Simplified tagging for iTunes.

This is a temporary home for Quick Tag, until I get the Mac Appetite website up and running.

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Features

• Tag songs in iTunes for easy organization and better smart playlists!
• Launch Quick Tag with a user definable global hot key
• Quickly tag the song that is currently playing, or tag whatever songs are selected in iTunes
• Existing tags are auto-suggested when entering a song’s tags
• Existing tags can be read from iTunes for auto-suggestions
• Rich support for tagging multiple songs at once. Add tags to the selected songs, remove tags from the selected songs, or replace the tags of the selected songs
• Rate the song at the same time you tag it, with the built in rating control
• Tags are saved to either the ‘grouping’ or ‘comment’ field in iTunes
• Configure how your tags are stored internally in iTunes
• Support for existing internal tag formats
• Optionally, starts playing a specified playlist in iTunes upon activation
• Multi-word tags are supported
• Displays information about the song you are currently tagging
• Use a tag cloud for keyboard free tagging
• Preserves existing data in the grouping or comments field when storing tags
• Lightweight and easy to use
• Leopard compatible

Planned Features for Version 1.0

• User definable global hot key
• Auto suggest tags when editing a songs tags
• Easier playlist creation
• The ability to tag multiple songs at once
• User definable tag field
• Tag renaming and deletion
• Notification when an untagged song begins playing
• Tag clouds for keyboard-free tagging
• Last.fm integration (Coming soon)
• Support for any internal tag format
• Tag format conversion so all users can change the way tags are stored in iTunes
• Display information about the song you are currently tagging
• Speed Tagging

Download

Quick Tag (version 0.71 beta) - Universal binary, Mac OS X 10.5+
Quick Tag (version 0.61 beta) - Universal binary, Mac OS X 10.4+

Donations will help keep future versions of Quick Tag free for everyone! If you enjoy the software, a donation would be greatly appreciated.

Support

Head over to the Mac Appetite Forums to report bugs and talk about Quick Tag.

Using Quick Tag

• Make sure iTunes is open and playing a song
• Open Quick Tag
• Enter some tags for the current playing song like

• Press enter to save the tags to iTunes
• Launch Quick Tag again by pressing the global Quick Tag hot key (defined in Preferences) which by default is Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+T

• Tag all the songs you can
• Use these tags to build better smart playlists.

Tagging Multiple Songs At Once (Multi-tag)

• Select the songs you want to tag in iTunes.
• With Quick Tag running, launch the Multitag window by pressing Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+M (the default hotkey)
• Select how you want to tag these songs. You have 3 options for tagging multiple songs at once. Add tags to currently selected songs - This will append the tags you enter to the selected songs, leaving any other tags the songs may have in place. Remove tags from currently selected songs - This will remove the tags you enter from the selected songs, leaving any other tags the songs may have in place. Replace tags of currently selected songs - This will overwrite any tags the selected songs may already have with the tags you specify.
• Enter in some tags
• Press enter to update the tags of the selected songs

Understanding the Tag Format

Ok, it seems there is some confusion with the tag format. By default, it Quick Tag set to store tags in iTunes like this:

<tagword1> <tagword2> where prefix="<", suffix=">", separator=" "

So if you don’t use any format you would have:

tagword tagword2 where prefix="", suffix="", separator=" "

Another example:

*tagword *tagword2 where prefix="*", suffix="", separator=" "

Of these 3 format, I highly recommend the first, since it support multiword tagging much easier.

Building Playlists:

• Once you have a good portion of songs tagged in iTunes you can use the internal tag format that Quick Tag uses (see Quick Tag’s Preferences) to build better smart playlists.

• Quick Tag stores tags as plain text in either the Grouping field or the Comment field in iTunes. You can specify which one to use in the Quick Tag preferences (the default is Grouping).
• Why does Quick Tag use an internal tag format? So that iTunes can better distinguish between all tags and you can enter tags in as a comma separated list of words. For example, say you want to build a smart playlist of all the great songs of the 80s. So you tell iTunes you want all songs where Grouping contains “80s” (without the quotes around it). Now say you have a tag that is “Not 80s”….songs tagged with this will show up in the smart playlist. Now if we use the tag format specified in the image above we would ask for all song where Grouping contains “<80s>”, and this will not pick up ““.
• Ok, on to an example. Lets say you want all songs that are tagged with “Ballad” and “Acoustic” but not “80s”. Here the playlist you would build (using the tag format in the above image):

An Alternative To Using Smart Playlists

If you don’t want to create a smart playlist for some random set of tags you are interested in, you can do the following:

1. Go to your Library Playlist with all of your songs
2. Select View > View Options from the iTunes menu.
3. Ensure either “Grouping” or “Comment” is checked. (Use which ever field you are storing your tags in)
4. Type in the tags (including tag format) into the search bar in the top right corner of the iTunes window. Make sure that you are searching on all fields (Click the magnifying glass and make sure “All” is checked). Example: <acoustic> <ballad>