Comments on: Spotlight Comments using Quicksilver

By: rob

rob — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:30:34 +0000

For me, Spotlight Comments represent a way to tag my files a la Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. This is immensely more useful for me than the default full text indexing that Spotlight offers…

how do you get flickr to recognize your spotlight comments???

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:27:34 +0000

I used to use Spotlight all the time and could never get into Quicksilver. It wasn’t until I read some of the tutorials that I realised what was possible in Quicksilver. I now have some nice little hot-keys set up. The ones that are particularly useful are the folders I open regularly.

Plus the iTunes control means I can get rid of SizzlingKeys.

By: Rolf

Rolf — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:46:03 +0000

Again me: For those having problems finding the “set comment”-Action: You need to have the plugin “file attributes” installed and actived.

By: Rolf

Rolf — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:39:14 +0000

You can even be quicker by select the file in finder and press CTRL+ESC - and there should be the file seleced in QS.

By: ryan

ryan — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 11:26:45 +0000

If you have enabled the proxy objects plugin, then there should be a built-in trigger for “Command window with Selection” - just set a hotkey (I use command-esc.)

This saves you the trouble of invoking qs and then hitting command-g. Just hit command-esc (which invokes qs with your selection in the first pane, and automatically selects the second pane so you can type your action), type sc (you may set this as default for set comments), tab, then your comment.

More efficient.

There is also a specific tagging plug-in now, which will allow you to set, view and delete tags for files. Unlike “set comment”, each tag is preceeded by a “@”, and can be manipulated individually.

By: Stephen WG Sullivan

Stephen WG Sullivan — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 17:16:10 +0000

I wanted to add that the quickest way I know to Set Comments for the contents of an entire folder, is to select all of those files inside the folder before going to quicksilver, then command-g in QS, then Set Comments.

The other option would be using “the comma trick” in Quicksilver to select multiple files, but depending on how many files are in the folder, this may not be a practical solution.

By: yusuf

yusuf — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 23:47:10 +0000

a google search brought me here and i just thought i’d add: rather than keying down to the “set comments” function (or any other function) you can just type “set comments.” makes my life easier, at least.

By: dekay

dekay — Wed, 18 May 2005 19:46:53 +0000

Noah, you would have to write an Automator-Script or just a plain AppleScript that recursively does tagging on all files in a folder and then call that from QuickSilver.

Personally I have just killed Spotlight as I was no longer able to play iTunes without getting stutters because mds was indexing my drive, again, and sucking all processor power out of my ibook. sucks definitely.

By: Jamie Kirkpatrick

Jamie Kirkpatrick — Wed, 18 May 2005 07:21:14 +0000

It seems that many of us are hot on this buzz (personally I saw the light following my read of the mamoth 20 page Tiger review on Ars)…

Anyway…this seems like a really good idea. Whilst I can code in Cocoa, this isn’t as easy as all that since contextual menu plugins are not availble from any Cocoa API and you have to resort to some rather antiquated Carbon code. If any one is up for the challenge I will gladly lend a hand; Perhaps we could also talk to the QS developers and see if they are interested in making a module (rather than a plugin) that can do this stuff?

By: Robb

Robb — Wed, 18 May 2005 05:36:46 +0000

after doing this today with all the files i accumulated today, i let iphoto and itunes import the ones which were relavant. unfortunately i realized that all of my tags had been stripped upon importing.

I was able to go into the respective folders and replace the imported files with the originals, but it was a bummer none the less.

cheers for the tips!

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Tue, 17 May 2005 21:20:10 +0000

Noah, good question. I don’t know how you’d do that, but I’ll see if I can figure something out for ya.

By: Noah

Noah — Tue, 17 May 2005 21:16:22 +0000

Is there a way to have Quicksilver recusively update files? I love your idea, but when I select a folder and try and apply a comment it only gets set on the folder not the contents… am I missing a command to do this?

By: Jamie Kirkpatrick

Jamie Kirkpatrick — Tue, 17 May 2005 08:49:15 +0000

If only Apple wwould build on the new xattr stuff and make metadata a real part of the OS (giving a very easy way to add and change this data)…

Alas, in the meantime this is a good compromise. Someone ought to design a QS plugin that addresses this specifically though - something a bit more tailored to the task as a stop-gap till Apple (hopefuly) get there…

for now I’ll go with your find though….great work!