Display Rating In Foobar Search Results

**Issue: How can I display the rating of songs in the search results of foobar2000? **

The popular music player foobar2000 (or foobar, as I like to call it) offers a great solution to work through a collection of songs. Foobar also offers the option to rate songs with 1 to 5 stars. However the program does not include the possibility to display the given rating inside of the search box. With a short expression this evidently useful feature can be easily implemented.

Preparing Foobar

Open up foobar2000 and click on Library > Configure to bring up the preferences. Make your way to Playlist View within the nested tree. Add a new Custom column and paste in this pattern:

$pad($repeat(★,$meta(rating)), 5,✩)

Type in a name to recognize your column later on. If your Playlist View resembles something like this, hit Ok:

Foobar Playlist View

Now open your search dialogue and click on a blank space next to the header with column names. A context menu will appear where you may choose the column you just created:

adding a column in Foobar

As the column appears you are now able to move it by drag & dropping it around. Congratulations, you just enabled the display of the track rating in foobar2000:

Foobar with enabled rating

The rating can also be displayed inside the Album View, using the same approach as in the search, by adding the column.

It’s a great idea to use a library search in foobar2000. Open up the preferences, navigate to Keyboard Shortcuts and set a hotkey for Library / Search. This will bring up a search box for your whole library, which you can populate and monitor in Preferences > Media Library. Of course you will be able to use your custom column here, too.