50 Mac Essentials #1: I Love Stars

Giles Turnbull ()

20100427-ilovestars.png

I Love Stars is one of those apps that does one thing and does it very well. It sits in your Menu Bar and lets you rate songs as they’re playing in iTunes.

Go hunting around for them, and you’ll find dozens of iTunes controllers. Some of them sit in the Menu Bar, some sit in your Dashboard, some are apps in their own right. And almost all of them include some sort of functionality for rating songs.

But I Love Stars is different because rating songs is the only thing it does. It has no control features. You can’t use it to switch to another playlist or browse your music library, or even pause what’s playing.

All you can do is rate the song that’s playing. The best thing about it is that you can rate that song without leaving what you’re doing. Just one click in the Menu Bar and it’s done.

So if you’re happy with the song playback controls you already have, but want an easier way to rate stuff as it drifts by – I Love Stars is the simplest way to do it.

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(You’re reading the 1st post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications. Read more.)

15 comments »

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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Posted in 50 Mac Essentials, Reviews, Software |

  • http://www.gridironmeanderings.com Colin

    Meh. Certainly not an essential app within the genre let alone for your Mac. If we’re talking iTunes controllers that can rate, might as well just list Coversutra and be done with the whole genre.

    My 2-cents.

  • prehensile

    Um. Strong start?

  • rougerobot

    This is #1? The most essential Mac app? Hmm, I guess I am misunderstanding the word “essential”.

    Certainly when I set up friends Mac’s my initial list includes:

    Perian
    Flip4Mac
    Growl
    Adium
    Burn
    etc etc.

  • http://gilest.org Giles Turnbull

    rougerobot: No, it’s #1, as in the first in the series.

  • jC

    Nice tiny app .. love it .. thx ..
    did not know her

  • Jean Claude

    No way. Not essential. Even for the iTunes app category. Bowtie is far superior…

    But for REALLY essential apps:

    AppFresh
    AppTrap
    Dropbox
    Facebook Notifications
    Geektool
    Growl
    Handbrake
    Perian
    Quicksilver
    Secrets

  • http://nonw eric

    Handbrake is debatable.

    I will get

    -Flip4mac
    -iStat…This helps you know whats going on in your laptop. Might be stupid but worth it if its acting weird.
    -Perian
    -SMCfan control (keep my fans at 3k and my latop NEVER gets stupid hot.
    -Coconut battery…Good to check battery life,cycles ect every month or so.
    -iAlert you.Awesome program for when you have to leave you mac on its own. Its free and gives you a great feeling of protection.
    -I like “ripit”…When I do rip a DVD
    -Exces..Nice way to hide certain folders.
    -Clean app..Great program for when you want to delete an existing program.Keeps tabs of everything that gets downloaded so when you delete the program it makes sure to take EVERYTHING it came with.

    Then things like

    Pod to mac
    skype

    Are all extras.But the first list is MUST haves IMO…They all serve their purpose,are free (well I think one I had to “pay” for) and HAVe great followings..I just discovered Ialert you and its an awesome alarm for your mac. Works like its suppose to and its stupid loud..Seriously check it out. Fun toy..

  • Steve

    I use this app all the time. I like being able to minimize iTunes while doing other things on computer, but still be able to rate songs. However, I was experiencing a problem when I tried to close iTunes, it would not exit the program completely. I tracked it down to this program. As long as I close “I Love Stars” first, then iTunes will close. If I forget and juts try to close iTunes while Stars is running, it will not. A minor inconvenience maybe, but still an inconvenience.

  • http://www.ccpearce.com cc pearce

    there is nothing essential about this app. i don’t even think it’s very useful… i wish you guys had started with something a little more useful! here’s hoping for tomorrow!

  • Alex

    Wow if you consider this an essential app I hate to see what else is on your list… I’m having trouble even seeing it usefulness other then taking up disk space.

    But I agree with Eric CleanApp is a very useful tool .

    http://www.synium.de/products/CleanApp/index.html

  • http://ihbs.co.uk Ben

    I think auto rate is a much more useful tool than this app. 1 click, and it will automatically rate all your itunes songs, determined by play count. Rather than you having to rate each one as you listen to it

  • ro1224

    Wow! Tough crowd, but hey, we’re Mac owners so there!!! :D

  • http://franciscans.tv Matto

    You control tunes looks better.

  • Trevor

    Can’t you just right-click (or control-click or two-finger click…) on the iTunes dock icon, hover your mouse on Rating, and select your desired amount of stars? I really can’t see how saving a mouse movement halfway up the screen is worth downloading a persistent menubar app.

  • Asfasdf23

    this is fucking retarded. it used to be free, and now i have to make an itunes account, enter my credit card info, and use the app store to download this software.

    TO SPEND 99 CENTS GODDOMMIT

    this is why i pirate.