Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

The Visualizer

Visuals is the iTunes term for the onscreen laser-light show that pulses, beats, and dances in sync to the music you’re listening to. The effect is hypnotic and wild. (To turn on the visualizer, click the flower-power icon in the lower-right corner of the window or choose Visualizer → Turn Visuals On.)

The show begins immediately. (For a really cool performance, choose Visuals → Full Screen so that the movie takes over your whole monitor.)

Add Your Own Visualizers

Visualizers are iTunes plug-ins. So when Apple’s built-in collection starts wearing a little thin, you can download a variety of new ones from http://www.versiontracker.com or http://www.macupdate.com. For example, the ArKaos Visualizer is an astonishingly adept freeware visualizer that you can install with a couple of clicks from http://www.arkaos.net.

Once you run a plug-in’s installer, the software winds up in your Home → Library → iTunes → iTunes Plug-ins folder. As a result, the next time you run iTunes, you’ll see the new visualizer listed at the bottom of the Visualizer menu, so you can choose your favorite for each song.

Keyboard Controls for the Visualizer

If you’re using the built-in iTunes Visualizer, you may not even realize that you can greatly influence what you see onscreen. Activate the visualizer, then once the screen is alive with visuals, you can turn it into your personal biofeedback screen by experimenting with these keys:

Key	Function
H or ?	Displays a cheat sheet of secret keystrokes. ...