TUAW's Daily Mac App: Bowtie

Have you ever thought iTunes was just a bit plain? Want a customisable controller that you can theme to match your mood? You need Bowtie.

We've covered Bowtie before, but it's basically a replacement for the iTunes Mini Player, giving you track information, controls and the ability to rate the currently playing track. The "Bowlet" is the part of the application you see when in use, which can sit on top of other windows (dependant on theme) and is themeable using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. There are some 12 pages of skins available for free download directly from the app, meaning that there's something for almost everyone (some examples can be seen above). If you don't see one you like you can always set about writing your own Bowlet themes with a fairly extensive guide available.

Bowtie also has a menu bar icon, which accompanies the Bowlet and allows you to show or hide the Bowlet, access the preferences and change the source that Bowtie is controlling. Using a companion iOS app (US$0.99), Bowtie can also control music playing on an iDevice, allowing you to control music playback on your stereo if you happen to have it hooked up to an iPod, iPad or iPhone. Bowtie will also let you scrobble the current playing track to Last.fm, providing a nice lightweight alternative to running the Last.fm client itself.

Bowtie is available from the Mac App Store for OS X 10.6.6 and up, but there's also a version available for Leopard and up that can be downloaded directly from the Bowtie site.

If you've been looking for a fancy yet lightweight iTunes controller, then give the free Bowtie a try.