Tinymp3

Coming home from a long day’s work might have you turn on those speakers and pumping some good songs on to calm you down. If you’re not using any web service and relying on your local music collection, you’re surely using an audio player. In case you need a new one, Tinymp3 can be a suitable candidate.

You can even carry Tinymp3 on a USB flash drive to use it on other computers as well, because the package it comes in does not require an installation. This also means that registries don’t need to be modified for things to work out, thus not having to worry about the health status of the PC you use it on.

The name and distribution package aren’t the only tiny aspects, with the main window taking little space on your desktop as well. A display area shows you the currently playing track, with time values for progress and end, as well as the possibility to skip through content using a slider. Playback and navigation are initiated either through hotkeys or corresponding buttons.

The application doesn’t allow you to add files by simply dragging them over the main window, so you need to use the browse dialog to load an entire folder containing MP3, WAV, WMA and MID files. Sadly, there’s no list to view songs for easy selection, and your only choice is to skip until you find the one of interest.

What’s more, you need to load the target folder each time, because there’s no built-in playlist editor, and playlist files are not supported. You can have the application shuffle songs, but no other options are there to contribute to overall practicality. To make matters worse, it stubbornly stays in the center of the screen, and minimizing is only done to taskbar.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that Tinymp3 is a straightforward solution to listen to a selection of songs. However, it’s simplicity may let you quickly accommodate, but it also means it lacks even some basic options, like the possibility to create, or at least view the playlist, no volume slider, and other inconveniences that affect practicality.