There have been lots of articles written about Quicksilver and about navigation shortcuts for iTunes, but none I found gave me what I wanted. If you need help getting sold on or getting started with this great open-source app (read free) try Quicksilver Changes Everything, Quicksilver: Moving Around and Training, How to Use the Quicksilver Shelf, or the brilliant Quicksilver’s Clipboard Module.
I was looking for a super simple way to Play/Pause, and move to the Next/Previous track in iTunes. And before you speak — I don’t want to have to invoke the Quicksilver window. Frankly I wanted to mimic the buttons on my Dell laptop.
The Stand alone SizzlingKeys looks quite nice, appears to do everything I need, and is free, but if I could get what I wanted from an application I already have then all the better. Elizabeth Lawley talks about quickly searching for albums with QuickSilver and Dan Schellenberg wrote about automating browserTunes and Quicksilver but neither quite fit. I listen to iTunes all day on shuffle and all I want is a way to pause when the phone rings or skip a song I don’t want to hear.
Setting up Quicksilver Triggers for iTunes control
As it turns out this is drop dead simple. Make sure you have Quicksilver with the iTunes Plugin installed (Quicksilver -> Preferences -> Plugins).
- Under Triggers hit the + sign at the bottom to make a new Trigger.
- Under "Select an Item" type "Next" and "Next Song" should appear. Leave the action set to Run Applescript and click save (you can’t assign your shortcut here).
- Now under the column "Trigger" double click "None." Here is where you need to be slightly careful. QS seems to be a little persnickety about the shortcut key. If you get change your mind like I did several times I often found I had to delete the trigger and start over. I ended up choosing F-13 for next song (more on choosing keys in a sec).
- Now add the "Previous Song" trigger and the ‘Play-Pause." I really like the Play-Pause trigger because it always toggles back and forth and will even launch iTunes if it’s not running!
Choice of Quicksilver Trigger Keyboard Shortcuts
These keyboard shortcuts are available everywhere in your Mac so you need to make sure that you don’t chose keys assigned in other applications. At first I thought choose really complex key combination like Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-> for Next Song, only to find out that turns up the Gamma or contrast on my screen in weird way - Strike One! Then I realized I didn’t want multi-key combos. I wanted a single key to press when the phone was ringing. So I thought that F-14-15-16 would make great Prev-Play-Next combo, but F-14/15 are taken for brightness control - Strike Two!
So how about that big F-13 key - would make a great "Next" button which is likely to be the most used. I wanted F-11 to map to "Previous Song" and F-12 to map to "Play/Pause." I did have to go and reconfigure Expose and the Dashboard shortcuts to use F-9/10 instead of F-11/12, but now it’s perfect - Home Run!
Michael Bolton - yuck - next song!
Show iTunes Artwork and Title for Current Track
As an added bonus return to Quicksilver->Preferences and go to the iTunes item which should have appeared after installing the plugin. By clicking "Show Artwork" you will see the song artwork (if you have any) pop-up with the track name as songs change. It was weird at first while I was work but quickly grew to love it. And what if want to see again after it fades away - simply hit your Play/Pause shortcut twice and it will pop back up.
I just have an improvement on the very last thing you mentioned about re-displaying the track name. The iTunes plugin also includes a “Show Playing Track” command, which can be hotkeyed. I like to hotkey this for manual use, rather than leave the notifications on for interruptions while i’m working.
Glad to see others are realizing the power of quicksilver though!
Have you looked at Synergy?
Yeah I did look at Synergy and it was cool, my main reason for using Quicksilver was that it did an decent job without having yet another memory resident program running all the time.
I might have to look at it again though because Quicksilver has been crashing on me since the last 2 beta releases.
[…] Quicksilver/iTunes Hot keys […]
Hey
great stuff on your site…
quick question: do you know where the artwork is stored if anywhere when quicksilver shows it? It’s a bit frustrating to see the artwork but not be able to put it in iTunes if it isn’t there ( as it seems to me that it does display some artwork when it isn’t there in iTunes.. though haven’t seen any consistency there…)
thx
[…] Leuk hoor een gratis Office pakket maar het opstarten duurt zo lang. Vandaag een beetje wezen surfen en via via er achter gekomen hoe krachtig QuickSilver wel niet is. Tuurlijk, apps openen enzo deed ik al wel. Maar dingen zoals ‘Append to‘ ‘Previous Song‘ ‘Email to‘ e.d. maken het programma nog een stuk aantrekkelijker. Niet eerst de app openen om dan nog eens te doen wat je wilt doen. Hell, via QuickSilver skip je je muziek nog sneller dan met je remote. Het enige lastige is nu om het (nu het voor mij nog zo nieuw is) ook echt aan te leren. Want dat je dan een stuk productiever bent is mij wel duidelijk. […]
The only thing is that the current song notifier doesn’t use Growl.
And the actual theme looks crappy.
Is there any way to change it? I love especially the “Music Video” notifier in Growl for that kind of purpose.
Actually, Growl comes with an app in the extras directory called GrowlTunes. If you drag that prog into your applications folder, it will automatically show the titles and artwork any time a new song starts in iTunes. It will obviously use the theme Growl is configured with. You should list it with your startup items also so it will automatically run.
I was doing a search on how to get iTunes keyboard shortcuts to do the exact things you write about (next song, etc., while working in another app) and came across this post. I had Launchbar installed, but I didn’t want to pay to register it and, having read your review and others, I downloaded QS.
I’ve since removed LB in favor of QS.
Thank you for your post!
[…] Tonight I was searching the web in an attempt to find out how to get a keyboard shortcut for iTunes in order to skip to the next song without my having to be on the application itself. I came across this post on Scott McDaniel’s blog and gave Quicksilver a try. […]
Thanks for tip!
I added two new scipts to the iTunes scripts folder that came with the itunes plug in (ctrl click >> Actions >> Reveal). Vol Up and Vol Down, and assigned them to F13 and F14. Each one adjusts the itunes vol by 20% without adjusting my mac or stereo volume.
I’ll paste them here if anyone wants to use them:
Vol Up:
tell application “System Events” to if (application processes whose name is “iTunes”) is not {} then ¬
tell application “iTunes”
set stored_Vol to (get sound volume)
set sound volume to (stored_Vol * 1.2)
end tell
Vol Down
tell application “System Events” to if (application processes whose name is “iTunes”) is not {} then ¬
tell application “iTunes”
set stored_Vol to (get sound volume)
set sound volume to (stored_Vol * 0.8)
end tell
Hey MeatZMrdr,
That’s awesome I’ll try that out soon.
Thanks
Scott
Hi,
just wanted to say thank you for these helpfull tipps!
Alex