RSS Feeds
The 23 Best iTunes Add-ons
Posted by Adam Pash at 4:00 AM on December 21, 2007
iTunes may not be the best media player on the market, but let's face facts: with its tight integration with our iPods and its excellent playlisting tools, it's very likely the digital jukebox you're using every day to manage your music. With that in mind, it's time you take iTunes to the next level. We've already tackled the 20 Best iPod Utilities, so today we're taking a look at the 25 iTunes add-ons that can take your iTunes experience from good to great.
Notifiers and Universal Shortcuts
CD Art Display (Windows): Display currently playing track, album art, rating, and tonnes of other wildly customisable features. In addition, CD Art Display can download missing album art and create universal hotkeys for controlling iTunes. (Download) (Read more)
moreTunes (Windows): Similar to CD Art Display, moreTunes displays a floating album art notification but instead has an emphasis on completing or repairing your metadata. moreTunes also has a recommendation feature and works with several other non-iTunes media players. (Download) (Read more)
Quicksilver (Mac): Control iTunes playback, browse your iTunes library, and more from the comfort of your favorite application launcher and beyond Quicksilver. (Download) (Read more)
DeskTunes (Mac): Another iTunes notifier, DeskTunes floats the current album art, track name, and rating on your Mac desktop. (Download) (Read more)
You Control: Tunes (Mac): Control iTunes from the menu bar, define universal hotkeys for changing tracks, view current song info or navigate and play any song in your entire iTunes library all from the You Control: Tunes menu bar drop down. (Download) (Read more)
DockArt (Mac): This plug-in performs one very simple tweak, replacing your iTunes icon in the Dock with the album artwork of the currently playing song. It's not a huge tweak, but it's certainly lovable. (Download) (Read more)
iConcertCal (Windows/Mac): Installs a new "visualisation" to iTunes that scans your music library and then displays upcoming concerts in your area for artists in your iTunes library on a calendar. (Download) (Read more)
Utilities
iTunes Folder Watch (Windows): Monitor folders for new music and automatically add the songs to your iTunes library if they haven't already been imported to iTunes. It's a feature everyone wants and tons of other players have, so this one's a must-have for a lot of iTunes users—especially if you download from sources other than iTunes (*wink*) (Download) (Read more)
Senuti (Mac): Copy songs from any iPod to your iTunes library. There are other iPod-to-computer tools available for Mac and Windows, like iPod -> Folder, but Senuti stands out for this list for its ability to tell you want music on an iPod is already in your library and which songs are not, making it easy to slurp new songs from a friend's iPod without introducing duplicates into your library. (Download) (Read more)
iTunes Export (Windows): Okay, so let's say you decide that you really do want to move your iTunes library to another computer, or maybe you just want to export the perfect playlist to a thumb drive to give to that special someone. Either way, iTunes export gets your music out of iTunes for moving to another computer or device. (Download) (Read more)
MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter (Windows): Turn your MP3 audiobooks into the iTunes standard M4B audiobook format easily with MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter. (Download) (Read more)
iTunes Sync (Windows): Love iTunes but haven't shelled out for an iPod? iTunes Sync syncs your iTunes library to your non-iPod MP3 players—like one from this verified working list. (Download) (Read more)
XiphQT (Windows/Mac): Play back audio files encoded in the popular open source Ogg codec with the XiphQT plugin. (Download) (Read more)
DRM Dumpster (Mac): Automates the tedious but generally simplest and most effective method for stripping DRM from iTunes music—by burning it to a CD and ripping it back to your library. (Download) (Read more)
iTunes Remote Control (Mac): Remotely control playback of another iTunes library on your network by playing and skipping tracks, browsing playlists, searching songs, and more. (Download) (Read more)- iSproggler (Windows) and iScrobbler (Mac): Automatically upload your iTunes listening habits to the popular social music recommendation site Last.fm. (Download iSproggler [Windows], iScrobbler [Mac]) (Read more)
Tagging Tools
Moody (Mac): Tag your tunes by color-based moods with this simple tagging tool. Not only does Moody take the work out of tagging, but it also automatically creates playlists for you to listen to your mood music. (Download) (Read more) 
Quick Tag (Mac): Quickly add tags to the current song playing in iTunes with a simple, universal keyboard shortcut and autocompletion for quick tagging. Metadata goes into the Grouping field for easy playlist creation later. (Download) (Read more)
Qloud (Windows/Mac): Cloud adds a button to iTunes for in-program tagging of your music, which—for better or worse—integrates with Qloud's social networking and recommendation feature. (Download) (Read more)
Playlist Generators
AutoRate (Mac): Some people love rating songs in iTunes, others don't. But the great part about ratings is that they're really handy when you're creating smart playlists, which is why AutoRate—an app that analyzes play frequency and skip count to automatically assign ratings to your music—is a handy download to have in your pocket. (Download) (Read more)
Soundflavor DJ (Windows): Soundflavor makes audio fingerprints of your music and builds playlists based on similarity of those fingerprints. (Download) (Read more)
The Filter (Windows/Mac): Another playlist creation and recommendation tool, give The Filter three songs so it knows the feel you're looking for and it will build you a playlist based on that mood. (Download) (Read more)
Top 13 iTunes AppleScripts (Mac): Whether you're looking to create playlists like a list of all your one-hit wonders or three-for-all blocks of your favorite artists, I highlighted the 13 best iTunes AppleScripts for bolstering iTunes on the Mac. (Read more) To weed through the entirety of excellent iTunes AppleScripts, check out Doug's AppleScripts.
If you've already read our list of the 20 Best iPod Utilities you may notice one or two repeats where the utility still applies to iTunes, but overall the list features a completely different set of software. And while you're supercharging iTunes with new functionality, be sure to check out a few iTunes power tips for taking advantage of killer iTunes features included by default that you may not know about.
Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who can't stop fiddling with iTunes. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker AU.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
Thomas A. Markel
Posted October 9, 2008 3:52 AM
A very useful iTunes tool is Dupe Eliminator for iTunes. This and other very useful tools can be found at http://www.markelsoft.com
xnendron
Posted 9:34 AM 20/12/07
I'm a big fan of iTunesKeys. It allows you to set global hotkeys to control iTunes. Pretty basic, but it does the job.
xnendron
conigs
Posted 9:30 AM 20/12/07
@vishaaall:
I'd even go so far as to say 23 is the new 25!
conigs
truggl
Posted 9:23 AM 20/12/07
Your article on "The Filter" claims that it's Windows only, not Win/Mac as is the case. And the linked site ([www.thefilter.com]) is down--try using just thefilter.com instead. Just a heads up... :-)
truggl
vishaaall
Posted 9:13 AM 20/12/07
23 is it the new 20?
vishaaall
onejasonforsale
Posted 10:35 AM 20/12/07
Mac users looking for something like Itunes Export for OS X can use my iPlaylist Copier utility. It's cross-platform (OS X or Windows), open source, and written in java.
Info & download links to OSX & Windows versions, and source code are here:
[www.worldsworstsoftware.com]
onejasonforsale
2-7offsuit
Posted 10:18 AM 20/12/07
Does anyone know of a plugin or program that can determine if an album is incomplete? Kind of like the itunes store "Complete My Album" feature, but for music from other sources. My hard drive failed and I was able to salvage most of my music, but there are just a bunch of random missing tracks. I'd really appreciate any tips before I give up and re-import everything.
2-7offsuit
Andrew
Posted 10:14 AM 20/12/07
I may have asked this when LH originally featured it, but is there a way to have moreTunes show artist/track name/album information in addition to the artwork? That'd make it a must-have for me. I didn't care for CD Art Display.
Andrew
mirolator
Posted 10:10 AM 20/12/07
There are 3 kinds of people in this world. Those who can count, and those who can't.
mirolator
aeronaut
Posted 10:08 AM 20/12/07
Which win program would help me merge music on four different disks into one new disk without creating duplicates? Along with the 160gig IPOD I just bought I got a new, big, hard drive.
Over the years I've been ripping and moving mp3s into different drives and directories as they fill up. On the last move I had to re-create all of the playlists and I would like to avoid that. Any ideas?
aeronaut
internomics
Posted 10:04 AM 20/12/07
[itunescontrol.com] is great for those of us with dell media buttons. It adds a small fully-customizable display of the song/artists/artwork you're playing when it changes or you press a button.
I've been using it for awhile and love it.
internomics
jmccamb
Posted 9:45 AM 20/12/07
volume logic (which now work for leopard) is an amazing audio enhancement plugin for both mac and windows itunes.
jmccamb
TheMelange
Posted 9:45 AM 20/12/07
If you care about the quality of your audio files at all, don't use DRM Dumpster. The "method" it uses for "stripping DRM from iTunes music" creates transcoded versions of your files. And if you've got an AAC files with DRM on it, it's almost definitely 128kbps in the first place, so transcoding it will result in a very low quality audio file.
TheMelange
vishaaall
Posted 9:41 AM 20/12/07
The most impressive part, was the first line "iTunes may not be the best media player on the market". :)
vishaaall
edpw
Posted 9:35 AM 20/12/07
SRS iWow is a great plugin I use on my mac. Makes a very noticeable difference to the sound quality even on my not great speakers and is very customisable to your speaker size or the type of music you want to play. Not free however.
edpw
Craig
Posted 11:47 AM 20/12/07
I love Foxy Tunes for FireFox, it adds iTune controls to every web browser opened, very nice plugin.
Craig
acurrie
Posted 11:10 AM 20/12/07
Um, where is Salling Clicker?
acurrie
saysme
Posted 11:04 AM 20/12/07
You missed one. Extray is the best track notifier and has some unique features like exporting track data to move to multiple machines, windows: [www.extendedtools.com]
saysme
CWW
Posted 11:00 AM 20/12/07
I think Adam is just counting base-9.
CWW
vishaaall
Posted 10:48 AM 20/12/07
@mirolator: there are rather 10 kind of people those who understand binary and those who can't. :)
vishaaall
inbetweener
Posted 1:01 PM 20/12/07
Not sure why you've got iSproggler on there - the current version of Last.FM's software scrobbles music off iTunes and your iPod when it syncs to iTunes, which as far as I can tell makes iSproggler unnecessary (but I may be missing something here).
inbetweener
Mystery-Man
Posted 12:48 PM 20/12/07
WHAT ?! NO COVERSUTRA?! the best albumart-display/controller for mac. [coversutra.com]
Mystery-Man
jayhilwig
Posted 12:23 PM 20/12/07
WHAT? No Magnetosphere? Without a doubt, the greatest visualizer for iTunes!
[software.barbariangroup.com]
jayhilwig
Pete
Posted 12:22 PM 20/12/07
Senuti has the ability to detect duplicate songs? Interesting.... I wonder how it works...
Pete
angrykeyboarder
Posted 2:25 PM 20/12/07
Now if I could just get iTunes to work with FLAC files.....
angrykeyboarder
ColinC
Posted 2:20 PM 20/12/07
Under Senuti:
...to tell you want music on an iPod...
Want should be what.
ColinC
Zipway
Posted 2:10 PM 20/12/07
So basically what this has tought me is: if we don't have a Mac, we're screwed and shouldn't be using iTunes...
Zipway
The Zach
Posted 2:09 PM 20/12/07
Daniel Johnston is great--props to whoever has that icon on his or her dock!
The Zach
IzelT
Posted 1:30 PM 20/12/07
I'd have to definitely agree on the SRS iWow, my cheapo speakers with that app sound way better. So I can definitely crank it up and now blow my wofferless babies and still sounds pretty darn good. I'll be getting some nicer once come Christmas though!
IzelT
chrs7637
Posted 3:22 PM 20/12/07
You miss SRS iwow
chrs7637
Andrew Heiss
Posted 2:57 PM 20/12/07
@Andrew: iTunesKeys will do that and more
Andrew Heiss
libelle
Posted 4:14 PM 20/12/07
durnit. Left off the link: [www.eternalstorms.at]
libelle
libelle
Posted 4:13 PM 20/12/07
@tankboy: I find GimmeSomeTune (mac) to be excellent for that -- and it scrobbles to last.fm, tries to find lyrics, and offers a menu-bar iTunes controller, if you let it.
The image fetching's not perfect, especially for those of us with seriously obscure musical interests, but all of my mainstream stuff gets found immediately.
libelle
libelle
Posted 4:11 PM 20/12/07
@2-7offsuit: I've been looking for the same thing, but have yet to find anything like it.
libelle
tankboy
Posted 4:02 PM 20/12/07
Yeah, but what's a good 3rd party app for downloading missing album art? I never worried about that with my older iPods, but now that I have a touch I find it really annoying ... and the built in iTunes feature works like crap.
tankboy
ruben
Posted 5:58 PM 20/12/07
GrowlTunes...the first thing I'll ever install.
ruben
Cyco
Posted 5:53 PM 20/12/07
@libelle: Is there anything like that available for the PC? No Mac here, but I would like to have a program that does what GST does.
Cyco
bdude
Posted 5:47 PM 20/12/07
edpw: Second that, SRS iWow is the best plugin ever.
bdude
greygoo
Posted 5:39 PM 20/12/07
SizzlingKeys [www.yellowmug.com] has been my favorite for a while. Global hotkeys for mac. Simple, customizable, great.
greygoo
/dev/nall
Posted 7:00 PM 20/12/07
GrowlTunes (+ QuickSilver) is definitely a must-have for Mac users.
Also, no one has mentioned Simplify Media ([www.simplifymedia.com]). It's a great add-on that allows you to create a friend list, then stream music from any of your friend's iTunes libraries. Basically, it restores the sharing functionality that Apple removed in iTunes 4.0.1. I mostly use it to stream my big music collection at home to my laptop. It is cross platform and works quite well.
/dev/nall
dekay46
Posted 7:56 PM 20/12/07
You forgot the best one: the uninstaller.
dekay46
gyffes
Posted 7:49 PM 20/12/07
I wish there was a nice easy way to have iTunes delete duplicate files.. and then notice when I'm trying to import an already-existant file to keep dupes from recurring. MAN is that annoying.
gyffes
xxdesmus
Posted 7:32 PM 20/12/07
I am still waiting for my advanced search capabilities in iTunes. WMP11 can handle a search like this:
(Artist_X NOT Artist_Y)AND Artist_Z ...it's incredibly useful, and yet iTunes fails at life.
iTunes sucks, and WMP11 sucks. It's only a matter of living with which sucks slightly less.
xxdesmus
dako
Posted 7:15 PM 20/12/07
Any suggestions on an Artwork grabber for my non-iTunes music? I just bought an iPhone, and with CoverFlow, missing artwork on mp3s is not cool, hehehe. I'm on Windows
dako
Tommasta
Posted 9:01 PM 20/12/07
Something should have been added. Duplicate Finder. iTunes CONSTANTLY duplicates files - sometimes even triplicates them. And the built-in iTunes duplicate finder only uses band name and song name in determining duplicates, so live versions and other versions on different albums are included in the so-called "duplicate search". Horrible. Every time I add music to iTunes I must search that drive with Duplicate Finder, then use iTunes Library Updater to remove duplicate entries in the iTunes library. I like iTunes a fair bit, but these two utilities are necessary in cases like mine - which aren't that uncommon.
Tommasta
skilled1
Posted 10:18 PM 20/12/07
and the best addon for iTunes, is the Uninstall that comes with it. What a bloat-ware POS iTunes is.
skilled1
Dane
Posted 9:50 PM 20/12/07
@angrykeyboarder: There's this great add-on called WinAmp, and it plays FLAC perfectly!
Dane
nidolke
Posted 7:33 AM 21/12/07
Is there a non-iTunes player that has Smart Playlists & Play Count? I'd be on that in a second.
nidolke
DougAdams
Posted 7:28 AM 21/12/07
"Something should have been added. Duplicate Finder. iTunes CONSTANTLY duplicates files - sometimes even triplicates them...."
Mac users can try Dupin (dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php)
DougAdams
GraniteInMyVeins
Posted 7:52 AM 21/12/07
OMG - I read this post yesterday, got a few of the plug-ins and now my iTunes is pimped out. Thanks!
GraniteInMyVeins
organman
Posted 6:45 AM 21/12/07
You say "iTunes may not be the best media player on the market." Then what is? I'd love to know.
organman
brezelbob
Posted 5:51 AM 21/12/07
iVolume is definitively missing here. It's a must have for all iTunes and/or iPod users. Never having to touch the volume control again while listening through your music!
brezelbob
Cloudbrain
Posted 3:50 AM 21/12/07
We just released a Mac version of FixTunes ([www.fixtunes.com]), in addition to the PC version. Its a pretty powerful program for correcting missing and misspelled song tags and album artwork (its uses its own database). It will also find and remove duplicate songs.
Cloudbrain
morouxshi
Posted 12:50 AM 21/12/07
I'm seriously surprised the list doesnt include Synergy. It has been around forever and it does what both mac software tools do, combined.
It floats the current track, It enables Growl AND it does the menu bar control. You can switch what it displays and how the keys look.
[wincent.com]
Totally worth it, i've been using it since Panther. Mac Only
morouxshi
gonx
Posted 10:07 PM 20/12/07
How is it that www.soundcrank.com didn't make the cut. It adds lyrics to your files which when updated on your iPod allows you to view the lyrics on your iPod while listening to the song. It updates your artwork and lyrics if you don't have them and if they do. Granted their database is not complete but it is always getting better. Anyway I'm surprised that it isn't on this list.
gonx
mikeisflash
Posted 6:22 PM 20/12/07
I'm fairly certain Qloud has abandoned their tagging functionality in favor becoming an embedded library app on social networks via their "My Music" app.
If you search hard enough, you can still find the original Qloud plugin. But there are no direct links to it anywhere on their website.
It s a shame though because the software didn't work well for me, but it is exactly what I need to organize my 150 GB library.
mikeisflash
gerchi
Posted 6:10 PM 20/12/07
@angrykeyboarder: You're so right!!! iTunes should be more open to other formats! I really liked the app but these lacks put me off!
gerchi
Kansasdude57
Posted 2:45 PM 20/12/07
Not an addon, but pretty cool anyway...
check out www.launchosiris.com
Pretty sweet visualizer.
Kansasdude57
SouthernerCalifornian
Posted 8:45 AM 21/12/07
Odd the people that say iTunes is bloated. It plays music and displays cover art. What about that makes it "bloated"?
SouthernerCalifornian
2-7offsuit
Posted 11:43 AM 21/12/07
@Cloudbrain:
It's a little misleading to say free download on your site when there's a charge to use the program. In the 50 song demo it screwed up about half of the tags on songs that were previously correct. It created spelling errors in the track names and it assumed the albums were the singles. It also couldn't find any of the info for the songs I actually needed it to.
2-7offsuit
mander8202
Posted 11:19 AM 21/12/07
Just wanted to add another iTunes utility for Windows to the list - BlueTunes. It will allow you to use the Wiimote as a remote control for iTunes. [home.comcast.net]
mander8202
Cyco
Posted 8:15 PM 21/12/07
@Cloudbrain: It's a cool program. It worked pretty well when I tried it out. My only complaint is that no where on your site do you say that it is shareware. All labeling for downloading just says free. No free trial or limited use. Just my two cents.
Cyco
Call me Kenneth
Posted 1:50 AM 22/12/07
@Cloudbrain: Hm, reminds me of MusicBrainz. Nice app, but needs to be a bit more stable - it repeatedly crashed on my PC and lost any track that it tried to fix...
Call me Kenneth
soapynebula
Posted 9:26 AM 23/12/07
This is a shameless plug for my own (no-ads) site...
[www.everythingitunes.com]
There's loads of content like this - you choose you Operating System [Mac or PC] on the homepage, and there's a huge collection of scripts for windows, as well as plugins and tips for all iTunes users.
Also, Mac users should check out [dougscripts.com] if they haven't already!
soapynebula
f0nd004u
Posted 10:50 PM 24/12/07
I suppose it's not an "add-on" per-se, but come on, lifehacker. Recommending that people use DRM Dumpster and burn/re-rip their purchased iTunes music?
For windows users, download QTFairPlay. . It's a tool that re-encodes your protected AAC files into DRM-free ones, without any loss. It basically plays them back at super-speed to a software AAC encoder, and then automatically replaces the DRM'd files in your iTunes library. It'll also re-encode to MP3's, I believe.
I use an Archos 605 Wifi, and this worked like a charm to un-DRM all of the music I had purchased from apple. I'm telling you, I'm never going back to iPods.
Please please please don't burn and re-rip your music. It hurts my psuedoaudiophilic soul.
f0nd004u
ekfritz
Posted 6:18 PM 22/12/07
I've started using Cover Stream . It puts iTunes Cover Flow view on the desktop with search, hotkeys and playlist access. It's Mac Leopard only though. Discovered it through this album art blog. Not sure is was worth $15 but it's pretty slick.
ekfritz
stevesky
Posted 12:57 AM 22/12/07
Great piece, and thanks for the mention of Soundflavor DJ! Just wanted to point out that the correct link to download Soundflavor DJ is: [www.soundflavor.com]
stevesky
knathanp
Posted 5:49 PM 21/12/07
What about idleTunes? This is an opensource Windows utility. It's my favorite iTunes add on because it can automatically get rid of dead tracks. It can also remove all playlists, export a playlist to a device, shuffle a playlist, and export a playlist to m3u, pls, or b4s. ([sourceforge.net])
knathanp