iPod and iTunes Hacks

Send Current Track Info to iChat

Set your iChat status message to the name and artist of the currently playing track.

Want to let your iChat Buddies know what you’re listening to? This simple hack updates your iChat status message with the Song Name and Artist of the currently playing iTunes track. The information will be visible beneath your name in your iChat correspondents’ Buddy Lists.

This script is saved as a stay-open applicationwhich, as you might imagine, stays open and running until you tell it to quit, or until some routine in its code executes a quit command.

The Code

This stay-open applet detects when the current track changes. When it does, it gets the name and artist of the current track and then sets the status message in iChat, replacing Available, Away, or Idle. Additionally, when the script is reactivated by clicking it in the Dock, it is reinitialized as if it had been restarted.

global curDBID, myIdleTime -- initialize some variables on run set curDBID to missing value set myIdleTime to 10 if both_apps_are_running() then show(current_track_info()) end if return myIdleTime end run -- check every 10 seconds on idle if both_apps_are_running() then show(current_track_info()) end if return myIdleTime end idle -- are iChat and iTunes active? on both_apps_are_running() tell application "System Events" set allProcesses to name of every process if allProcesses contains "iTunes" ...