The Ultimate macOS Thread

Authoring. The mac equivalent of nero, if there is one. Thanks
 
Is anyone familiar with Automator?

I've got my music organized the iTunes way, as in Artist/Album/Track.mp3 with the album art in there as a JPEG. Except, I stopped using iTunes for a few years and renamed the Cover.jpg files to Folder.jpg files to make it work on my HTC phone.

Now I want to rename them back to Cover.jpg since unlike say, Winamp, iTunes is too dumb to just take any JPEG in the album folder and use it as the album art.

I tried using Automator, but I don't think it's seeing the specific JPEGs within the subfolders for each album. Any ideas?
 
I'd try writing a shell script. Sadly, my knowledge is a bit too rusty to just write one for you.

Any volunteers?
 
Edit: Seems I misunderstood. You need to change just one file within each folder - doubt Automator can do that.

You could do a finder search for files named "folder.jpg" and drag them to Automator to change their name, no?
 
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Do I understand you correctly that you have the following structure:

directory1/Folder.jpg
directory2/Folder.jpg
and so on, and you want this:

directory1/cover.jpg
directory2/cover.jpg
?

If so, execute this in your music directory:
Code: 
find -name Folder.jpg | sed 's/^\(.*\)Folder\.jpg$/mv "&" \1Cover.jpg/' | sh
 
narf said:
Do I understand you correctly that you have the following structure:

directory1/Folder.jpg
directory2/Folder.jpg
and so on, and you want this:

directory1/cover.jpg
directory2/cover.jpg
?

If so, execute this in your music directory:
Code: 
find -name Folder.jpg | sed 's/^\(.*\)Folder\.jpg$/mv "&" \1Cover.jpg/' | sh
Click to expand...

That ended up throwing me an error in Terminal, but as I found out later it might have been because my files were read-only (or locked as OS X seems to call them).

It appears Automator is kind of weak in batch renaming files (look under replace text), so I downloaded a program called Name Mangler. When that failed to do anything I put my noggin to work and realized my files were read-only. Took care of that and Name Mangler took care of my batch renaming no problem.

Thanks for the help at any rate fellas, posi-reps all around.
 
God damn I hate iTunes...

New problem, it doesn't recognize any of the album artwork. Is it no longer Cover.jpg inside each album folder? I have my music organized in Music\Albums\artist name\album name\ with the Cover.jpg files in the last folder.

Edit: In less frustrating news, I didn't know holding shift while bringing up Expose slowed it down to rather groovy levels. It's oddly relaxing.
Edit 2: And Dashboard as well! Though who uses that anymore? It seems so passe.
 
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I use Dashboard for iStat Pro, and the calculator :) It's not the slickest of implementations, but it's useful in some situations :)

And the holding shift thing is nice, did it by accident at some point :p Completely useless, but nice :D
 
I have two instances of the weather widget, iStat, and Slothcam showing me a webcam of English Bay in Vancouver.

But I don't really need any of them, just that I didn't like the stock look. I used to have so many widgets on my old Mac, but they aren't worth the resources they hog.

It just seems like Dashboard was a huge feature in Tiger, but became forgotten and unloved with the next releases of OS X.
 
Shawn said:
That ended up throwing me an error in Terminal, but as I found out later it might have been because my files were read-only (or locked as OS X seems to call them).
Click to expand...

The error message should have told you that :rolleyes: :shakefist: at MacOS
 
Can't you just right-click on all your music in iTunes and hit Get album art? :p
 
Shawn said:
It appears Automator is kind of weak in batch renaming files (look under replace text)
Click to expand...

I didn't know that, but it would have worked for your purposes, right? You have find text and replace with, so you could have found folder and replaced with cover and you would have been set.

Shawn said:
Is it no longer Cover.jpg inside each album folder? I have my music organized in Music\Albums\artist name\album name\ with the Cover.jpg files in the last folder.
Click to expand...

I just deleted all my album artwork cos I didn't like it showing up on my iphone.

But there's a separate folder called Album Artwork inside the iTunes folder. Maybe it's supposed to be in there?

Shawn said:
Edit: In less frustrating news, I didn't know holding shift while bringing up Expose slowed it down to rather groovy levels. It's oddly relaxing.
Edit 2: And Dashboard as well! Though who uses that anymore? It seems so passe.
Click to expand...

It only does it when you use the F key, not hot corners. Holding the Apple key slows scrolling.

I use the calculator, currency exchange, translator and unit converter but it's painfully slow to load everything the first time after start-up.
 
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I use dashboard a lot because I go on sites like this that are international and it has a converters for things like metric/imperial and currency. Easier and faster to just hit F4 then to google it
 
Derek said:
Can't you just right-click on all your music in iTunes and hit Get album art? :p
Click to expand...

Not when a great majority of your albums are old and relatively not well-known. :p Also, not when you have OCD and want to organize your music library by yourself.

Seriously though, last time I tried it failed to find most of them. But this was a few years back, it's likely gotten better. But my OCD hasn't. :lol:

hansvonaxion said:
I didn't know that, but it would have worked for your purposes, right? You have find text and replace with, so you could have found folder and replaced with cover and you would have been set.



I just deleted all my album artwork cos I didn't like it showing up on my iphone.

But there's a separate folder called Album Artwork inside the iTunes folder. Maybe it's supposed to be in there?



It only does it when you use the F key, not hot corners. Holding the Apple key slows scrolling.

I use the calculator, currency exchange, translator and unit converter but it's painfully slow to load everything the first time after start-up.
Click to expand...

Nice all-in-one post there mate. :mrgreen:

I guess I'll let iTunes grab a few album artworks and see how it prefers for me to set it up.
 
I select the album songs and drag the cover art to the empty cover art pane. I too have a lot of obscure shit.
 
Shawn said:
I guess I'll let iTunes grab a few album artworks and see how it prefers for me to set it up.
Click to expand...

There's cache, download and local folders within, so that suggests they're kept separately.

Maybe the way itunes uses database files to keep track of it all prevents you from just adding/modifying files like you're trying to do?
 
hansvonaxion said:
I use the calculator, currency exchange, translator and unit converter but it's painfully slow to load everything the first time after start-up.
Click to expand...

When I was a primarily Mac person, I used an app called "Dashboard Kickstart" which basically called and dismissed the dashboard when you log in, or as if you hit the dashboard key twice. That has the effect of starting all the widgets as soon as you log in, so when you really need them, they are ready to go instantly.
 
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