When I read that you could use Quicksilver with Twitter, I felt as excited as Jack Bauer in an interrogation room full of terror suspects. It all started with Twitter Fan Wiki. And then I lost myself in hours of troubleshooting as I tried to force hack after hack to work the way I wanted them to. As these things are, it wasn’t nearly as hard in the end as all the work that led up to the final result.
The first AppleScript I found for the job was here. But as best as I can tell, the Keychain Access was a major bottleneck. Then I found an option that uses the Twitter Rubygem, but you’ve got to be pretty serious to install Rubygems on your Mac. I couldn’t make it happen. I’m not that serious. Then I found another way to avoid Keychain scripting, but it was still too geeky for me to get working with my limited know-how. I even found iChat support and word count with Growl notification.
I was about to give up. But I said I would give myself the length of the entire Purple Rain album to make it happen. (I hadn’t listened to it in a long time and it was my favorite album as a dirty minded pubescent teen. He said “masturbating!”) About an hour of pop/funk later, this is what I had hacked together.
Features:
- Counts characters and notifies you by Growl if you exceed 140.
- Notifies you by Growl when your tweet is sent.
- Twitter username/password is hard coded to avoid Keychain Access and reduce delays.
- Checks to see if iChat is running and then sets your status message as the current tweet.
- Checks to see if Skype is running and then sets your mood text message as the current tweet. Note: If you want to integrate Skype mood text updates, open the script in Script Editor and uncomment (remove “–”) the Skype tell.
- Growl will use the icon of Twitterific if installed.
- Need to manage multiple Twitter accounts? Just create a copy of the script in your Quicksilver Actions folder, change the username/password, and you can tweet from two accounts.
How to install:
- Download the script, unzip, and put it here:
~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions - Using Script Editor, modify these lines of the script to your Twitter username and password:
set twitter_key_account to "your@email.com"
set twitter_key_pass to "your_password" - Restart Quicksilver.
How to use:
- Invoke Quicksilver.
- Enter text mode (hit period) and type your message.
- Tab to the Action Pane and type “Tweet” (or as much of the word as you need).
- Enter.
I hope you find this script useful. I’m no programmer, so I can’t support it. If you have addons or variations, please post them. Don’t forget to add me to your Twitter friends list. And thanks to all the coders that came before me and made this possible.
Update 4-21-07: Integrated Skype mood text updates as an option. See instructions for details.
Update 8-11-07: Integrated Facebook updates as an option. See this post: Update Twitter, Facebook, iChat, Adium, And Skype With Quicksilver
Update 5-24-09: I made a change to the curl script which should solve any previous problems.
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Works like a charm!
Thanks for making this – I could never have done it myself, and will be twittering a lot more from now on…
Don’t know if that’s for the better or worse
[...] clipped from integral.grahamenglish.net [...]
[...] read more | digg story [...]
I have no “Action” folder at ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/
Do I have to create it?
Awesome! Glad it worked like I said it would.
For better or worse, I may Twitter more, but it takes me less time to do it. Plus, I’m saving system resources by not needing a browser to be open or running a separate app like Twitterific (Which is still a pretty cool app). It’s win-win.
This is fantastic Graham. AppleScript is a dark art and I appaud you for whipping it up (even in a purple rainstorm).
This is going into my “One True Way” routine.
[...] iQuickTwitter – My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack » Graham English’s Integral Con… (tags: twitter quicksilver hack apple osx hacks mac script) [...]
Got it to work! But, it’s not working like it should. When I open quicksilver, I have to type tweet, and then tab, then tab, and then enter my tweet. Oh well, I’ll take it!
@Milkfilk: Glad you like it. I didn’t code it from scratch. Just hacked a bunch of different AppleScripts together. But I really love AppleScript. The more I get into it, the more I realize how powerful it is. But playing with the dark arts does have its price!
@Derek: That’s strange. You know I have a similar problem with the Address Book plugin. Everything’s backwards. I can’t put a contact as an object in the third pane but I can do it in the first object pane. I’m going to look harder for a fix and if I find anything, I’ll let you know.
@Gabriel: Yes. Just create an ‘Action’ folder and you should be set.
I can’t get it to work. It will update my ichat status, but it will not update my twitter status
Justin, my guess is that you didn’t do the username/password edit correctly.
You want to change this:
Leave the quotes there. Double check if your username is your email or profile handle. But both should work. If you aren’t getting a growl notification that your tweet has been sent, then it’s not getting through to the server. Let me know what happens.
Works great! Thanks!
Though I am not seeing the character count.
@Jim of Davao: Do you have Growl installed? If so, you might need to turn it on in Quicksilver. Go to Quicksilver’s preferences and search for it in the plugins menu. Let me know how it goes.
Very nice, Graham! Thank you!
Steven
You’re welcome, Steven.
This is fantastic! BTW anyone using Adium rather than iChat can just substitute the reference to iChat in the Applescript with Adium.
Thanks for pointing that out Christopher. Before the end of the day, I’m going to have a Skype update too.
[...] com a simplicidade usual, bastando que para isso um pequeno AppleScript seja instalado. Com o iQuickTwitter, basta usar o comando para iniciar o Quicksilver, digitar a mensagem e em poucos instantes o status [...]
Figured it out. Add this below the iChat tell:
I’ll consider adding it to the script or providing an alternate version if people are interested.
[...] Here is a cool Quicksilver script that lets you post messages to Twitter. Once you’ve downloaded the script and placed it into your Quicksilver/Actions folder, you can simply call up Quicksilver, invoke text mode (by typing a “.”), tab to the action pane, type “tweet” and you’re off. Plus, Growl will let you know when you’ve successfully “tweeted.” [...]
fantastic script & works like a charm – know this is extremely presumptious but … could you create a script that works with jaiku … or even something like twaiku (which I can’t get to work) … thanks for your work …
Raymon, how much $ are you offering?
I haven’t looked at jaiku yet. I’m thinking about joining, but it won’t be this week. Maybe if I do, I’ll see if I can hack something together. I’ll give you a shout if I do.
[...] iQuickTwitter – My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack plugin for posting to Twitter from Quicksilver (tags: quicksilver twitter plugin mac apple) [...]
[...] Twitter, Jaiku, TwitterPost, Twitterrific, Twitter + QuickSilver Financial Aid Podcast, Chris Penn (I don’t think I said my name, how stupid), The Wine Scout [...]
no $ just the rewards found in a challenge
btw did get twaiku to work …
[...] I found iQuickTwitter – My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack. This script does the same as the one I used for a few days now—except it doesn’t fetch the [...]
This is excellent – will definitely be using this from now on. Quicksilver is the bee’s knees already, but you just made it a bit bee’s kneesier.
Ha ha. Glad you dig it, Mark.
>Is there a benefit to cross posting?
>”The reason we can do that is because I have flexibility. I don’t want to have to say, “I can’t do that”
You answered the question yourself.
Enjoying your twitters & see them alomost instantanouesly with Twitterrific (i think)
You’re absolutely right, Raymon. Or should I say, I was absolutely right?
I guess what I meant to say was, is there a benefit to cross posting as opposed to just putting your Twitter feed into Jaiku. Know what I’m saying?
Graham,
I’ve tried it both ways, with my user name and with my email address (both in the quotes as you mentioned), and neither works. It changes my ichat status and I get a growl notification saying that its been sent, but it doesn’t make it through to my twitter account.
Not sure why?
[...] solong 推荐的 iQuickTwitter [...]
[...] iQuickTwitter – My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack (tags: quicksilver osx mac hacks) [...]
Cool thing, works perfectly, thanks!
You’re welcome, Hubert.
By the way, Justin and I fixed his problem. Avoid putting a ‘?’ in your password. It breaks the Twitter URL into a query string.
Thanks, I got your script.
And it works except “@” is in top of twitter not works.
Do you have any idea?
That’s about the only downside with this script. You can’t use the @ symbol. I’m sure there’s a way to get it to work, but I haven’t tried. If I find a fix, I’ll post back.
Since I always have iChat open, and that’s where I get my Twitter updates from, I use that to send direct messages and @ messages.
Hi, Graham.
I changed –data-binary from -F, I could comment to Twitter with “@”.
Is that not good?
@keizo: That worked for me too. Nice job! Thanks.
[...] can tie in quicksilver to twitter for even-faster-status-updatey-goodness, too. Pretty [...]
[...] iQuickTwitter – My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack » Graham English’s Integral Con… (tags: quicksilver hacks twitter) [...]
Hi,
Could you please tell me how you enabled commenting w/ the “@” symbol? I tried following the last two posts but the seem somewhat cryptic: “changed –data-binary from -F”….I don’t know what this means.
I’ve already made the changes to the script so all you need to do is download it.
[...] und von Anwendungen in Twitter machen den Dienst so langsam brauchbar. Neueste Entdeckung ist die Quicksilver-Integration von Graham English. Einfach Quicksilver aufrufen, in den Textmodus wechseln (.), TAB, [...]
Hmm, my wordpress told me you’d linked to my Quicksilver / Twitter / Various IM Clients script. I guess not then?
By the way, if you’re needing more features (but to be honest, I don’t use half of them myself!) check out my script. It will update the status of not just Skype and Adium, but MSN Messenger, iChat and Proteus as well as shortening any URLs that take you over the 140 limit using TinyURL.
Ok, I’ll stop pimping myself now
I just trackbacked because it was a common theme and we have a common name.
Pimp away!
Just installed the script, and I love it. I would never use sites like Twitter without Quicksilver. Thanks again for hacking these scripts together.
You’re most welcome, Noah. And I wouldn’t use Twitter nearly as much as I do if I had to use a browser or some other resource using app.