Mick Tagger For Mac

Spotify is pretty awesome, but the official desktop app is lackluster, to say the least. It has minimal integration with macOS, so you have to bring up the UI for almost everything, including changing the volume, liking songs, or adding them to playlists.

Mick Tagger is a cleverly-named app that will roll some of these stones out of your way. It allows you to quickly add the current song to an existing playlist, or even create a new one, all from a simple search box that can be brought up with a hotkey. Moreover, it can create playlist mixes and get rid of songs you don't like all that much.

Say you're listening to your Discover Weekly, you hear a cool song, and you want to add it to a permanent playlist. To do that, you have to open Spotify, right-click the song in question, and select the right playlist from a drop-down menu. Not fun.

With Mick Tagger, you just hit ⌘⇧Space (CMD+Shift+Space), start typing the name of the playlist, and press Enter. If the track is already in that playlist, it won't be duplicated. If the playlist doesn't exist, a new one with that name will be created. Fun!

While the app's main function is adding songs to playlists, it has other features as well. You can quickly open any of your playlists in Spotify if you want to manage them, which can save a bit of effort.

We all have songs in our playlists that we almost never listen to, but we can't really bring ourselves to remove them. This app helps you keep your playlists enjoyable, removing any tracks that are skipped often.

If Spotify's mixes aren't cutting it, Mick Tagger can help you create new ones. Just select a few playlists, and a new one—called Mailbox Monday—will be created every week for you to enjoy. It's made up of songs that have been added to the playlists in the past week, so think of it like a compilation of your greatest hits from multiple genres.

Changing music volume in Spotify can be a real pain, especially if you're playing audio to another device via Wi-Fi, as the dedicated volume keys only affect the current system. This app can make it so that they control Spotify directly, so it won't matter which device the music is played on.

In short, Mick Tagger is an incredibly useful app, and most people will probably be more than happy with the free version, as it only lacks the playlist mix and cleaning features.

As for things that could be improved, I would love to be able to hide the app from the Dock and keep it in the menu bar or just running in the background. Also, I'd like the ⌘⇧Space shortcut to hide the window when used a second time, as you currently have to close it the old-fashioned way.