Pandora and Mac

Been a while since I posted anything, so I thought I might share a tip with my Mac using, Pandora loving friends.

It took me a while to catch on to the Pandora craze, but now that I have, I'm a huge fan. While I've never actually hit my free Pandora limit, I've come awfully close pretty much every month. I've been tempted on a number of occasions to become a paid member for two reasons: the desktop app, and the higher quality streaming. On occasion, I listen to Pandora on my home stereo system, so I could certainly benefit from the enhanced audio quality, and I hate having a browser tab dedicated to Pandora (I'm kind of anal retentive about having a clean desktop).

While I don't have a work around for the higher quality music, I do have one for the desktop app, and I think it actually one ups the mac integration factor of the Pandora developed one.

If you are running a Leopard or Snow Leopard, open Safari and use your "webclip" feature on your Pandora page.

If you take a look at the screen capture above, you'll notice the pair of scissors that have a dotted box running through them. This is what I'm talking about. If it's not already in your browser bar, you may need to ctrl-click and and select customize toolbar to add it.

Now, navigate to the Pandora page.

Once there, you'll simply want to click on the webclip button discussed above. Once you have, mouse over the player portion of your Pandora page so it's highlighted as in the image below.

Then click once and move to the Add button on the purple toolbar. When you do, it should open Dashboard with a clip of Pandora. Like so:

If you mouse down to the lower right corner, a little "i" will appear and you can click it to open up the options for the clip. Uncheck "Only Play Audio in Dashboard" and you're all set for Pandora to play in the background. This is especially useful if you have dashboard assigned to a key on the keyboard so you can pop in and out of it at will. It takes up no space on the desktop, doesn't require a subscription fee and provides all of the features of the web based version of Pandora without having to keep a window or tab reserved for it.

When I first thought of this it was a "well, duh" sort of moment.