Review: free iMedia Browser great for Snow Leopard users

Posted by Dennis Sellers Nov 5, 2009 at 6:05pm

The iMedia Browser from Karelia Software is a nifty, and free, utility to add the familiar “media browser” experience to just about any Mac application. And as of version 1.2.1, released this week, it’s compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”).

In fact, iMedia Browser resembles the media browser found in several Apple apps, and works as a stand-alone utility that can be used to access a user’s library of photos, sounds, movies, or bookmarks. With it, you can browse your libraries of photos (iPhoto, Aperture, and Pictures folders); music (iTunes library, GarageBand songs, and Music folders); movies (from iTunes, iPhoto, and Movies folders), and bookmarks (from several leading web browsers). It can be activated either from the dock or from a small icon in the menu bar.

If you’re running Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”) or Snow Leopard you may not have much use for the utility as the iLife media browser is integrated into the Open dialog, allowing you access to iLife content from any Mac OS X application. Of course, it does provide another option for accessing and browsing your media, but I find it redundant in Leopard and Snow Leopard.

It should be noted that you can drag and drop any folder into the source list to add to your library and download plug-ins such as iDelicious to extend the capabilities of the browser. Another nice touch is that you can flip the window over to control toolbar and caption preferences.

iMedia Browser is a wonderful little edition. Since it’s free there’s no reason not to give it a try.

The Karelia iMedia Browser is Universal Binary so runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.

Macsimum rating: 9 out of 10

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