Wow version 2 of Yate is out.  We wanted version 2 to be pretty major and we’re excited about it.   This release concentrates on major UI changes around the management and editing of actions.  It also introduces an exciting new artwork search capability called Auto Search.  Complete release notes can be found here.

We’ve written actions which should make your life much easier as they allow you to confirm your acceptance of a downloaded image before saving it to the tracks.  The actions are contained in a folder (new for version 2) called Auto Search Actions.   If you initially installed Yate prior to version 2, you can get the actions after updating to the new version.  Simply hold down the Option key while displaying the Yate>Reset Built in Items menu and selecting Import Actions.

There are two variants of the action.  The first, called ‘Confirm Artwork from Auto Search (Update iTunes)’ will refresh iTunes with the accepted new artwork.  The second, called ‘Confirm Artwork from Auto Search (No iTunes)’ does not update iTunes.

To download new artwork do the following:

1) make sure you do not have a scale factor set in Preferences-General-Artwork.  If you do, you might not get the largest artwork possible.

2) set the UI to the artwork tab.  This is not strictly necessary but does make it easier to see what is downloaded.

3) load an album into Yate.  Make sure it’s an album for which you only want to retain one artwork itemThe actions being discussed only retain the largest artwork item after downloading new artwork.

4) start the action (with or without an iTunes refresh).

5) If you get a No artwork found message Yate couldn’t locate an image.  You can hit Cancel or Continue and no files will be modified.

6) If you see a Retain new Artwork? message it means that something was downloaded.  The downloaded artwork will be the last image in the artwork tab’s list.  Hit True to keep only the largest artwork item and possibly update iTunes.  Hit False to reject the new artwork.   Unfortunately the function is not perfect and incorrect images may be downloaded.

Try it out, it’s easier and far more entertaining than the description sounds.

We hope you like using the new features and UI changes in version 2.  Keep the feature requests coming!