Tell me the truth. You love a little eye candy on your Mac, right? Like simple but slick and sassy apps that display iTunes track information and cover art right on your Mac’s Desktop.
Admittedly, I like such visual sugar. I’m collecting music and album art for a reason, so it’s great to have an app that shows it off. And, even better if the same app edits tags, displays lyrics, supports Growl notifications, fetches art from Amazon, posts to Twitter, and scrobble to Last.fm.
What? There’s an app for that? How much is it? Free, you say? Nah, just kidding.
Hidden On The Desktop, Behind Windows
First, the good news. TunesArt is the little Mac app that brings sweet goodness to your Mac’s Desktop, and brings a bunch of utilities, too. It’s not just album cover art, either.
TunesArt can grab album art from Amazon, display song lyrics, lets you edit lyrics, displays song title and information on the Desktop, and all the above. What’s not to like? It’s beautiful.
Just look at it.
Album art with the quaint vinyl record sticking out. Artist name, song name, album name, iTunes star rating, and time. The little search field makes it easy to dig into iTunes without even using iTunes.
Got lyrics?
What’s the problem?
Other than TunesArt used to be free and now, thanks to the Mac App Store, it comes with a price tag (albeit nominal), most of what TunesArt does is behind one of the dozen or so open windows on my Mac.
Seriously? When does a Mac user ever have a clean and clear Desktop. Is that a deal breaker? No, but it would be nice to have a hot corner option to bring everything to the front of all the windows so I could admire the art, check the lyrics (to find out what I’m singing is wrong), and search for something else.
Even with all that, TunesArt is still worth a few bucks.