Use LaunchBar to Launch AppleScripts for iTunes

One of the best ways to extend functionality of iTunes is through AppleScripts. These routines allow you to manipulate tags and files, and save me a huge amount of time when I’m ripping CDs and need to tag items, and when I’m working with my iTunes library. Doug Adams’ website Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes is the place to go to find great scripts that can save you a lot of time, and do things you simply cannot do from iTunes.

Launching AppleScripts from iTunes involves putting the scripts in a special folder (located at ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts), and choosing them from a script menu that displays in the iTunes menu bar:





The AppleScript menu is that little squiggly thing (a scroll) in the menu bar.

But there’s another way to launch AppleScripts in iTunes, using Objective Development’s LaunchBar, a powerful launcher that you control from the keyboard. Here’s how.

First, you need to add the Scripts folder to LaunchBar. Press your LaunchBar keyboard shortcut, then click on the gear icon and choose Index > Show Index, or press Command-Option-I. You’ll see something like this:





Click on the + icon at the bottom of the window, choose Add Folder, then navigate to ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts; ~ is a shortcut for your home folder, the folder that has your user name. The LaunchBar index window will show all the scripts in that folder. (You’ll note that there is already a Scripts folder in LaunchBar’s index; this is a different folder, located at ~/Library/Scripts.)

Press Command-0 to update the LaunchBar index, then close the window and save your changes.

Now, in iTunes, when you want to launch a script, do the following:

1. Press your LaunchBar keyboard shortcut.

2. Type “scr” and use the arrow keys to navigate to the correct folder. If the other Scripts folder is in the menu, make sure not to select that one.

3. Once you’ve selected the correct Scripts folder in the LaunchBar menu, press the space bar. This will display a menu with all your scripts.



4. Now, you can either use the arrow keys to choose the script you want to run (press Return when you’ve selected it), or type an abbreviation to get to it. LaunchBar will find the script if you type a few letters of its name.

Launching scripts in this manner merely saves you from accessing the scripts menu in iTunes, but if you like to keep your hands on the keyboard, it will save you a few clicks. If you run certain scripts often, it is a good way to get to them quickly.

(By the way, I was prompted to write this after reading Doug Adams’ post about using TextExpander to launch AppleScripts for iTunes.)

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Posted: 8/22/2012 by | Filed under: iPod & iTunes Tags: , | 1 Comment »

iTunes, Full-Screen View and AppleScript Applets

One of the marquee features in OS X Lion is full-screen view. Using this, your menubar withdraws from the screen, and your window takes up a tad more space. I don’t use this much on my 27″ iMac – may main computer – with the exception of for iTunes. Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a big music fan, and have a huge iTunes library. (Currently about 75,000 tracks.) With iTunes in full-screen view, I can eke out a bit more space to view my music.

I’m also an obsessive tagger. Whenever I add music to my iTunes library, either by ripping CDs or by adding downloads, I ensure that the tags fit my personal tagging scheme. To do this, I use a number of AppleScripts from the Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes web site.

Doug Adams recently updated a script I use often, Remove n Characters from Front or Back, turning it into a nifty applet which is far more useful than previous incarnations. Unfortunately, when using iTunes in full-screen mode, applets simply don’t work well. Since they spawn their own windows, they can’t display over the iTunes window, and bounce to another space. This is a shame; when I want to use such applets, I need to take iTunes out of full-screen mode.

This behavior can be confusing. Fortunately, Doug came up with a dialog explaining this to users. His applet detects when iTunes is in full-screen mode, and, if so, shows the following:



This means that users have to either move the applet’s window back to the iTunes space, but it’s actually easier to take iTunes out of full-screen mode. It’s a shame that AppleScript works this way. This will be the case for a number of applets, and is especially unfortunate because AppleScript, in Lion, can access Cocoa frameworks, and create applets that can do much more than previous versions of AppleScript.

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Posted: 9/19/2011 by | Filed under: Apple & Mac OS X, iPod & iTunes Tags: , | No Comments  »

New AppleScript: A Space Between, from Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes

As Doug describes it:

iTunes has had the Crossfade feature for a while, whereby consecutive songs will overlap for a few seconds at end-to-beginning. But what if you want the opposite effect: a set amount of silence between each song? But you can’t set a negative Crossfade. A Space Between is an AppleScript applet that will wait a user-set number of seconds between plays of consecutive tracks in a playlist. Just select a playlist, or a track in a playlist, launch the applet, and enter a number of seconds.

I can see this being very useful. Download A Space Between v1.0

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Posted: 2/25/2011 by | Filed under: iPod & iTunes Tags: , | No Comments  »

Ten Years of Doug’s Scripts for iTunes

Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes has been around for ten years! One of the essential sites for those wishing to take iTunes further (Mac-only, though), Doug Adams’ repository for AppleScripts is unique. I’ve written about Doug’s scripts many times, notably in this recent Macworld article, Ten great AppleScripts for iTunes 10.

Check out Doug’s site for many ways to extend iTunes.

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Posted: 2/17/2011 by | Filed under: iPod & iTunes Tags: , | No Comments  »