A Quicksilver trigger is a convenient way to define a global shortcut, accessible no matter which application is currently active or the frontmost.
There are two kinds of triggers: Keyboard and Mouse triggers. The mouse trigger is very similar to the keyboard trigger, only that you click a mouse button along with some function keys instead of just a key.
Here is how to create a trigger in Quicksilver to do something very basic, for example launch Apples “Mail” application:
First select “Triggers” from the Quicksilver menu in your toolbar at the top of your screen:
In the dialog that appears Click on the little plus-sign at the bottom and select “HotKey” for a keyboard trigger or “Mouse” for a mouse trigger. In my example I am selecting “HotKey” for a keyboard trigger:
Quicksilver will show a dialog very similar to the normal Quicksilver interface. Define the trigger exactly the same way you would ususally use Quicksilver to do something. So in this example I select “Mail” as item and “Open” as the action:
You should now have a new trigger to open the mail application, so the only thing left is to define which key combination will invoke the trigger. To do that select your new trigger and click the little “i”-button at the bottom right of the dialog:
A drawer will open with the details of the trigger:
Click on the “Edit” button for the hot key. Enter the key combination you would like to use for the trigger.
I always use the combination “Shift-Control-Command” along with a defining key for all my Quicksilver triggers. This key combination may feel odd at first, but it didn’t take long for me to get used to it. The advantage of this combination is that it only very seldom causes any conflict with keyboard shortcuts in other applications.
This concludes the creation of a keyboard trigger. Mouse triggers are created similar, only that the drawer to define the Hot Key looks a bit different to cater for the options you have when using a mouse.
