After years of development, a shift from closed source to open source, and the advent of popular competitors like Alfred, the OS X productivity tool Quicksilver is finally leaving behind the beta tag it has been carrying around since 2003. According to the Quicksilver blog, the new release "means more than just a change in the version numbering system—it signifies a maturity of Quicksilver and a sign of what’s to come."
Version 1.0.0, which supports OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 is available to download from Quicksilver's website. Quicksilver still has the same core feature set the app has always had: it allows users to quickly launch applications and open files with just a few keyboard shortcuts or mouse gestures (called "triggers" in Quicksilver-ese). The pitch for the app is very simple, but its extensive customization features and plugin library allow it to hook into many popular OS X apps, saving you the trouble of having to use your mouse to drag around and interact with the operating system. These plugins are another key focus for version 1.0.0, and the Quicksilver developers hope to be able to attract them back to the ecosystem.
"We need to make it as easy as possible for developers and users to create plugins and AppleScript extensions for Quicksilver," said Patrick Robertson, one of Quicksilver's lead developers, in an interview on the Quicksilver blog. "The true power of Quicksilver comes from our plugin developers, so I’ll be happy once we have a strong dev community back on our side creating great plugins, and over the coming months I’m going to be working hard to try and achieve this."
Version 1.0.0 also offers preliminary support for Retina displays and the ability to make the same trigger perform different tasks in different applications, but it will be the last release to support OS X 10.6 and 32-bit mode. The other changes and fixes can be found in Quicksilver's changelog.
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