miniplayer posts

For me, one of the most welcome new features of iTunes 9 was the restoration of sanity to the way that iTunes responded to the zoom button. I had long been irritated by the non-standard behavior iTunes had displayed, brazenly flaunting the accepted practice of how the zoom button worked by toggling the mini player on and off, instead of zooming the window like a well-behaved Mac app.

Never once in all my years of using iTunes have I wanted to use the mini player. Whenever I tried to zoom the app and the mini player appeared, it would be quickly followed by muttering and grumbling. So you can imagine my joy and bliss at discovering that iTunes 9 finally validated what I had known all along. The zoom button was supposed to act a certain way, and if you want to do something different than the standard, then you ought to use the option/alt key.

I celebrated this change. I called friends I had not spoken with in ages to tell them about it. I wrote a sonnet to the proper use of the zoom button. A party was planned. Ok, maybe not all of that, but I was pleased with the change.

Then iTunes 9.0.1 came out and ruined everything. Yes, I said everything! No, you're the one who's overly emotionally attached to a relatively minor UI issue!

Well, apparently I'm not the only only one. Over on Twitter @zadr and @siracusa reported that you could revert iTunes 9.0.1 to iTunes 9.0's behavior through a command in Terminal.app:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes zoom-to-window -bool YES

This tip was then "retweeted" about 50 times and ended up on MacOSXHints.com which is where I first saw it, moments before breaking out into song and dance.

If you would prefer not to get into Terminal.app, you can get the 9.0 standard zoom behavior in 9.0.1 (and presumably later versions as well) by holding down the alt/option key when clicking the zoom button.

Dear Auntie TUAW,

With all the shiny goodness of iTunes 9 and a way to finally organise iPhone/iPod Touch apps without getting a friction burn on my thumb, I settled in for some music lovin'.

Now I don't know how everyone else in the world likes their iTunes experience, but personally I'm quite fond of using the miniplayer. I love having it floating atop everything else for quick track skipping without having to resort to any kind of ghastly menu bar or dashboard trickery (I'm a purist maybe?).

To my dismay the zoom button now... actually... zooms the iTunes window rather than presenting me with my favoured miniplayer. It's no great loss (considering the hot key is only shift+cmd+M) but I liked the simplicity of "The green one gives me small happy player."

Love and kisses,

Your Nephew James



Dearest James,

Auntie TUAW wanted me to answer for her; she's in the process of baking some cakes for the annual church social at Our Lady of Perpetual Motion, so she's a bit tied up right now.

I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble with the new functions of iTunes 9. I have hope! Apple didn't change the functionality too much. In fact, they made it more consistent with the rest of the operating system. The green "+" button now acts as a proper zoom button like every other app out there -- BUT -- if you hold the option key while pressing it you still get the mini player like the previous versions of iTunes. Sure, you can use the shift+command+M hot key if you'd like, but there's a still a mouse click solution that will hopefully help you and the rest of our readers out.

With best regards,

Cousin Josh