See & edit iTunes ratings in the Macintosh status menu bar!
Okay, I admit, I love tidy playlists and try to keep my iTunes track ratings quite accurate, so that I can always enjoy my intelligent playlists. There has been a tool called iTunesRatings by Matthew Handley, which disappeared some years ago. Because I think this was a very nice application, I spent some hours programming my own app, which has some improvements:
Features:
· See the rating of the current track
· Edit the rating of the current track
· Supports 1/2 stars (eg. 4.5 stars) by clicking & dragging
· Context Menu with the most important iTunes control (Play/Pause, Previous/Next, Loop One)
· Floating Cover Panel
· Quick Playlist and Track Access
· Option to autostart at login
· Option to hide the Menu Bar icon when iTunes isn’t launched
· Designed to use as less resources & processing power as possible!
· GPL-licensed (free & open source!)
· Runs on Mac OS X 10.5. (Leopard) or 10.6. (Snow Leopard) / Universal Binary /
RateMe! compared:
I noticed that a bunch of similar programs has been released lately – needless to say, that those that need an extra click to rate aren’t that useful (you could right click on the iTunes Dock-icon as well). Most of them don’t support half star ratings, and many are so overloaded with features that they consequently need too much processing power for my taste, thus slowing down the computer.
RateMe! has been designed to use as little CPU as possible. To reduce the number of AppleScripts, I’m using the iTunes Cocoa-based notification system. I checked for Memory Leaks and kept an eye on RAM usage. And I keep an eye on usability, so there are enough features to make this application useful and less enough to keep it simple and lightweight.
And finally RateMe! is -AFAIK- the only one that’s open source!
System Requirements:
· Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6. (Snow Leopard)
· iTunes 7
Download:
· RateMe! v0.2.3 (Universal Binary for OS X 10.5./10.6.)
· RateMe! v0.2.3 source (for OS X 10.6 Leopard – developers only, normal users please download the above binary!)
Installation & Usage
· Download and unzip
· Move “RateMe.app” to your programs folder
· Double-click to start
· Exit “RateMe!” by right-clicking and selecting “Quit RateMe!”
· If you want “RateMe” to start automatically with Mac OS X, right-click and select “Preferences > Autostart at Login”.
· Note: Rating is disabled when iTunes is paused!
· To rate full stars click on the star; to rate half stars click and drag
Original Timestamp of this post was 2008 March 07
March 19th, 2008 at 2:26
Hi Michi,
jetzt hab ich mir zum ersten mal dein WebSitenKonglomerat mal bisschen angesehen … macht Spaß und ist informativ!
Also ich habe mir gerade RateMe gesaugt und das geht net!!!
Weil ich noch kein 10.5 hab nehme ich an… heul ..
grüsse
chris
March 19th, 2008 at 7:37
Hi Chris,
mit 10.4. sollte iTunes Rating eigentlich noch funktionieren ;)
Gruß, Michael
April 12th, 2008 at 1:19
Mit (Intel) OS X 10.4.11 und iTunes 7.6.2 wills bei mir auch nicht starten.
Also doch Leopard-only?
April 12th, 2008 at 1:32
Ja! (Wie es bei den Systemanforderungen steht) :
RateMe ist Leopard only (> 10.5.)
Wie ich im letzten Kommentar schon geschrieben habe: für Systeme bis 10.5 sollte das Programm iTunes Rating von Matthew Handley funktionieren.
Gruß,
M.
May 31st, 2008 at 8:55
Hi. Das Programm läuft zwar, ist aber in der Menüleiste unsichtbar, außer beim Rechtclicken. Ich kann also lediglich die sekundären Funktionen benutzen. // The program works except that it isn’t visible in the menubar, except if I right-click. I can only access the secondary functions (ie, not the rating itself). OS X 10.5.3, iTunes 7.6.2
Cheers
Duncan
June 6th, 2008 at 16:07
Hi Duncan,
after we mailed last week and I cannot reproduce this problem with OS X 10.5.3 and iTunes 7.6.2 on two different machines, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a problem related to RateMe, but has something to do with a System “Enhancer” module (eg something like SIMBL).
If anyone else is experiencing a problem like this, please leave a message or contact me via the feedback menu item (context menu of RateMe!)
Best,
Michael
Update 6/10/08:
The problem seems to be fixed with the updated graphics from the 0.1.5 release :)
December 23rd, 2008 at 18:27
I just stumbled upon a hidden preference that enables half-star ratings in iTunes:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUEhttp://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20081220090352648
=)
April 15th, 2009 at 23:07
Just released RateMe! 0.2.1 =)
New features include cover artwork in the menu, optional cover window (“Info Panel”) with transparency and (my favorite!) quick menu access to playlists and tracks.
Hint: “Show iTunes Window…” now works as it should and reveals the current track.
There might be missing icons in the Library submenu with localized iTunes versions other than german or english – and currently no nested playlists are supported (just one folder is recognised): these restrictions are due to the limited access Apple gives us to the unencrypted iTunes library file. I don’t want to mess around with the library and/or hack the encrypted one, but I hope you all enjoy the new release!
Nevertheless, all links to older versions are still available in the version history.
Cheers,
Michael