Steven Levine
Steven Levine
1 min read

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It has been a while since a single program changed my workflow as much as Quicksilver has.

Over the years, it has been covered a lot on the Mac sites, but it never really seemed like something that would help me. Guess it was the stubborn side of me refusing to try something new. So the question is what changed my mind now? Two things:

  • The Productive Programer: In his book Neil Ford describes several work flows involving Quicksilver that actually made sense to me, especially the Subversion plugin.
  • Pragmatic Thinking And Learning: Again, the virtues of Quicksilver described in such a way, that made a lot of sense to me.

After reading these two excellent books, it was time for me to give it a try, and see what it has to offer. It has been about a week now, and it is hard to imagine using my Mac without it. It has increased the efficiency of my workflow tremendously. The mouse has become optional for most tasks. It has sped up common tasks for me such as checking in/out files from Subversion, opening documents to edit, quickly composing emails and attaching files, and my favorite time saver is this neat trick that allows you to lock your computer with a simple keystroke. Previously, it required clicking on the “lock screen” option in keychain.

If you are a Mac developer like me, and you are in to efficiency, you need to at least give Quicksilver a try. You won’t be disappointed.