Navigate full-screen Cover Flow

Other than the support for the someday-to-be-released Apple TV, the marquee feature of the new iTunes 7.1 is its full-screen Cover Flow view—the view that spreads your iTunes library’s album covers across your computer screen. Yet, attractive as this view may be, navigating it has proven confounding to some people. It’s like this:

If you’ve sorted your library or playlist by album or artist and invoke full-screen Cover Flow view by clicking the Cover Flow button at the top of the iTunes window (or typing Command-Option-5 on the Mac or Control-Alt-5 on a Windows PC) and then clicking the Full-screen button at the right of the Cover Flow window (or typing Command-F on the Mac or Control-F in Windows), you navigate with the mouse by doing the following.

To play the foremost album, click the Play button. Click Play again to pause.

To fast-forward through the track, click and hold the Forward button. To rewind through the track, click and hold the Back button.

To move to the next track in the album, click the Forward button. To return to the beginning of the currently playing track, click the Back button. To move to the previous track on the album, click Back twice.

To move to another album, click the right- or left-pointing arrows in Cover Flow’s scroll bar or click on the cover of that album. To play the first track on that album, double-click the album cover or click Pause and then Play.

You can also navigate with the keyboard.

To play the foremost album, press the Spacebar. Press Spacebar again to pause.

To fast-forward through a track, press and hold Command-Option-Right Arrow key on a Mac or Control-Alt-Right Arrow key on a Windows PC. To rewind through a track, press and hold Command-Option-Left Arrow key on a Mac and Control-Alt-Left Arrow key on a Windows PC.

To move to the next track in the album, press Command-Right Arrow on a Mac or Control-Right Arrow on a Windows PC. To move to the previous track, Command-Left Arrow on a Mac or Control-Left Arrow on a Windows PC. To move through the album’s tracks more quickly, press and hold Command-Right Arrow (Mac) or Control-Right Arrow (PC). To return to the beginning of the currently playing track, press Command-Left Arrow (Mac) or Control-Left Arrow (PC) once. To move to the previous track in the album, hold Command (Mac) or Control (PC) and press Left Arrow twice.

To move to another album, press the Right or Left arrow key. Press Spacebar to pause playback, and then press it again to begin playing the first track of the foremost album.

To adjust volume, use the Up and Down arrow keys.

To quickly move to another album using the artist’s name, type the first few letters of the artist— beat , for Beatles, for example.

Things change slightly when you choose to sort your music by track name rather than album or artist. In this case, when you use the mouse or keyboard to move to the next track, it won’t be the next track on the foremost album, but rather the next track in alphabetical order within the library or selected playlist. When you move in this way, the album cover will likely change as you’re probably playing music from a different album.