iTunesTrackInfo

A sample iTunes tool to show track information and control iTunes by global hotkey.

Screenshot

Rainmeter (iTunes Player 2 skin)

iTunesTrackInfo

Lyrics (.lrc, .ass and *.srt are supported.)

The reason I gave up Rainmeter which have been used for several years

There are two things that bother me when I use Rainmeter to show current iTunes information.

The NowPlaying plugin of Rainmeter 3 isn't support the half-star rating which I use very often to manage my music database.
The artwork image IO function of the old iTunesPlugin of Rainmeter 2 isn't optimizated which save a new artwork image file to disk at each UI update event even if the player is stopped.

Due to the above two reasons, I spent one day to rebuild a tool which has the same UI of "iTunes Player 2" skin and add the global hotkey rating function to replace another autohotkey script.

Rainmeter iTunes skins/iTunesTrackInfo compare

	Rainmeter	iTunesTrackInfo
Custom global hotkey	X	? (modify&build code)
Custom skins	V	? (WPF UI editor + build code)
Hide on mouse over + click through	V	V

C#/WPF programming examples

How to control iTunes in C# (including get/set track info, player control, iTunes event callback)
C# WPF transparent window
Creating animation using C# (fade-in&fade-out)
Hide on mouse over + click through
Global hotkey hook.
Single instance check by using creating mutex (not using wait/release mutex)
Multi-Thread event synchronization

Todo

Commenting Code

Buliding Prerequisites & Dependencies

Microsoft Visual Studio 2012/2013 (Express version is enough)

Attribution

All icons used in this project are made by android team and downloaded from deviantart
The C# global hotkey hook class "UserActivityHook" is borrow from George Mamaladze.

Thanks for their hard work. :)

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