Mac: I Love Stars
It's only appropriate that I begin with I Love Stars, a fantastic app on the Mac App Store by Potion Factory that is only $0.99. Imagine a world where all your songs in iTunes are perfectly rated to your taste with no exceptions. Now, think of the world you live in. Is it even close? I don't think so. This nifty app allows you to have your iTunes library rated the way you want with very minimal effort and in a nonobtrusive kind of way. There are apps like CoverSutra and Bowtie that you might like, but those have cover art and a whole bunch of extra stuff that you don't need or want if you just want a fully rated library. If you want those extra features, you can check them out, but for rating all your songs in the simplest, yet effective way, this is it. With I Love Stars, you can rate your songs in 1/2 star intervals if you so choose, or full stars.
The best feature of this app is the little chime that you can customize when a song is about to come to an end. It's a gentle chime that will tell you that you haven't rated a song and to do it right then and there. When you're not in the right mood for some music, check the preferences, and the menu bar icon will disappear when iTunes isn't playing.
I love having keyboard shortcuts set so I can just hit "option+5" to rate my song instantly. All the keyboard shortcuts are customizable, so you're never bound to a certain way of rating songs. But, you can also just click on the menu item and select how many stars you want to designate for a certain song.
Here's how Potion Factory describes its app:
Rate the currently playing song in iTunes from your menu bar.
I Love Stars only shows up when there is a song playing in iTunes
It gently reminds you to rate a song if it's unrated
You can setup keyboard shortcuts to change the rating with
Correctly shows album ratings and half-star ratings
And its latest update adds some really cool features:
Delays showing the menu bar item when launched at log in so that it ends up being the left-mode menu item.
Menu bar item is always visible by default. You have an option to hide it just as before.
Preference to start I Love Stars at log in
New animation to transition from the always visible menu bar item
So you're ready to buy I Love Stars for $0.99? Awesome! It's available on the Mac App Store, so follow the link below to find that world where all of your songs are rated perfectly to your taste!
If you're not quite ready yet, maybe sometime later, but keep checking back for more apps or stay up to date by following 5StarApps on Twitter.