I use iTunes excessively. So when it comes to accessing my library of music when I’m in the middle of searching the web or working with another program, it can be a task just to pull up iTunes to search for the one song you want to hear. As miniscule as this task may be, why not install a program that makes choosing a song in my library lightning fast without having to divert myself from whatever is currently on the screen? CoverSutra will help you do just that.

CoverSutra is an attractive, lightweight app that significantly minimizes the need to pull up iTunes and search for your song of choice, for the reasonable price of $19.95. Once installed, an icon will be added in to your menubar, which basically acts as Spotlight for your iTunes. Clicking on the icon will bring down a search bar allowing you to search any song, artist, genre, or album. After doing so, a list of your search results will appear right underneath what you typed in a sleek and streamlined fashion, showing the artist and songs categorized by the album title. To add to the visual aesthetics, a little picture of the album art is also displayed next to each album.

Clicking the icon on your menubar will also allow you to access the preferences for the program where you can customize CoverSutra to your liking, which includes personalizing everything from the way it looks to the way the program assists you. Within the preferences, among the more useful things I have found were the various options to set up shortcuts, allowing you to do different things such as toggling on/off repeat, or even showing and hiding a window that gives you complete control of the current songs playing.

Another favorite is a feature that includes a little album cover shown on your desktop, which you can place anywhere you want. If you enable the correct options, you can also have it so underneath the album cover shows the current song, artist, and album cover, allowing you too see what you are listening to. The people who will find this most useful are the ones who may have an extensive library ranging in the thousands. I have a library upwards of 9,000 songs, so always being able to see what I am listening to is extremely useful, as sometimes I may not know the name of the song I’m listening to.

CoverSutra is very well worth the money if you are a music enthusiast. Being able to access any song from a large library of music within a matter of 3 seconds is a nice little shortcut to having to pull up iTunes and search for a song. Between the customizable options available, Last.FM integration, and useful shortcuts which can be setup to your liking, this is a program that once used, is hard to picture not having on your computer.