Sending short email messages from within Quicksilver

I’ve recently gotten in the habit of using the email subject line alone to convey a short message. The old-school best practice of geeks in this matter is to end a self-sufficient subject with (EOM), which stands for, you guessed it, “end of message.”

Neat trick here for Quicksilver users to dash off an EOM-type email from right inside the app. (Yes, I assume this requires the Mail and Address Book plugins, possibly others, yadda yadda yadda).

  1. Invoke Quicksilver (usu. CTRL-Spacebar)
  2. Hit . (period key) to get the variable input field
  3. Type a short EOM-style message
    • Try “My 43F test message (EOM)
  4. Tab to the second pane
  5. Type, say, dir until you get “Email to...(Send Directly)
  6. Tab to the third pane
  7. Type until your own Address Book entry appears
    • Optionally right-arrow in to select the specific (non-default) email address you want to send to.
  8. Hit Return

If everything is configured right, this should send an email with the contents of step 3 as both the subject and the body of the message. Of course, this would also work really well with Andrew’s Gmail To-do and Journal system among many other things, but I love it especially as way to quickly dash off a super-efficient email without changing modes. And most recipients love the brevity, so everybody wins.

Good one, Dan. I try leave...

Good one, Dan.

I try leave my #1 as “Paste” and #2 as “Append to…” but that’s a great suggestion.

There’s a lot of power in that Actions area. Do you notice that yrs get re-jiggered when you add new Services, and Plugins? Seems like new ones always gobble the top slot wherever they apply.