Move an iTunes library from a Windows PC to a Mac. As more people switch from Windows PCs to Macs, they want to make sure they can move their digital lives from their old computers to their new ones. In most cases, copying documents is as simple as, well, copying them. Just take your My Documents folder and copy it to your Mac. But what if you want to copy your iTunes library, with all its music, and maintain your playlists and metadata (information such as ratings and last played dates)? It’s actually not that hard to do, but requires a modicum of preparation. What used to be a complex procedure is now relatively simple with iTunes 9. First you need to make some preparations on the Windows side. Next, choose File -> Library -> Organize Library. After this is done—these two steps may take a while if you have a big library—it’s time to copy the iTunes folder.
Windows 7: yourusername\My Music\iTunes Windows Vista: yourusername\Music\iTunes Windows XP: Documents and Settings\yourusername\My Documents\My Music\iTunes. Review: iTunes 11 adds cool features, but can be jarring to longtime users. [Editor’s note: The iTunes 11.0.1 update released on 12/13/12 addresses several of the problems discussed in the review, including very slow searching and the missing ability to display duplicate tracks.] iTunes 11, whose delayed release fueled much speculation about last-minute changes following an internal reorganization at Apple, sports the most radical alterations to the program’s interface since its inception. Previous upgrades to iTunes were incremental, adding features and tweaking the interface, but iTunes 11 puts a whole new face on the software.
In addition, iTunes 11 seems to be designed more for playing music than for organizing it—a slightly anachronistic approach, given the prevalence of portable devices. The most obvious change is the reintroduction of color to the program. Viewing your music The new options to view music by Genres or by Artists display sidebars showing icons for genres or for artists, with icons from your album art. Playlists. Back up your iTunes media files. As time goes by, and our digital media collections grow, we need to ensure that we don’t lose the music and video files that we’ve spent our hard-earned dollars (or, in the case of ripping our own CDs and DVDs, considerable time) on. Music, videos, and audiobooks can add up until your iTunes library fills your hard disk and then some. In addition to storing the original files, you have to make sure you keep backups, because in many cases you can’t download such files again.
What do you need to back up? Apple recently changed its policy, and now allows you to re-download much of the content you purchased on the iTunes Store as part of its iTunes in the Cloud functionality. You can get fresh copies of music, TV shows, apps, and books, but you can’t currently re-download movies or audiobooks. And, in the categories available for download, you may not find everything you purchased.
Depending on where else you bought your content, you may be able to re-download it. TuneRanger for Windows 7 - Sync iTunes libraries over a network. Connects iTunes-running computers over a network, allowing music, video, and playlists to be copied from one iTunes library to another seamlessly. Even works across platforms letting iTunes on Windows communicate and synchronize with iTunes on Mac or any combination. Offers true synchronization. It compares songs and videos on all computers and only moves what has changed.
It even does this for playlists. TuneRanger connects iTunes-running computers over a network, allowing music, video, and playlists to be merged from one iTunes library to another seamlessly. TuneRanger incorporates numerous tools designed to keep iTunes libraries clean and optimized. A 1-User license lets you install the software in up to 5 computers. New Release · Lots of general reliability, network discovery, and speed improvements. · We've adopted Apple's Bonjour network discovery on Windows. . · Added ? All TuneRanger reviews, submitted ratings and written comments become the sole property of . Get Organized: Clean Up iTunes (Part 1) As much as I am an organized person, my iTunes library is a disaster.
Or at least it was, until I decided to write this article. It didn't become a slop house overnight. It took years. Some time around 2004, I started using iTunes to copy music I had on disc. It was part of a grand plan to get rid of most of my physical media. When I suddenly had a hard deadline to sell off or donate all my old CDs and books (I was about to move overseas), I hurried up the process and didn't take a few essential steps to make sure it happened in an organized way. And it's grown worse every year since. If this sounds familiar, if your iTunes library is utterly disorganized, let's clean it up together. In this article, I cover how to clean up music and audio files in iTunes in three steps. The most important thing to understand about this article and others in the Get Organized series is that you don't have to be perfect. How to shift iTunes libraries. As I tool around the country talking to people about their iPods, I begin my talk by polling the audience to see how many tracks are in their iTunes libraries.
Not so long ago, perhaps one or two people in the crowd had more than 5,000 tracks. That’s changing. Now I have to ask “More than 10,000?” Before you begin separating the men from the boys (and yes, it’s always men). While this speaks volumes for the popularity of iTunes and the iPod (or, at least, the acquisitive nature of men), it also poses a problem: Assuming you want to use your computer’s startup drive for more than storing and playing music, where do you put all that music? Me? With all that storage at my command the only remaining issue is how to move the music on my startup drives to the archive drives. Moving music: First Steps There are a couple of ways to move your music from here to there. But there’s another way, which is: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Moving Music: A Step Beyond The technique I just outlined is no big secret. 1. 2. 3. iTunes Smart Playlist getting started guide. Here’s an outline for a set of Smart Playlists that will get you started building an accessible iTunes Library…The basics should be universal, but you’ll want to customise it to suit your taste: if you have lots of music pre-1950, for example. If you need a reresher on making a Smart Playlist the how-to guide is at the bottom of the page. Folder: Rating ’0 Star’: My Rating is 0 Star ’1 Star’: My Rating is 1 Star ’2 Star’: My Rating is 2 Star ’3 Star’: My Rating is 3 Star ’4 Star’: My Rating is 4 Star ’5 Star’: My Rating is 5 Star Folder: Year ’1950s’: Year is in the range 1950 to 1959 ’1960s’: Year is in the range 1960 to 1969 ’1970s’: Year is in the range 1970 to 1979 ’1980s’: Year is in the range 1980 to 1989 ’1990s’: Year is in the range 1990 to 1999 ’2000s’: Year is in the range 2000 to 2009 Folder: Maintenance Folder: Top Create a folder for each group. cmd-opt-n to Create a new Smart Playlist.
More tips. - dougscripts.com. June 9 2017 - 7:06 am Kirk and I go deep on playlists in iTunes in this week’s episode of The Next Track podcast. Real deep. This episode is sponsored by Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba. If you can hear it on your Mac, you can record it with Audio Hijack. Download a free trial of Audio Hijack and be sure to check out a special offer for The Next Track listeners in this week’s episode. You can listen to the episode at The Next Track website here or subscribe here in iTunes to make sure you get all future episodes. May 31 2017 - 3:38 pm I have just updated Delete Empty Playlists to v3.0. This latest version can, certainly, delete all the empty playlists it finds. Delete Empty Playlists is free to use with a donation nag and is available to download from this page. May 23 2017 - 7:54 pm Apple released iTunes 12.6.1.25 just about a week ago. I believe this is the third time a release has been updated with a minor build shortly after its initial release.
May 22 2017 - 12:00 pm May 19 2017 - 12:14 pm. How to manage a huge iTunes Library. So you have 100,000 tracks in your library and now you can’t find anything? Here are some principles and practical ideas on how to manage and maintain a huge iTunes library… Divide & Conquer Make big changes and improvements, then fix the small problems later. Example: search for ‘Led Zeppelin’ and change the genre for all tracks to ‘Classic Rock’ (or whatever!). Depending on your library, you may have fixed the genre for a couple of hundred tracks… do this with ten of your biggest artists and you’ve made some progress!
Here’s another way of fixing big batches of tracks: use maintenance smart playlists to catch untagged stuff. Set up an Unrated (0 Star) Smart Playlist, and SPLs for tracks with no genre, no artist name, or no year. A general principle: organise your music based on the tags you’ve given it, instead of building a manual structure of Dumb Playlists. Develop different approaches for getting at the good stuff, or stuff you need to be reminded about. Tag your music well. iTuner - The iTunes Companion - Home. iTunes Library Toolkit. While some software sites may provide downloads for Library Toolkit, the latest version is always available via the download link below. The latest version is 1.1.03 : System Requirements & Pre-Requisites Windows XP, Windows 7, or Windows 8* Microsoft .NET Framework 4 iTunes (validated from version 10, though earlier versions should also work) * Windows Vista & Server users: please verify the trial version works without issue before committing to purchase. iTunes Library Toolkit (for Windows) has been developed by the makers of iTunes Folder Watch, a well established and proven iTunes utility.
The iTunes Library Toolkit will greatly simplify the ongoing maintenance of your iTunes library. New Media - detects new media under watched folders and adds them to iTunes. The Automate function leverages the power of the core functions. Licencing Licence for one year on one computer : £3.99 (GBP) How is it different to iTunes Folder Watch ? Why can't the toolkit attach to iTunes ? Where is my key ? Enable Hidden, Missing, Lacking Extra Features In iTunes.
Advertisement iTunes is a great music and media player, but it does lack in basic useful features and functions, iTuner is a free software which adds missing and lacking features to iTunes including automated library maintenance, playlist exporting, playlist synchronization with MP3 players, global keyboard control, lyric discovery, and track and playback control. C#, WPF, MusicBrainz, iTunes APIs, and more. Note: As this program works as a addon for native program iTunes, so make sure that iTunes in running in background to use this application All those software features which are difficult to find and locate in iTunes, like some of the features mentioned below which adds on top of iTunes. Automated library maintenance and optimization Synchronize one or more playlists directly to a selected USB MP3 player Easy playlist export Global hot key control of iTunes playback with customizations Automatic lyric discovery using multiple online providers Download iTuner [ Via Ghacks ]
How To: Rebuild or Clean an iTunes Library. Building up an iTunes Library can take up a great deal of time when you have dozens of GB to work with. And all your hard work can be flushed away in an instant when your computer crashes or you have any other hard drive problem. iTunes can bring the user a very fulfilling experience once he can benefit from all the iTunes artwork, when all the Library is fully organized or tagged, through the Cover Flow function that enables the user to visualize artwork while navigating through iTunes. In order to prevent or alleviate the nightmare of losing all your work designing the iTunes Library, TuvaBox has created this article providing information on prevention (the best case scenario) and reducing the damages after a computer failure (the worst case scenario) and all the options a user has in each situation. When iTunes works fine.. Any time is the right time to back-up your iTunes Library content, in order to be safe when and if your iTunes dies out because a computer crash or a rare bug. 1.
BeaTunes ~ build better playlists. Ask the iTunes Guy: iTunes tips 101. [Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.] I get lots of questions about some of the basics of iTunes. These are things that may not be that obvious, but are practical to know and can make your use of iTunes more efficient. Here’s a selection of some iTunes tips. Q: I can’t seem to figure out which of the many playlists is actually playing. They are all listed on the left but I see no indication of which one is playing. How can I find out?
There’s no way in iTunes to see which playlist is playing. Q: I like to put my entire iTunes music library (about 10,000 songs) on shuffle and listen to whatever comes up. iTunes offers a setting to exclude tracks from shuffling. If you ever want to change it back—say when it’s Christmas season—just select all the tracks and change that setting to No. In theory, yes, and it’s called Sound Check. If I change my itunes library to an external drive, will it duplicate or move existing tracks to said dri.
It sounds to me like you want to store your music on, and listen to your music from, an external hard drive that. I’m not sure if you already have iTunes files on your external drive and, if so, whether you already have these same files on your local hard drive. If you have files on the external drive that aren’t on your local drive already, I suggest first copying those files locally. The idea is that you want to start with everything already on your local drive, as part of your existing (local) iTunes library before you follow the instructions below. These instructions come directly from the Apple support site. (If you want to move your iTunes using a Mac, follow these instructions instead.)
If your hard drive is nearly full after loading all your music into iTunes, or if you just want to move all those music files to another hard drive on your system, here’s a way to make the move while retaining all your playlists, ratings, and play history. Open iTunes. Click OK. Open iTunes.