The iLife media browser is one of my favourite features of the iLife suite of software. Having access to all your media in one convenient palette is very handy. For most part however, the media browser is restricted to an application or in Leopard, the Open dialog box.
Why hasn’t Apple put the media browser in the Finder sidebar then? Perhaps they want you to actually use the applications instead of just accessing data from the sidebar. After all, you cannot possibly do things like create new events, or geotag your photos using a sidebar browser. In any case, we’re left with no universal media browser, and sometimes that just sucks.
Thankfully Karelia software has been making a slick utility iMedia Browser. This application will feel familiar to any Mac user, as it’s basically the same iLife media browser, only universally available. However, iMedia does pack in a little more punch.
For one, you can drag and drop in any media into the respective source list to add them to the library. So if you need to add a movie to your Movies folder, drag it into iMedia and it will take care of the rest!
iMedia Browser also features your Safari bookmarks, although I’m not very sure I find that very useful. In the two weeks I have used it not once have I looked through that.
iMedia Browser can be available in the dock or from the menubar (which is where I keep it), and uses little or no resources (although a little buggy at times). It’s a free download, and if you’d love to have access to media everywhere, I think you should give it a try.
