Do you use Windows Media Player 11 or 12 as your default media player? Today, we’re going to show you how to add some handy new features and enhancements with the Windows Media Player Plus third party plug-in.

Installation and Setup

Download and install Media Player Plus! (link below). You’ll need to close out of Windows Media Player before you begin or you’ll receive the message below.

The next time you open Media Player you’ll be presented with the Media Player Plus settings window. Some of the settings will be enabled by default, such as the Find as you type feature.

Using Media Player Plus!

Find as you type allows you to start typing a search term from anywhere in Media Player without having to be in the Search box. The search term will automatically fill in the search box and display the results.

You’ll also see Disable group headers in the Library Pane.

This setting will display library items in a continuous list similar to the functionality of Windows Media Player 10.

Under User Interface you can enable displaying the currently playing artist and title in the title bar.

This is enabled by default.

The Context Menu page allows you to enable context menu enhancements.

The File menu enhancement allows you to add the Windows Context menu to Media Player on the library pane, list pane, or both. Right click on a Title, select File, and you’ll see the Windows Context Menu.

Right-click on a title and select Tag Editor Plus.

Tag Editor Plus allows you to quickly edit media tags.

The Advanced tab displays a number of tags that Media Player usually doesn’t show. Only the tags with the notepad and pencil icon are editable.

The Restore Plug-ins page allows you to configure which plug-ins should be automatically restored after a Media Player crash.

The Restore Media at Startup page allows you to configure Media Player to resume playing the last playlist, track, and even whether it was playing or paused at the time the application was closed. So, if you close out in the middle of a song, it will begin playing from that point the next time you open Media Player.

You can also set Media Player to rewind a certain number of seconds from where you left off. This is especially useful if you are in the middle of watching a movie.

There’s also the option to have your currently playing song sent to Windows Live Messenger.

You can access the settings at any time by going to Tools, Plug-in properties, and selecting Windows Media Player Plus.

Windows Media Plus is a nice little free plug-in for WMP 11 and 12 that brings a lot of additional functionality to Windows Media Player. If you use Media Player 11 or WMP 12 in Windows 7 as your main player, you might want to give this a try.

Download Windows Media Player Plus!