Add shortcuts to rate current iTunes track from anywhere (Snow Leopard) (Updated with Growl)

A while back I wrote this post describing my efforts in looking for a way to rate iTunes shortcuts anytime with a quick shortcut on Mac. After upgrading to Snow Leopard, I found the steps to enable this site wide was a bit different, thus this post was created.

First, use Automator to create the Services needed. Services will be available no matter what app is in the foreground.

1. Open Automator
2. Create a new “Service”
3. Under “Utilities” under the Library, add “Run AppleScript” as the first and only step in the Automation
4. Paste the following code in place of “(* Your script goes here *)”
   
tell application "iTunes"
set the rating of current track to 20
end tell

5. Save under the name “Rate as 1 star”
6. Change “20″ to “40″ then Save As “Rate as 2 stars”
7. Change “40″ to “60″ then Save As “Rate as 3 stars”
8. Change “60″ to “80″ then Save As “Rate as 4 stars”
9. Change “80″ to “100″ then Save As “Rate as 5 stars”

That finishes up the Automator work. Just be sure you used “Save As” and not “Save”, you don’t want to overwrite your services, but create 5 different services.

Now, go to System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts. Select “Services” on the left window, and in the right window you should see (at the bottom) the 5 services you created.

You can click in the white space to the right of the services (not intuitive really, but there is a little spot on the right you can double click to edit the short cuts for all the items in that list.)

Once you add a shortcut there you should be able to use the short cut from anywhere!

Be warned, I found it very tricky to find a short cut that worked for me in all apps, since some apps or services (mainly iTunes) had shortcuts similar to them. (Snapshot utility for example is Cmd-shift-4, which may be a shortcut you wanted to use.)

I found that the Cmd-Option-Shift worked for me best.

UPDATE: Add Growl Notifications to show that the song was indeed rated!



This is a screen shot from Automator showing the Service for Rate as 1 Star

Well, this is an easy and quick addition to the Automator services. I constently found myself switching to iTunes to see if the song was rated… kind of defeted the purpose of adding the shortcuts!

I realized (in somewhat of a “duh” moment) that I could just use Growl to add a little note for each of the ratings. I already had Growl installed (it’s a standard install for any Mac of mine.) And best of all Growl is very Automator friendly, so it just took a few seconds to add a pop-up Growl notification for each Rate as ? Service!