10.4: Fix iChat's iTunes status message format

Jun 27, '05 08:58:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Tiger only hintiChat 3.0 comes with a "Current iTunes Track" option in the status message list. However, for most Internet-savvy audiophiles, this format is backwards. The standard format is Artist - Track but iChat gives it as Track - Artist!

However, this is fixable. Here's how:

  1. Quit iChat.
  2. In Terminal, enter this command: defaults write com.apple.iChatAgent iTunesMessageFormat -string '%Artist - %Track'.
  3. Enter the command killall iChatAgent -- this kills iChat's background daemon.
  4. Restart iChat, and choose the Current Track message option.
This formats the current tune as Artist - Track, the correct format. If you want to be unique, you can add any of the following tags in the command string:
%Artist
%Track
%Album
%Genre
%Year
%URL
Or, you can add a music note by putting
\342\231\253
in the string.

[robg adds: I tested this, and it works -- other than I can't figure out how to enter the string shown in the "musical note" option at the end. I've asked several well-versed Unix and Terminal users, and none of them knew the answer, either. So now I'll ask the real experts -- how about it, readers, how should that string be entered? If you're going to paste examples with code formatting in HTML mode, please use the [ code ] [ /code ] (without the spaces around the words!) tag pair to protect your backslashes!]

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