Quicksilver

There is no doubt that Spotlight can find and open anything on a Mac, but that's about it in terms of its functionality. With Quicksilver, finding a specific file on your disk is the most basic task you can perform. The application is capable of retrieving information from within a file, like a phone number from your address book, or a song in the iTunes library, but the most important part is that it enables you to perform various actions on the fly once you find what you are looking for. Copying or moving the file to another location, opening it with a specific program and sharing it over the Internet are just a few examples.

While Quicksilver is running on your Mac, you can bring up a compact user interface through a hotkey or by clicking its dock icon. The interface consists of several slots, in which you can find files or other contents and set up various actions. For example, if you wish to find a document, you only need to type its name. Once you find it, you can open it, display one of its contained paragraphs on the screen or even click and drag the document to another location.

When you find your document, you can simply hit the Return key to execute a default action, but you can also select different actions, in the appropriate slot. Certain actions require parameters, like a path or a program, which can be selected in a similar manner. Besides finding local data, you can also open websites, perform web searches, save files in specific locations, copy and move data and much more. All you have to do is type and select an action.

Another central feature is Quicksilver's learning capability. It can remember your frequent actions, to make it much faster and easier to perform them in the future. You only need to spend a small amount of time with this application and you will be able to access anything on your Mac or perform numerous actions, on the fly, even through abbreviations.