InfoTag Magic is a useful shell extension that provides informational tooltips on mouse-over for audio files (MP3, WMA, APE, and Ogg Vorbis), quick tooltip previews for text files (TXT, INI, LOG, BAT, DIZ, BAK, and QUE, tooltip information on the properties of windows shortcuts, and tooltip version information for EXE, DLL, and OCX files.
This is a very straightforward software that provides informational toolips whenever you hover your mouse over certain types of files (see screenshot).
Here’s more info on each of the different types of files supported:
- Audio files: supports WP3, WMA, APE, and Ogg Vorbis. The first thing you need to find out is whether your audio player already provides informational tooltips for audio files, and, if so, whether you like the ones you already have. What I have noticed is while InfoTag Magic creates very nice tooltips, in some infrequent instances it omits some info even when that info seems to be available (as far as I can tell). The 2 MP3s in the screenshot both had info in their ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags, but the “Air” song did not have the title and artist displayed in the tooltip.
- Text files: (actually TXT, INI, LOG, BAT, DIZ, BAK, and QUE files). This is a really handy tooltip if you’re browsing a bunch of files or notes that you’ve created and would like to be able to quickly peer into files to see whats in them.
- Shortcuts: if you’re like me you not infrequently resort to right-clicking on a shortcut and displaying its properties to find out where it is pointing to and where it starts. With this tooltip, all you have to do is hover over a shortcut to instantly see this info.
- Executables: (EXE, DLL, and OCX). A quick way to see version and other info.
Wish list:
- The ability to switch tooltips off and on for certain file types. If, for example, my audio player already provides good tooltips for audio files and I simply want tooltips for the other filetypes. (Note that this is probably easily attained simply by installing InfoTag magic first and then re-installing your audio player or the software that provides the audio tooltips you want)
- Tooltips for video files
The verdict: this is a very nice program and very innovative insofar as it offers preview tooltips for text files, exec files and shortcuts. I find that I am more interested in the non-audio tooltips but its possible to get these and get audio tooltips from another source (see wish list above).
Version Tested: v1.0.b5
Compatibility: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP or Windows 95/NT with Internet Explorer 4.0 (or later) and Windows Desktop Update installed; no info on Vista.
Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 137K).
