14 DAY TRIAL // Every once in a while I start getting annoyed by iTunes' mini player window and start looking around for something else that could do the job instead of it. It simply takes too much screen space to keep around all the time on top of other windows, and even then it uses that space badly. Fortunately, there are a lot of little apps that improve iTunes in areas that Apple seems reluctant to go into. From floaters to universal keyboard shortcuts to control iTunes, you can pick and choose, unfortunately, few of these applications provide anything that can actually replace the mini player. One possible replacement, CoverSutra, did catch my eye though.
What it does CoverSutra is an iTunes enhancement application that comes to improve Apple's default offerings. In this particular case, you get an information floater, keyboard shortcuts, a control floater, as well as Last.fm integration and Apple Remote support.
Floater versus Control window Most of these applications have a small floating window that pops up whenever you change songs, showing you information on what is currently playing, and CoverSutra is no different. However, CoverSutra's floater is in a class of its own. Not only is it incredibly limited in usefulness, it is also quite ungainly to the point of being absurd.
More of a feed-back bezel, the kind you get when you change the system volume or the brightness than anything else, the first thing that strikes you about it is how little the tray on the screen is. It must have a lifetime of about 2 seconds, but it is hard to tell since it isn't mentioned anywhere, and there is no way to change it. Also, it is rooted on the spot, and not opaque enough to give a good contrast for the scant text it has. Unlike every other floater I've seen, it only shows you two things, the cover of the album that is currently playing and the name of the song, written underneath. It does not even resize or scroll the text of the song in case it is too long to fit. It works fine to provide feedback when changing the volume or changing the way tracks play, but for actual information on what is playing it is simply unusable.
The control window on the other hand is quite nice, displaying everything you could possibly want and being easily available through a keyboard shortcut. It is the equivalent of the default mini player, with the one difference that it also shows album art and has options for toggling Repeat and Shuffle modes. Although much bigger than the mini player window, this isn't really a problem since you can show and hide it easily, from any application and it does display a lot more.
Keyboard shortcuts and the Apple Remote CoverSutra lets you define universal keyboard shortcuts for all the common iTunes actions. This includes not only playing and changing tracks, but also ratings, repeat and shuffle and volume. In fact, it even lets you scrub through tracks by holding down the forward or backward shortcut, the way the buttons in iTunes work. Not only are the shortcuts universal, so you can use them regardless of what application is in focus, but they also provide feedback through a little floater.
As for the Apple Remote, it lets you sync it to CoverSutra so that you can easily control it from wherever you might be. The nice thing is that if you ever decide to break this sync, you can just keep Play pressed and everything will revert to normal until you enable it again.
Last.fm integration and Icons A lot of internet based music services and communities are catching on to iTunes and how popular it is, and a lot of them are tapping straight into it with various plug-ins. CoverSutra lets you interact with your Last.fm account without having to actually make any modifications to iTunes. Just type in your username and password and any siing you listen to will be automatically 'scrobbled' and sent to your Last.fm music profile. Neat, simple and clean.
Unfortunately, while most of what this application does is in the background, it does saddle you with a pretty useless dock icon and menu bar extra. Now, the developer was kind enough to give the option to disable one of them, but not both. Looking at the menus that these icons give you, there is only one real option that you need there, the preferences. Why you can't disable both of these icons and have a totally transparent application whose preferences can't be accessed from the floater is beyond me. In fact, when it comes to customization, the entire application is pretty much in shambles, offering next to nothing beyond the keyboard shortcuts.
The Good
A viable replacement for the miniplayer, with a few nice extra features.
The Bad
So many things that simply do not make sense, and a total lack of customization options.
The Truth
As a mini player replacement, CoverSutra is pretty good, however, the application could be a lot better if the developer let you change some of those settings. From the color of the controller and floaters, to the lack of icon and menubar item, all of these would be simple improvements, which would make a big difference.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
