Quicksilver

I love quicksilver. There is no better productivity program out there than one which lets you open programs, files, folders, scripts, etc without the need to point and click.

What is Quicksilver you might ask? Well, it is similar to spotlight in that you can hit a combination of keys to bring up a window to type in. As you type it finds things for you. It has a load of options to customize how it searches, what it searches, and how you deal with it. I can say that I haven't even come close to using all of it's features. I mostly use it for opening applications, which is a severe underuse of the program. But, the more I use it, the more I do with it. For instance, it has triggers. I can assign keystrokes to perform certain actions in the system. One I use all the time is iTunes triggers. I can pause, rate, skip and other commands with the keyboard alone. No mouse is required to do these things, no switching of windows. If I don't want to hear a song I hit my set of keys and it's on to the next and I haven't left my current application. 

The program is adaptive, so it can learn from what you type and what you select. The next time type part of the name of a program or file, the one you repeatedly select will become the default. But, because of all that it can do, it also suffers from memory leakage. When used often and completely it must index everything, including it's own database of memorized keystrokes. If you don't restart the program or your computer frequently, it can easily eat up a lot of RAM. This does tend to be a problem for me as I rarely restart my laptop. I wouldn't mind having a scheduled script to close and reopen quicksilver for me, that might be something I could work on. Otherwise, the program is awesome and is the most useful program you can put on your computer. It's even better than trying to find a replacement for finder. It's absolutely free so download a copy today!

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