicksilver.app
>
> Once the workflow is saved as a .app, it can be placed in the Dock or
> launched with Spotlight (which is usually quick enough for me). I've called
> mine "Relaunch QS.app" so that Spotlight will return it for "QS" (it seems
> to be pretty stubborn about learning what "quick" means).
>
> »Lucas Garron
>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 01:29, Patrick Robertson <
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> robertson.patr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Great tip!
> > I have tweeted this tip, so as to share it with as many users as we can.
>
> > Typically, if Quicksilver isn't running I use spotlight to launch it. But
> > that is still quite slow and I often launch QUICKtime instead by accident.
>

> > On 12 March 2012 03:40, CakeFace <bicyk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Sometimes, for one reason or another, QS isn't running. I feel a deep
> >> sense of loss when I try to activate it and nothing happens. The main

> >> problem is that I want to use QS to *launch *QS. Navigating the

[Tim Lawson]

Tip of the day, maybe even the month! - thanks CakeFace and Patrick!

[Oliver Schrenk]

Indeed! As I can't get Quicksilver to properly launch on bootup this helps a lot (I even had "Applications" directory in my finder sidebar ... ugh)

[Rob McBroom]

On Mar 11, 2012, at 11:40 PM, CakeFace wrote:

> Navigating the applications folder seems creaky and lame, and QS has made me a shortcut man.

When I need to manually launch Quicksilver, I just switch to Finder (clicking anywhere on the Desktop is one way) and hit ⇧⌘A to open `/Applications`.

Not as fast as a global hotkey, but those are pretty hard to come by.

--
Rob McBroom
<http://www.skurfer.com/>

[Tim Lawson]

Sooo slow, sooo last year ;-)

[philostein]

This tip is really popular on Twitter. Looks like you've soothed a raw nerve for a lot of QS users. :)

[CakeFace]

Patrick,

 

     Making the shortcut to launch QS be the same key-combo as the invocation is brilliant. I've already switched myself.

[Guy Manchester]

Rather than create a separate application to do this I've always used
Spark to launch / invoke QS for this very reason - Spark never crashes
but QS occasionally does. It's free & has minimal CPU / RAM effect.

But then I've always got Spark running anyway for those few cases
(like keystroke remapping) that I can't use QS to set triggers. Might
be a bit of overkill to download a whole App just to open / launch QS.

[Adam Merrifield]

Does anybody remember back in the day when QS used to be able to do this without applescripts and automator workflows? It was a kickass feature back in the day. There was also a feature that would persistently launch QS if it ever crashed. Those were the days.

--
Adam Merrifield
seyDoggy vCard: seydoggy.com/vcard

[Jon Stovell]

No, I don't remember those days, because they never happened. An
application cannot launch itself; not sure what you are thinking of.
The persistent relaunch was a clever trick someone came up with and
shared on MacOSXHints.com. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060927132601570&query=quicksilver+launchd

On Mar 12, 12:16 pm, Adam Merrifield <mac...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Does anybody remember back in the day when QS used to be able to do this without applescripts and automator workflows? It was a kickass feature back in the day. There was also a feature that would persistently launch QS if it ever crashed. Those were the days.
>
> --
> Adam Merrifield
> seyDoggy vCard: seydoggy.com/vcard
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, March 12, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Guy Manchester wrote:
> > Rather than create a separate application to do this I've always used
> > Spark to launch / invoke QS for this very reason - Spark never crashes
> > but QS occasionally does. It's free & has minimal CPU / RAM effect.
>
> > But then I've always got Spark running anyway for those few cases
> > (like keystroke remapping) that I can't use QS to set triggers. Might
> > be a bit of overkill to download a whole App just to open / launch QS.
>

[Adam Merrifield]

Ye of little faith. The auto launch did happen. I used to have a blog post about it. I'll see if I can dig it up.

--
Adam Merrifield
seyDoggy vCard: seyDoggy.com/vcard

[Rob McBroom]

On Mar 17, 2012, at 12:14 AM, Jon Stovell wrote:

> The persistent relaunch was a clever trick someone came up with and
> shared on MacOSXHints.com. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060927132601570&query=quicksilver+launchd

Which I wouldn't recommend by the way.