While there are hundreds of applications that are capable of displaying lyrics very few support synchronised lyrics and karaoke mode. MiniLyrics belongs to this rare category of lyrics plugins. It supports an insane number of applications (21 in all) including Windows Media Player, Winamp, Foobar, The KMPlayer, VLC Player, Songbird, iTunes and RealPlayer. And since it works through its own unique interface rather than integrating itself with the application interface it works very well irrespective of the player you are using.
That brings us to the lyrics display part. The default MiniLyrics skin displays scrolling lyrics with the current song line highlighted. Album art as well as basic playback controls are also integrated into the MiniLyrics interface thus ensuring that you won’t really need to use the player once you start playing the songs. If you find this too bloated you can switch to the single line mini-mode or use any of the 9 skins that the software comes with. However, I prefer to use the alternate interface that MiniLyrics provides – floating lyrics.It is the best thing about MiniLyrics. The Floating Lyrics window displays scrolling lyrics in a selected portion of the screen. This region is transparent in appearance as well in behaviour. You can actually click through this region and access any object beneath it. Thus ensures that no region of your screen is blocked and allows you to work without having to deal with the Lyrics window interfering.
MiniLyrics automatically searches and download lyrics for the song you are playing. When an exact match is not found it will prompt to select the correct result. MiniLyrics’ database may not be the largest but is fairly large. In fact it even includes lyrics for many recently released Hindi film (Bollywood) OST. You can configure MiniLyrics to store the lyrics in a separate folder or to store it in the same folder or even insert the lyrics in the id3 tag of the files. MiniLyrics also allows you to easily resync any out of tune lyrics. You can even create and upload new synchronised lyrics for any song using the handy lyrics editor.
MiniLyrics can be a bit buggy on occasions; however it is under active development with new versions released frequently. For most of the part it works as it should. The support for LRC (scrolling lyrics) files and floating lyrics display mode makes MiniLyrics the best lyrics display plugin I have come across. It supports as many as 21 players so chances are that it’s going to work with the player that you use. Heck! It even supports Windows Mobile. Unfortunately it’s not free. However, the trial version never expires and if you don’t mind a nag-screen at start-up you can use MiniLyrics for free.
Download MiniLyrics (1.61 MB)
MiniLyrics Website
Version reviewed : 6.5.281
Platforms Supported : Windows All versions
License : Shareware – Nagscreen
Cost : $19.95
Excellent program. Using version 6.7.391 myself but nonetheless. Awesome little program. Cannot recommend it enough.