iPod and iTunes Hacks

Control iTunes from the Finder

With a few extra tools, you can control iTunes from the Finder or any other application.

iTunes gives all of us an incredible amount of control over our digital music. However, most of us make our living doing things outside of iTunes, and often we get interrupted. Phone calls, obtrusive coworkers, and the almighty nature calls might conspire to force us to go back to iTunes and pause what’s playing. Likewise, we might want to (gasp!) skip to the next track or switch to another playlist. Again, we have to stop what we’re doing, switch to iTunes, and hit the fast-forward button or make a new selection.

Luckily, some smart and friendly developers have solved this problem by creating applications that allow you to control iTunes from the Macintosh Finder. For this hack, we are going to take a look at two of the available options: ByteController (http://brainbyte.digitalhybrid.net; donationware) and the aptly named SizzlingKeys4iTunes (http://www.yellowmug.com; free).

ByteController appears as a small menu item in the Finder menu bar, as shown on the left in Figure 4-1.

Figure 4-1. Play/Pause and more from the menu bar, using ByteController

To run ByteController, download the application and install in it your Applications folder. If you want, you can have ...