iTunes Synergy
iTunes is great, but it’s interface is rather bulky. Even the shrunk-down panel is more than I want normally. I was thinking it would be useful to have a global hot-key tied to skipping songs or pausing, it would be nice to see what song (and album cover) is playing, and even perhaps have hot-keys tied to adjusting the Ratings setting.
Well, Synergy does all this, and more. It puts a tiny control bar up in the menu bar, gives you hot keys for everything I listed, and when iTunes switches to a new song it pops a little window up in the corner of the screen with the title, artist, rating, and cover art. All this for only $5!
Thanks for the recommendation. Synergy is great. I often kept iTunes in minimal mode, but in front so I could glance at song and artist, but always missed being able to see the album cover, and really prefering to hide iTunes. Now with Synergy, iTunes stays hidden, the song, artist, album cover and rating display on my screen, and I’m very happy. Only one issue, it would be nice if you could set the info to display for longer than 20 seconds but less than always. 30 seconds to 1 minute would be a nice range to add to the options. Outside of that, wow, what a great app. It’s even helping me identify albums without art, so I can correct them.