January 13 '09 - 2:52 pm
Change Hidden iTunes Preferences is an application that will let you invoke some so-called “hidden” iTunes preferences: Show “Library” playlist, Show genre while browsing, Allow half-stars in ratings, Show arrow links — to either search the iTunes Store or search your library, Load complete iTunes Store preview before playing, Play songs while importing or converting, and Create file names with track number. Some of these preferences, as some users may recognize, used to be available in iTunes’ Preferences. Others, like the “Library” and half-stars prefs, have recently been discovered. This is for use with iTunes 8 or better only.
The download disk image contains the actual application (which is not an AppleScript) and an AppleScript to launch the app from your iTunes Script menu. Make sure you copy both of them off the .dmg.
posted in Apple, Controlling iTunes, New Releases, Tips and Info, iTunes
January 12 '09 - 8:31 am
Daypart is a simple yet full-featured application that allows you to schedule iTunes playlists when to play, giving you an easy way to program varied musical content throughout the week in your home or workplace.
Program your iTunes music when you want, the way you want.
Smart Playlists, Playlist Folders, and Genius Playlists provide some degree of musical variety in iTunes, but you still have to manually select, start, and stop each playlist one at a time whenever you want to switch from one to another. Daypart does all that for you and lets you program every day of the week with different playlists at different times. You can have Daypart play your Party Shuffle playlist in the morning, Most Recently Added around lunch, dance music in the afternoon, Classical for dinner, and audiobooks in the evening. And on the following day schedule something completely different. Plus, you can create more than one schedule to accommodate your many listening habits.
With Daypart you can:
- Schedule playlists flexibly, for just a few minutes or several hours
- Schedule intricate configurations of playlists on a weekly basis
- Segue between playlists without cutting off songs
- Automatically shuffle and/or repeat playlists
- Store and re-use frequently used scheduling criteria
- See how playlists are scheduled over a period of days
- Automatically load and engage a schedule at startup
Plus, Daypart features:
- Uncluttered, easy-to-use interface
- Scheduling tips
- Scheduling conflict-awareness
- Customizable windows positioning
- Ample keyboard shortcuts
- Detailed Help book
More information, link to video demonstration, and download is here.
posted in Controlling iTunes, Daypart, Managing Playlists, New Releases, iTunes
January 2 '09 - 7:06 am
After playing around with the “show-library-playlist” setting, it looks like you do have to set “hide-library-playlist” also. So, to show the “Library”, run these two commands in Terminal one after the other (that is, press Return after entering each):
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-library-playlist -bool TRUE
defaults write com.apple.iTunes hide-library-playlist -bool FALSE
To hide the Library again, run the same commands, but reverse the TRUE/FALSE values.
posted in AppleScript, AppleScript Syntax, Controlling iTunes, iTunes, unix
January 1 '09 - 1:59 pm
I’m not certain if this has been mentioned anywhere–I haven’t seen it–but I found the defaults command for displaying the entire iTunes library. Remember when you actually had a large playlist named “Library”, before Apple split it up into–what I call–”Master” libraries of “Music”, “Movies”, “Podcasts”, and so on? The “Library” listed everything in your iTunes library. Well, you can get that back using this command in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-library-playlist -bool TRUE
Quit iTunes before entering the command. When you restart you’ll have a new playlist named “Library” at the top of your Source list, above “Music”.
If you want to remove the “Library” again, use this command in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-library-playlist -bool FALSE
There is a second preference called “hide-library-playlist”, which I at first thought would have to be set in tandem with the opposite of “show-library-playlist”, but this doesn’t seem necessary. In fact, you can set one or the other, apparently, and get the desired result; that is setting “show-library-playlist” to TRUE or setting “hide-library-playlist” to FALSE amounts to the same thing. Also, for AppleScript purposes, this playlist can be referenced as library playlist 1; it always could be, but now it is visible.
posted in AppleScript, AppleScript Syntax, Controlling iTunes, Tips and Info, iTunes, unix
April 29 '08 - 4:26 pm
Fixed an error in Needle Drop when canceling from the first dialog box, made it universal binary, and added the ability for it to quit automatically if you pause iTunes while running it. This script will play through the tracks of the selected playlist at your set time interval.
posted in AppleScript, Controlling iTunes, Updates, iTunes
April 25 '08 - 7:41 am
If you subscribe to any TV Shows from the iTunes Store Apple can send an email notifying you when the latest episode is available. Then you can go to iTunes’ “Store” menu, click “Check for Purchases…”, and the download will commence.
A while back I had posted a script called Check For Purchases which used GUI scripting to automate this process. It required that you hardcode your iTunes Store user name and password in the script and also have GUI scripting enabled. Yuck. These are two of my least favorite–if not my most least favorite–techniques for using a script. But, it turns out, there’s an even simpler and better way to accomplish this…
posted in Controlling iTunes, Managing Files, Tips and Info, iTunes
April 4 '08 - 10:43 am
Quick Convert converts the iTunes track selection using your choice of encoder, restoring your Preferences-set encoder afterwards. Latest version is universal binary, ensures that files converted to AAC with the bookmarkable option are re-added to “Audiobooks” Master Library correctly.
posted in AppleScript, Controlling iTunes, Updates, iTunes
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