Foobar2000 - Configuring and modding

I've been actively using foobar for five years. When I first started using it, I was impressed on how quickly it operated on my computer compared with its current rivals back then (Winamp, Windows Media Player). However I quickly became obsessed on how to make it look better. The default interface just didn't do the trick anymore and I wanted something "shinier" to replace the dull interface. I ended up trying many skins along the years, but now I've found the best, in my opinion of course. The skin is made by DeviantArt user called fanco86 and the skin is called "Metro".

As you can see from the video above, Metro is customized to look like Microsoft Zune, which in my opinion is very nice User Interface. It downloads all of the biography data including the artist artwork in biography tab from last.fm, but you will have to download cd-covers using either some foobar addons or some other software ie. Album Art Downloader. This skin uses different 3rd party components and plugins, but they are totally safe and virus-free. Nowadays customization of foobar2000 is fairly easy, so even newbies can get this thing up and running in a second. Now in this small tutorial I'm going to explain how to setup foobar and import the Metro skin.

First step is to download and install foobar2000. Most of the skins I've tried will only work with an exact version of foobar, but Metro seems to work on any of the newest foobar releases. The latest version up to date is 1.1.8 and that's what I recommend you to download and install from the foobar website. After installing it's not necessary to run foobar so just uncheck the box and finish the installation.

After that go to DeviantArt and download the Metro skin. It comes in .7z archive which can be opened by using any of the common freeware zip utility programs for example IZArc. Extract all the files to your desktop to a folder called Metro.

Either you can look inside the "HOW TO USE THIS" folder inside the Metro release or you can continue to read this hub and let me explain to you how to get this skin running on your foobar.

1. Copy components and skins folder to your foobar2000 installation directory (default is C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\

2. Launch foobar and choose ColumnsUI as the default interface. Cancel ColumnsUI quick setup that pops up.

3. Hold the Shift key and click the File menu open. Holding shift is necessary, because it allows you to locate your configuration folder and the option is hidden if you don't press shift while you open the file menu. Click Browse Configuration Folder. Now it opens a folder where you need to copy the configuration folder that came with the Metro release. Do this and restart foobar.

4. Now go to File\Preferences. Go to Display\ColumnsUI and choose FCL Import. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\skins and choose any of the Metro skins. Make sure to import all settings. Look at the picture below, because that's exactly how your foobar should look right now.

5. We still need to import some music to our player, so that we can start jamming. Go To Preferences and click Media Library. Choose the paths where you store your music files and after that click Ok. Now by clicking the disc image at the bottom left corner you should see all your music categorized by artist or by the album name.

6. Choose the album you prefer to listen and start listening.

For some of you the skin may still look boring, because I for start did not have any artist pictures saved in my music folders. I fixed this with one small step. Download Album Art Downloader (freeware) and when installing make sure to check the Artist images box. Then open the software and go: File\New\File Browser. Then search for your music collection and add artist pictures.

And in the end you should have your music completely organized. Enjoy!