Rhapsody and Mac haven’t always played nice. In fact, I think Real Networks doesn’t care much about Mac as a platform at all. Sure, these days Intel Mac owners can run Rhapsody natively with Parallels or Boot Camp, with all the bells and whistles. (downloads, offline listening, Rhapsody To Go, etc.) But I’ve been happy to just run it in my browser on my MacBook. Sometimes though, web apps can crash your browser unexpectedly, so that’s not ideal.
Just yesterday, I found a solution:
Fluid is a free Mac Application that you can use to build site specific web browser “applications.” I used it to create my own Rhapsody.app. I enjoyed it so much, I had to make my own icon for it too, which I’ll share here too. Here’s a screenshot of my Fluid built app:
**Edit: Now with Browsa! More on that in the comments.
And my icon in the dock:
If this appeals to you, give it a try:
- Download My Icon or make your own, if you feel like it. Gotta have one, or else you’re stuck with the favicon from rhapsody.com.
- Go Get Fluid, it’s great for your other favorite web apps too.
- Make your app and start listening. If you’re not already a Rhapsody web user, you’ll need to install a plugin, and if you’ve never used Rhapsody before you’ll need to create an account.
Marcel Ray
4 Oct, 2008
I actually have been doing this exact same thing. I love having the player in the right Browsa Browsa plugin. Thanks for the icon! I’ve been using a low-res one up to this point.
The latest version of Rhapsody seems to have some nasty JavaScript to auto resize the player window, which causes the entire Fluid app to resize! Gah!
I’ve been trying to play with overriding/hijacking the method, resizeWindow(), but have had no luck. It looks like the GreaseKit methods execute after the native functions.
Have you tried anything with this? Anyone else?
.Marcel
Micah
10 Oct, 2008
I’ve only ever ran the player in its own window, but I now I just upgraded my Fluid instance to see if I can do a single window like you’re talking about. I’ll let you know what I figure out.
Micah
13 Oct, 2008
I managed to get it working with a cheesy workaround. I edited my browsa preferences to make a split pane on the right that has a home page set to:
http://www.rhapsody.com/player?remote=false&page=&pageregion=&guid=&from=&pcode=rn&hasrhapx=true&__pcode=
Then you have to relaunch Rhapsody, start your browsa instance, and while it’s loading click one of the play buttons in the main window. This seems to get the player working without launching a window, making an even more streamlined Rhapsody Mac experience! I’m adding a new screenshot to the post now too.
Denise
3 Feb, 2010
Does fluid make the Rhapsody to go work so that an mp3 player can be updated on it?
Micah
3 Feb, 2010
No. Unfortunately you’ll need a PC to use Rhapsody To Go.
kd
10 Feb, 2010
Do what I did — get VirtualBox for free. Then either get a windows disk or download an iso file of windows.
The whole process should take about 3 hours, and you’ll have a PC inside your mac. Then just run rhapsody. VirtualBox is really good — as we speak I am loading 10 albums onto my sansa fuze while I use google chrome in OS.
Micah
11 Feb, 2010
Virtualization is always an option, I have used Rhapsody To Go via Boot Camp and Parallels myself but VirtualBox looks cool and it’s free. Nice!
http://www.virtualbox.org/
James
2 Mar, 2012
Fluid no longer seems to be working with Rhapsody. I’m not sure why. It was a great app program for my listening needs but a few weeks ago, the program would no longer load onto the Rhapsody site…
oh well, I’ll have to find another option
rob
30 Mar, 2012
actually i just installed fluid and added rhapsody, it is working correctly.