Browse Your Mac’s Photos, Music, Links For Free.

Do you like how iLife integrates browsing for music, movies, and photos? Many Mac utilities take advantage of that nifty, handy, fluid OS X file integration.

Media browsing is easy for Mac users. Here’s the tool that does media browsing right, any time you want it, and it’s free.

We’ve long been fans of Karelia Software, the folks who make Sandvox, the web site builder. It’s a point and click application which lets you build attractive web sites with ease.

Sandvox has a nifty utility called the iMedia Browser which works like the browser in each iLife application. You can select music, photos, movies, and drop them into the web site. It’s all point and click or drag and drop.

The iMedia Browser is now available for free and it pretty much works in any Mac application that needs it, OS X Tiger or Leopard.

What iMedia does is let you browse all your media without having to open iPhoto, or iMovie, or iTunes, or even Safari for bookmarks. They’re always open, always ready, always a click away.

Browse the photos in your iPhoto or Aperture library, or any other pre-defined folder. Ditto for music, iMedia lets you scan all the songs in iTunes, but also lets you view what’s been created in GarageBand or anything inside the Mac’s Music folder.

Got Clips? iMovie can start to take up lots of space. iMovie for iLife ‘08 is better at managing a library of movie clips, but iMedia Browser lets you dig through the Movie folder without bothering to open up iMove first.

Ditto for Safari bookmarks, too. The Safari Links icon in iMedia means you have quick access to any of your Mac’s bookmarks in the browser window. It even works on Firefox, Camino, and OmniWeb.

iMedia Browser is one of those rare utilities that should be everywhere you want your files to be. Apple builds in a media browser for iLife applications, and iMedia Browser works in a similar vein, but is available from the Dock, or from the Menu Bar.

You’ll need Mac OS X Tiger or Leopard to operate iMedia Browser. Panther users should upgrade before their Mac’s selfdestruct. Isn’t there a selfdestruct mechanism built in? There is in Windows. Sorry. I just had to.

Why is Karelia making iMedia Browser free for Mac users? Because they can. Mac users don’t buy Sandvox just to use the iMedia Browser. They buy it to build web sites. So why hide a utility that all Mac users can use?

Did I mention that iMedia is free? I thought so. It’s my calling in life.

Here’s a series of questions to consider. Do you use iLife, whatever the version? Do you use Apple’s built-in iLife media browser to move photos into iMove, and music into iPhoto, and so on? If so, is it handy to have a free browser that works the same way for your other Mac applications? Talk Back to us and post your experience in the Comments section below.