For many the dock is the central point of contact with all the daily applications one needs to use. It can easily become cluttered with application shortcuts coupled with running application icons.

'De-cluttering' can be achieved with Quicksilver. Quicksilver is a free application designed to be a unified interface for working with other applications within the operating system, and can be described as a beefed up version of Apple's own Spotlight - catering more towards productivity then solely on search; a jack of all trades.

Quicksilver's interface is intuitive and simplistic yet highly functional with the top field acting as a search-bar. Like Spotlight you are presented with a list of results matching the term specified, but normally scrolling through the list is not necessary as Quicksilver is spot on with what you have searched for.

Besides the default option of simply opening the application, in this case iTunes as shown in the screenshot above, one can also select other available actions - for example playing of a soundtrack if iTunes is already open.

The beauty of Quicksilver is that it remains hidden until invoked with the default keyboard shortcut of CTRL+SPACE, enabling quick access when required instead of either reaching for the (cluttered) dock or finding the required application in the 'Application' folder in 'Finder'. We'll explore more advanced features of Quicksilver to help boost your productivity in future articles.

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