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Use Quicksilver to navigate around dialog boxes; Default Folder plug

Drag Into Dialog Boxes - ScreenshotIf you’re in a dialog box, you can quickly jump to the item or location you’re after by using Quicksilver.

With the dialog box open, invoke Quicksilver, and pull up the file or folder you want to target as usual. When your match comes up, drag the icon for the item from Quicksilver into the dialog box, and you’re done (screenshot).

Bit of a piffle until you really start using it and realize: you now have yet another way to pipe your life through Quicksilver and avoid repetitive clicks and drill-downs. Also, note that this “drag in or out of Quicksilver” function works pretty much everywhere (and possibly just completely changed the way you work if you didn’t know that already).


On a related note, I should put in a plug here for a brilliant companion app that I’ve used since Christ was a corporal: Default Folder. In addition to totally tricking out your dialog boxes and adding tons of helpful functions, it lets you—from within a dialog box—click any open folder in the Finder to make that the target folder in the dialog box. The window doesn’t even have to be the frontmost window. This is a huh-uuuge timesaver. So worth the $, especially if you move around in lots of files each day or frequently “Save as…” multiple versions.


Got a good trick for Quicksilver dragging? Leaned "the comma trick" yet?

About Merlin

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Bio

Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. He’s best known for being the guy who created the website you’re reading right now. He lives in San Francisco, does lots of public speaking, and helps make cool things like You Look Nice Today, Back to Work, and Kung Fu Grippe. Also? He’s writing this book, he lives with this face, he suffers from this hair, he answers these questions, and he’s had this life. So far.

Merlin’s favorite thing he’s written in the past few years is an essay entitled, “Cranking.”

 
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