pearLyrics Widget for Mac

pearLyrics Widget is a simple widget that automatically retrieves song lyrics as they play in iTunes. It can also search for lyrics without playing the song thanks to a manual search bar and it will even populate the lyrics inside your iTunes Library. As with many widgets of this kind, the success rate in retrieving lyrics is a bit hit and miss. Popular songs are sometimes retrieved but even then, other major songs and tracks simply won't. The standalone application is slightly more powerful as it also allows you to pre-fetch lyrics for whole iTunes playlists so you have them ready when you need them. The problem with pearLyrics Widget is that Apple has probably restricted the amount of access it has to iTunes. This means that it can't retrieve songs or ID3 tag data like it could before the latest update. This is in part due to pressure from record companies who see the retrieval of song lyrics as violating copyright. pearLyrics Widget is a brave attempt at providing a simple iTunes lyrics retrieval widget but the success rate is quite low.