January 2024
NEW: Remove Leading-Trailing Spaces
Remove Leading-Trailing Spaces will remove any number of extra space characters at the beginning and ending of chosen tags (Name, Artist, Album Artist, Album, Composer, Genre, Grouping and Show) in the selected tracks.
Selected tags are remembered between launches.
iTunes 12 won't let you add leading or trailing spaces to a text tag in the Get Info panel so these sorts of anomalies are likely to be the result of tagging by another means (by editing a tag directly in the iTunes browser window, for example, or by using another application).
Blanking the Genre Tag in iTunes 12
Kirk has found a bug in iTunes 12 whereby selecting a batch of tracks and deleting their Genre tag via the Get Info panel inserts 8 spaces instead of empty text into each track's Genre tag. This creates a Blank Genre that is actually displayed and selectable in Genre lists.
This AppleScript will correctly delete the Genre tag of each track in a selection:
tell application "iTunes"
set sel to selection
repeat with thisTrack in sel
tell thisTrack to set its genre to ""
end repeat
end tell
Also, any number of other scripts that can edit the Genre tag, like Multi-Item Edit, will get the job done.
MacVoices Podcast
Chuck Joiner invited me to join him on his MacVoices podcast. We talk about iTunes and AppleScript (of course) and obsessive-compulsive music organization, among other topics.
Dupin v2.8.4 Released
Over the weekend, I released a version of Dupin that was basically a simple maintenance release. However, it was then brought to my attention that a bug had been in existence since v2.8.2 which errantly moved files to the Trash when using Dupin to remove tracks from a playlist. This isn't an often-used featuremost users just want to delete the tracks and Trash the files from the entire librarybut you can imagine the problem this would cause when the last thing you expected while just removing tracks from a playlist is to find that the files had been Trashed as well.
I have fixed that issue in version v2.8.4 of Dupin.
UPDATED: Sundry Info to Comments v4.0
iTunes knows some stuff about your tracks but won't let you see it other than via the Get Info panel because there are no columns in the browser window to accommodate it. We can fix that.
Sundry Info To Comments v4.0 can copy your single choice of filename, file path (location), file's parent folder path, file creation date (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS), current playlist, volume adjustment, start time or stop time (HH:MM.SS), artwork size (WxH), purchaser name or purchaser account ID to choice of Category, Comments, Description or Episode ID tag of each selected track. By putting data in one of these available tags it can be visible and sortable or used with Smart Playlist criteria.
Setting up to copy the Apple ID to the Episode ID tag of the track selection.
This latest version adds the track's start time, stop time and artwork size as info to apply; adds the Episode ID tag as a potential target tag; adds user-enterable separator-text field when appending to extant tag text; now stays active and frontmost until Quit; has minor compatibility adjustments for OS X 10.10.
Sundry Info To Comments is for OS X 10.8 and later and is free to use full-featured for ten day, $1.99 thereafter. More info and download is here.
NEW: Size of Artwork
I've been on a roll lately with the Managing Artwork scripts, eh?
The latest is Size of Artwork, which simply displays the size of the artwork of a selectd track:
For OS X 10.9 or later. This script is way more convenient to use when you assign it a keyboard shortcut.
UPDATED: Multi-Item Edit v3.0
Multi-Item Edit v3.0 will display the selected track(s)'s tags in a single window for viewing or editing. When working with two or more tracks, the common tags of the selected tracks are initially displayed; when a single track is selected then it displays all tags for that track.
This latest version, first and foremost, will recognize a single selected track. And because it now also stays active and floating above iTunes until quit (no longer quitting after applying changes), you can cursor through tracks in a playlist to view or edit them individually.
I also added auto-complete to the Genre field, added Close and Miniaturize control buttons to the window, improved accessibility tabbing between text and option fields, improved the UI logic between Plays/Skips and Last Played/Last Skipped fields, and made other minor tweaks.
Multi-Item Edit v3.0 is a free update for registered users, free to try full-featured for ten days, $1.99 to purchase. OS X 10.8 or later.