Want a banner when your iDevice begins a new song?
If you have ever wanted to know what song your iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad just switched to, then there is a great free jailbreak tweak available on the BigBoss repo by iOS developer and hacker Ryan Petrich dubbed MusicBanners. As you can see from the image above, MusicBanners renders an iOS 5 notification banner with your song information, album artwork, and Music application icon on it. This banner appears every time that a song begins playing on your iDevice, even if one was already playing and it started playing a new song.
MusicBanners is beautifully integrated into iOS. The way it works is as soon as your device starts playing an audio file, the banner pops up. MusicBanners works with a variety of different music-listening applications including Music, Grooveshark, Spotify, and more. You aren't limited to Apple's Music application by any means, which to me, makes MusicBanners very valuable. Because it uses the iOS 5 banners, you need to be on at least iOS 5 to use MusicBanners. It doesn't have any options to configure, it's one of those plug-and-play tweaks that just works when you install it.
The response time for MusicBanners is perfect. It doesn't appear too early or too late when a song begins. The banner stays up for the same amount of time that a notification banner for, say Messages, would appear for. Then after some seconds, it disappears on its own. The tweak is very simply but has a very satisfying effect.
Since it is technically a notification, this tweak isn't for everyone. You have to like getting notifications, or else it could get annoying to you. The popup will appear even if you manually change a song yourself - so you already know what will be playing. When it tells you what is playing. Redundant?
Overall, I like MusicBanners. Since it is a free tweak, you can't be too picky about it. But, it adds a nice feature to iOS that we never had before. What are your thoughts about MusicBanners? Share in the comments below!
Name: MusicBanners
Price: FREE
Version: 1.0
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: Ryan Petrich
Editor's Rating: 4/5
Sources: Ryan Petrich
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