Clutter is a small Mac OS X application that lets you put virtual music CDs on your desktop. You can drag them anywhere — they’re really windows. Line them up neatly or put them in piles, it’s your choice. Each one looks like the real CD’s cover, and double-clicking it tells iTunes to play that CD.
Think of Clutter as an alternate user interface to your music collection – like a bunch of CDs piled on your Desktop. When deciding what to play next, instead of searching through a huge alphabetical list, let your eye roam over the covers of your favorite CDs and those you’ve been listening to recently.
There’s a main window that shows the CD you’re now playing — the cover picture is looked up automatically from Amazon.com, or you can paste in your own. To keep a CD around for easy access, just drag the picture out of the window onto your desktop. Then double-click it whenever you want to play it. Nice!
Clutter is freeware. More info and download link here.
Okay – I am hooked on this app already! It works as advertised and I’ve dragged about 15 virtual CD cases onto my desktop. And it’s a FREE app. This will piss off my Windows friends to no end, as if they aren’t pissed enough – I know, “friends don’t let friends do Windows,” I’m working on them…
Tip: OPTION-drag from Clutter to the iTunes art box to add art to songs (multi-select songs to do the whole album).
This is a great front-end for your iTunes collection–I have ALL my CD cases scattered on the screen for visual browsing. Cover art appears EVEN if the art is not in iTunes, and even if you only have one song off the album. The art (pulled from Amazon) stays even when you’re offline.
Another tip: look in the menu: you can Select All and then change the SIZE of the art for all albums at once.
VERY nice program indeed
It’s cool. Pretty gimmicky and as soon as my desktop gets too cluttered I’ll get pissed and stop using this thing, but for now it’s interesting.
The only thing I don’t like is that double-clicking the album covers creates a new playlist. I’d rather it just accessed the first song from the album already in my library, or the playlists I’ve already established.