"I Love Stars" is my new freebie application that shows the rating of iTunes' currently playing song in the menu bar. Before I say anything else, here's the download link.
I spent a good part of yesterday solving a problem that's been bugging me. That is, how to rate songs in iTunes with as few brain cycles as possible.
You tend to get distracted switching back and forth from iTunes and even rating songs with iTunes' dock menu is not fast enough when your hands are on the keyboard. Apps like QuickSilver and CoverSutra already solve a big chunk of the problem by letting you assign keyboard shortcuts for raising and lowering ratings—I have command-option-control-up and down arrow set to raise and lower the rating, for example —but I needed a way to quickly see what the rating actually is before changing it.
If you cringe at the thought of having unrated songs in the library like I do, you'll enjoy I Love Stars. Mainly, it's there to show the rating, but you can adjust it with the mouse as well.
Here is what you'll get once you launch I Love Stars:
To quit, right click for the menu:
If you want I Love Stars to launch at boot up, go to System Preferences, Accounts, then Login Items and add it to the list.
I Love Stars is completely free (as in beer), but if you are a music lover, check out my commercial application Tangerine! too.
Thanks to Steve Harris for sharing the rating control code.
2.0 UPDATE:
I think I'm having too much fun working on this little app. I found myself giggling like a schoolgirl a few times today. In what might go down in the history books as the fastest release of a 2.0 version, a day after the initial launch, the sequel is ready already.
The new version features 150% more features:
- I Love Stars hides itself when iTunes is not playing
- It does so with a nifty animation
- You can assign half a star rating by clicking on the last star
- It is smaller and requires less memory
- 1 bug has been fixed
Here is a short demo of version 2:
Thanks to people who sent in suggestions. Enjoy.
2.1 UPDATE:
- Hide when playing podcasts
- Correctly show album ratings
- Accept input from scroll wheel for rating songs
- Slow-mo animation when shift key is held down
Comments
Hi Andy,
I downloaded this and already put it as a Login Item. I like the cocept and will love this product. Thanks!
Perfect! I have tried all the iTunes controls, but they all fell short. All I ever wanted was a quick way to change the song rating. That was all. This is the simplest and most elegant way to complete that task. Thanks for the effort. I sincerely appreciate it.
Great app!! Already downloaded it and hope to finally organize my iTunes library.
Does this require Leopard? I downloaded it and it isn't working for me. Sounds like a great idea. If it doesn't require Leopard and you can help me get it working I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks
I forgot to mention this crucial fact in the post, but yeah, it does require Leopard. There was one piece of technology in Leopard that made life much easier for me.
Thank you very much! I love the app! I love the icon!
On version 1.0, I actually spent more time on the icon than the code. Thanks for expressing your love!
I love.. this app!
I have been waiting for something like this forever. You rock my world.
Fantastic - I've been looking for something that I can just drag my mouse across to rate songs - the only thing lacking is the ability to rate 1/2 stars.
My current app of choice is called Star does allow ratings of 1/2 a star but you have to click and select from a long menu of options - and the company behind it seem to have gone so I suspect it's days are numbered..
If you could add support for 1/2 stars - I know it might require some precise mouse dragging - perhaps clicking on a star could toggle it between full and half or you just have a couple of options in the drop down menu - add and subtract half a star?
Then it would be perfect!
Thank you for the suggestion. Version 2.0 has this feature.
Now it's perfect!
Thanks :)
There is another similar app called Funes, released a few weeks ago. It also stars your iTunes songs but without the stars in the bar but with a smaller icon.
Nice but i would like to rate an entire album...
Sorry, but that is not a goal of this application.
I don't think half stars are supported by iTunes, so it wouldn't really make much sense in this app.
What I would love to see, however, is an option to only display the stars when a song is actually playing, to keep the menubar from becoming too cluttered.
This was actually the most requested feature (with 2 whole requests!). Enjoy version 2.
Great app, if only the stars were a little bigger it would be perfect.
Wow! What an Awesome little app. It's absolutely the best complement to iTunes for us Star obsessed. I have one request Andy Kim! Please will you make it compatible with Tiger, that would be so appreciated....
Sorry, but it'll have to stay Leopard only. This is a free product and I can't justify spending time testing on two OS releases and giving up the technology in Leopard that makes coding this much easier.
I'm so excited about this app! I've waited a long time for a success to iTunesRating (which was never upgraded for Leopard) and it's awesome to see this app -- especially with all the nice flourishes you added! Nice work!
Absolutely beautiful UI, applause! I literally laughed when I saw that the stars actually *twirl* when they exit the menu bar :)
This is a really neat app. The only suggestion I would have is maybe add the option to alternate the "set rating" and "show menu" mouse clicks. As in, allow to configure the right-click to show the menu and have the left-click set the rating.
Just a thought! :-)
Reason behind it : It's a simple case of expected results. When I click a menu from the menubar, I expect to see a menu, not actively change data. That's all :) But I more-or-less understand why it's the way it is… which an option for this makes sense.. (In my opinion)
I agree that right clicking for the menu is not standard behavior, but I think left clicking to set the rating is still the correct behavior. The main thing people want to do with this app is to set the rating just as in iTunes. Plus the menu should rarely be used as it's only good for quitting the app anyway. It won't be the end of the world when a user discovers that a left click sets the rating, but it'll be more efficient in subsequent uses.
Great application....... i was wondering if you're suggesting making the same application also for iPhoto, or other Mac apps which utilises stars..
I Love Stars will only work with iTunes. It'll be too confusing otherwise.
This is clearly the most important mac app of the year, and you should submit it for an apple design award if not too late.
Feature requests:
1. click and hold shows menu, in addition to right click
2. alt. slim view using single star and a number
3. make it a menu extra so it can be repositioned via cmd-drag
4. release the code so we can play with it?
Further specs:
item 1:
On mousedown, nothing happens until either:
- a drag occurs; then you star setting the rating by the star being hovered
- a few hundred ms have passed; then you show the menu and no rating change occurs
- the mouse button is released; then you set the rating to the star that was clicked
item 2:
- menu icon is just a star with a number, either inside it or beside it
- rating is set by clicking and dragging sideways in the "air" (like knob buttons in some audio apps)
- rating could also be set by using the scrollwheel over the icon (this could also apply to the current UI)
And that's all. Thanks for a great and well polished app.
I have to say no to the left click hold for menu and the narrow menu icon because I like that it works the same way as in iTunes. If you want a similar app that takes less space in the menu bar, check out Funes.
The scroll wheel is a great idea though. I frequently make my sliders accept scroll wheel input and I can't believe I forgot this time! Version 2.1 has this feature now.
I have no interest in looking into menu extras right now, but maybe I'll see how difficult that is when I work on version 3.
Leave it as is. If people want smaller menu bar icons, there are other tools to accomplish that.
I would love to have it as a menu item for greater flexibility... iStat Menu has accomplished that as a 3rd party developer!
Also I would love an option to disable ratings for podcasts (so that it doesn't show when iTunes is playing podcasts). But I guess I'm in a minority with that request :-/
Thanks for the great app!!
Version 2.1 hides when a podcast is playing. This was annoying me too :)
Wonderful little app! I love it!
One thing I that you hopefully could fix is that stars for albums are displayed when the current playing song doesn't have any stars of its own. That way it looks like I've rated the song already. My suggestion would be for you to either could supress stars for albums completely or include the outline stars seen in iTunes.
Thanks for the great work and for keeping this app a freebie!
Just noticed the same thing that Anders mentioned. I second his opinion in its entirety! :)
Love the app.
@Anders Dahlgren and Jonathan Lang
Thank you for letting me know. Version 2.1 now correctly shows the album rating.
Wow. This app is definitely worthy of five stars. I've gone through two other similar apps: menuBarRating [broken in Leopard] and Stars [slightly obnoxious interface], and this totally blows them out of the water. Thank you!
An unusual, but maybe appealing, feature request:
If the tune I'm listening to is not rated pulse the stars red when it has a minute left to play. This would be a handy reminder that I should rate the tune, and happens when I've had some time to decide what I think of the song.
Even if you don't change another thing, I love your app!
Cheers, Paul
Thanks for the suggestion but I'm hesitant to put in a feature that could be annoying/distracting for a lot of people.
I like the idea. Seems a good way to "force" someone like myself to rate songs. I think there could be various ways as to how to tackle something like this. A gently pulsating glow shouldn't hurt, and I'm sure it could be implemented so you can have the option to not have it glow?
Great app! Loving it at the moment, and am starting to love stars! =P
Love the app. It is spreading virally amongst my friends. However, most of us rate our podcast episodes. I would like to have the stars still appear on podcasts. Why the 2.1 update to take them away?
Most of my smartplaylists are often built on the stars I've rated my podcasts, thus why having the podcasts rated is important to me.
Thanks,
Matthew J McCullough
To disable hiding on podcasts, you can paste the following into Terminal.app:
defaults write com.potionfactory.ILoveStars hideOnPodcasts -bool NO
You rock Andy. That worked superbly. Now the app truly is perfect (for me)!
Fantastic! Thanks for this app.
I was using the first version and occasionally it stopped responding to left clicks and I'm not sure why, either:
1. conflict with Spaces?
2. conflict with MaxMenus, which pops up a list of open applications when I click on an empty part of the menu bar. I disabled that feature in MaxMenus, and download version 2 of I Love Stars - hopefully there's no more conflicts!
Andy, thanks for your app, it is a great piece of software.
I often listen to radio streams. Would it be possible for I Love Stars to hide when playing those like it does when playing podcasts? Rating streams does not make a lot of sense either.
Best regards from Germany,
chris
This is just was I was looking for. Thank you very much :)
Now, is there a way to make this open and close with iTunes automatically? I have two other applications that makes extra features for iTunes that I would like to do the same, is there a stand-alone app that does this?
What I do is just add it to the Login Items in System Preferences and have it running all the time. The app is very lightweight and it hides itself when iTunes is not running only to spring back into action when iTunes is playing a song.
This is an awesome app. I love how subtle and easy to use it is. Good work :)
I came here after the 2.1 release and it has all the great features I want.
May I make the following recommendations regarding half star selections:
* Have a brief delay between the star selection in the menu bar and syncing with the current song (perhaps the same system duration that distinguishes between a double-click and two single clicks). I do a lot of half stars and whenever I double-click to get a half star I get a pause as the iTunes database gets one update and then another.
* If there are no ratings, the click gives the full star rating for the first click. After that have clicks that are within a star rating of the current rating adjust by a half rating. The current behavior only allows for half star ratings that are a half star less than the current rating. So, if you have rated a song 3 stars, if you click on the fourth star the rating goes up half a star. But if you have a song with 3 stars and you click on the fifth star the new rating is 5 stars because you are obviously correcting a star rating as opposed to advancing. Interestingly, this is the behavior when adjusting ratings downward. Now you just have to adjust it so when you click an empty star slot next to a full star it goes up a half star rather than a full star.
Great, minimalist app.
i love this. thanks :)
I love it! Thank you thank you!
export stars with the song file
Nice app. But is it possible to export the stars with the songfile? After reimporting the songs to itunes all the stars have gone. Many Tags are exported and saved with the file, but nostar-rating. Do you know an solution?
I recommend that you look around Apple's iTunes discussion group: http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=149
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