by Muzzy is a tiny and gorgeous iTunes companion that lives on your Menu Bar, enabling you to control your iTunes library, view artwork and track names, and scribble, all from a small icon located in a convenient place.
A few moments after the installation, I knew that Muzzy was heading straight into my precious “launch at startup” boot routine.
Anyone who’s read one of my reviews knows how much I covet small, simple apps that do their job with efficiency and simplicity—and Muzzy ticks those boxes. Once loaded, it sits up in the Menu Bar, waiting for iTunes to be launched. When you play anything from within iTunes, it will start going about its business.
Muzzy presents the artwork for your current track (if it’s been downloaded from iTunes) along with the current play time. With a tap, the artwork spins around to show track listings for your album or song list. (Does anyone think that Daft Punk’s album doesn’t have another chart hit on it apart from “Get Lucky”?) Artwork for all media types is supported, so as long as you have artwork, you’ll see it.
One feature not mentioned is a small time line that comes through the album artwork—it borders on barely noticeable, but it’s there. This allows you to scrub through the tune to get to a part you like.
When the next song or video starts to play, Muzzy will show you the artist and title of the new track. There’s no way to add anything more to this notification, such as track length, but it’s handy to see a notice at all, which of course can be turned off if you’d like.
Muzzy sounds like a simple, almost chuck-away app at first that wouldn’t really make much of a difference to your iTunes experience—yet it does. Imagine you have a big playlist and can’t remember the name of a specific track; with Muzzy, it’ll be there instantaneously without having to delve into iTunes or launch the MiniPlayer.
Plug out, scrobble and Last.fm support
You know how when you’re listening to music on your device and you pull out your headphones or speakers, and the music stops? That’s a feature called plug out, which Muzzy supports, along with “scrobbling” tracks to Last.fm.
So what’s the point of an application like this if you have the iTunes MiniPlayer available?
Although the iTunes MiniPlayer barely takes up any screen real estate, most people probably feel more at home going to the Menu Bar rather than hunting around for the minimised player.
Muzzy It’s a small 2.2mb download from the app store and barely touches any system resorouces in usage.
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