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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art Pick of the Week
Clutter iconThe macosxhints Rating:
10 of 10
[Score: 9 Scale: 0 to 10 ten lights with 10=perfect]
I ran across Clutter in one of the comments to the various "adding album art to iTunes" hints that appeared a week or so ago. What does clutter do? Theoretically, it's designed to let you 'clutter' your desktop with a bunch of virtual albums. Once launched, Clutter displays a small window showing the current iTunes track information, some forward/pause/rewind buttons, and the album cover for the current song. But the album art information doesn't come from iTunes, it comes from Amazon, assuming you're connected to the internet. As each album is found, a local copy of the artwork JPEG is stored on your hard drive, so future lookups are local, not internet based.

Once you have a cover, the way you clutter your desktop is pure Macintosh -- just drag the cover artwork out of the Clutter window and drop it where you wish. This creates a virtual album that can be control-clicked on, allowing easy management of songs on albums, as seen at left (larger image). Over time, you begin to accumulate favorite albums scattered across your desktop, hence the name Clutter. But having cluttered your desk, you'll find it really easy to find that favorite song you wanted to hear without having to visit iTunes to do so. When you're tired of an album on your desktop, just click once and hit delete.

Until yesterday, if you wanted the Clutter artwork directly in iTunes, you had to manually go into the Clutter artwork download folder and drag and drop the image into iTunes. But Clutter version 1.0d13 adds a new "Copy Cover to iTunes" menu item to make the process really easy.

After using Clutter for a week or so, though, I've found that I use it in a different manner than the author intended. Although you can clutter your desktop with imagery, and easily copy the artwork to iTunes, I do neither of those things. Instead, Clutter has replaced my iTunes window. I no longer leave even the minimized window open. I simply create a small Clutter window, and I have song, artist, album, play, previous track, next track, and cover artwork available at a glance. The other side benefit is that when I switch to iTunes, I now get the full size window (since it opens a new one when activated), instead of having to manually click the expand button on my minimized window.

The only reason I gave Clutter nine stars instead of ten is that the newest version seems to have a problem with the play control buttons losing their functionality -- the 1.0d12 version didn't have this problem at all, so I hope it's temporary. Basically, sometimes when I try to click any of the buttons, they don't respond. It takes some combination of window resizing and switching apps to restore their functionality. Other than that one glitch, though, I think Clutter is perfect!
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  • Currently 2.11 / 5
  You rated: 4 / 5 (9 votes cast)
 
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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: seven5 on May 19, '03 10:53:14AM

this app is great. The new version has a "copy album cover to iTunes" function in it. Its nice cause it copies it to every song in the album you are listening to. Very handy. BUT, and theres always a BUT, it doesn't have a key command!!!! Why they didn't add one i'll never know. So i just opened it up in interface builder and added one. This makes it much nicer to add album covers to your songs. Just select Clutter and hit command-s (or whatever you chose as a key command) and it copies.

I also got rid of most of the things in the album cover window, as i dont need the controls or the song listings :)



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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: thebimbo on May 19, '03 11:14:28AM

Folks, played with Clutter but suggest all should look at Synergy whose pop-up now also displays covers from all tunes (incl. iTMS). Also has a useful menu bar.

http://synergy.wincent.org/

---
=mak



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Choices...
Authored by: robg on May 19, '03 12:24:03PM

I tried Synergy, but for me it boiled down to (a) window size -- you can make the Clutter window quite small horizontally, which lets me keep it near the right edge of my screen and visible at all times, (b) the ability to drag images to the desktop to make virtual albums is quite cool ;-), and (c) cost -- $5.00 isn't much, but it's infinitely more expensive than free. Given that both of these more or less replace functionality that I can already get with iTunes itself, free seems like the way to go for me.

But that's not to say Synergy is a bad app -- it's quite good on its own merits, and it's "click proof" semi-transparent windows are truly innovative. Obviously, people should try both and pick the one they prefer! These PotW entries are simply the picks that reflect my choices.

-rob.



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Choices...
Authored by: truhe on May 20, '03 05:12:34AM

well, this is not that innovative, since it is what mac os x uses for ejecting cds, manipulating volume and so on. and synergy is shareware. this is not bad, but i prefer the freeware pthitunesnotifier. lets you manage itunes via keystrokes, adds a menu extra to switch songs and can show a transparent window with information of the currently played (or switched to) song. perfectly. clutter i use for frequent access to albums on my desktop.



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Choices...
Authored by: eno on May 21, '03 11:13:34AM

True, $5 isn't much.

But applications take time to develop. Lots of time. Thousands of lines of code etc. There's no reason why they should be free. Developers have a right to ask for compensation for their time, and for the bandwidth they must pay for in distributing the software.

Disclaimer: I submitted one of the button sets for Synergy, so that's why I like it.



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Interface Builder? What? Where?
Authored by: nodmonkey on May 19, '03 06:22:05PM

What's this interface builder thing? I had a goosey for it at VersionTracker.com and came away empty handed. Also did a search on the computer in case it was a built-in mejobbin but no luck there either.

Anybody care to enlighten me?



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Interface Builder? What? Where?
Authored by: mhorn on May 19, '03 07:43:14PM

Interface Builder is Apple's developer tool for creating Cocoa interface files which are used by Cocoa applications. These interface files end with the extension .nib. You can open these nib files and edit certain values for menus, window position, window brushed metal appearance, etc.

Interface Builder is not installed by default on Mac OS X systems. It is part of the developer tools which can be freely downloaded from Apple.

I hope this helps.



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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: swanksalot on May 19, '03 11:28:12AM

Clutter is cool as an iTunes album display tool, but for me at least, does not allow me to either export album covers to iTunes or control song play by control-clicking on albums. Both result in AppleEvent time-out errors. I suspect that my library is too large (18,000 songs or so).

Still works great as Rob describes, I've been using it non-stop for a couple of weeks without other errors.



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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: swanksalot on Dec 11, '03 11:49:41AM

To revise what I wrote earlier: Clutter now works for me to control iTunes. The solution is to upgrade to a G5!! perhaps the combo of my slow machine and my large library precluded timely applescript responses.



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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: ZZamboni on May 19, '03 05:58:25PM

It's great to see Clutter as the pick of the week. I've been using it for a while now, and I think it's the best way to interact with iTunes. I also use it in the way robg describes, as a replacement for the iTunes window.

One thing that is not mentioned in the review is that if the cover is not found (happens sometimes with compilation CDs and other strange beasts) you can specify your own search terms for Amazon (Cmd-F) or to Google (Cmd-G). Once you find the image you want, simply drag it over to the Clutter window and it will be permanently associated with that CD.

One note about d13: the new "Treat playlists as CDs" option is enabled by default, which caused me some confusion because it searches for the playlist name and not for the CD data. Disabling that preference reverted to the old behavior, which I prefer.

Overall, a fantastic application!

--ZZamboni



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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: johnseal on May 20, '03 08:48:56PM

Thanks, ZZamboni! That "Treat playlists as CDs" behavior was causing me quite a bit of confusion.

---
Do quantum pirates make you walk the Planck?



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your bad
Authored by: nodmonkey on May 19, '03 06:05:09PM

"But the album art information doesn't come from iTunes, it comes from Amazon, assuming you're connected to the internet."

I believe that, in fact, the album art information DOES come from iTunes if the information is there. Amazon is consulted if there is no album art information in iTunes for that track (unless artwork has already been assigned by Clutter from Amazon or iTunes for another track on the same album), or if manually searched.

Clutter - what a lovely mess it can make! If only it didn't make copies of album art which are already in the ID3 tags; a small but annoying waste of disc space.



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You are correct!
Authored by: robg on May 19, '03 06:33:33PM

That's what I get for working on the site early in the morning ;-).

-rob.



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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: pairaka on May 19, '03 08:09:11PM

I like this little program, but my choice to "copy cover art to iTunes" on the File menu is greyed out. Any idea why?

-- Pairaka



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mp3's get bigger becoz of album art!
Authored by: panicX on May 20, '03 05:43:43AM

a bit of topic but as Clutter made me realise, I post it here...
I was watchin a playslist in iTunes whiles Clutter was copying
album art and I saw the playlist grow in size! I had wondered
where iTunes stores the album art and know I know.
After adding album art to a Macy Gray mp3 it was 3.7 instead
of 3.6 mb. Imagine if you do it to your whole library of
zillions of songs!
Also my iPod started updating all those songs again, so less
space on my HD and iPod.
Weird isnt it, I didnt know you could copy stuff like album art
into an mp3.

bye the way, LOVE Clutter :)



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mp3's get bigger becoz of album art! - each song?
Authored by: Anonymous on May 27, '03 01:06:10PM

From an earlier post, it looks like the album art os stored in an ID3 tag in the MP3 file directly. But does this mean that a new copy of the album art is stored in EACH MP3 from a single album, or is there just one copy for each album? (That would sure be a redundnet waste of space)

Ideally, I'd either put the album pictures in the album folder in the iTunes Music folder, or put them all in a seperate "Album Covers" folder, and then use an XML file to link everything up. Of course, we know how Apple is of two minds when it comes to thoughly supporting XML-based preferences in the iApps (see recent opinion column in MacWorld about how iTunes is becomeing closed in that respect, and fearing the same for Keynote..)



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Alternate option? Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: egold44 on Jul 31, '03 02:55:44AM

Please clue me in... Is it possible to make the album artwork replace each "Playlist" icon in the "Source" window pane on the left-side of the iTunes interface? ...with or without Clutter?

I use Playlists to store complete albums, and I would love to have the individual album artwork replace each Playlist icon (the icon of the music note on top of a sheet of music), even though the result would be a very small image.

Is this a pipe dream?



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Copy artwork for your entire library using iTunes Catalog
Authored by: andrewz on Nov 03, '03 10:24:48AM
You can use KavaSoft's new iTunes Catalog program to download album artwork for your entire library and copy it all into iTunes with just a few clicks.

Or if you want, you can copy just the artwork for a specified genre, artist, album, or song.

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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: joadan on Dec 13, '03 06:59:05AM

This application does not to work with Panther.

Joakim

---
jocke



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Clutter - Manage iTunes4 music while collecting album art
Authored by: nkuvu on Jun 13, '04 12:50:28AM

That's odd, it's working fine in Panther for me. Panther version 10.3.4, Clutter says version d14.

Of course, this is an old comment, so things may have changed. But I don't believe I've updated Clutter since I first got Panther in October of last year.



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