gHacks technology news » apple itunes

Install iTunes Without Unnecessary Software

Martin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:32:55 +0000

Apple has just released iTunes 9 and the web is full of reviews that compare the new version to previous ones and outline the changes and new additions that Apple has packed into the new version of their popular music management software. The new version does not offer that many new features but most users would probably like to update their old version of iTunes anyway. Something that has not changed is the inclusion of many additional software programs and services that many users consider unnecessary. These software programs include the Bonjour service, Apple Quicktime, MobileMe support or the iTunesHelper and iPodService startup processes.

Ajua has updated the iTunes switchless installer which will install iTunes without this unnecessary software. The user needs to install Quicktime Alternative (or Apple Quicktime) separately before this modified version of iTunes can be installed. The functionality remains the same for most users. Only those that require the Bonjour service (is there any Windows user who does?) or MobileMe support obviously need to install the official version provided by Apple.

The latest iTunes switchless installer can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is available in English and a multi-language version. The switchless installer was tested with Apple Quicktime installed. Some users reported that Quicktime Alternative 2.9.2. caused problems during installation which might mean that the software needs to be updated to be compatible with iTunes 9.

Tags: apple itunes, bonjour, iPodService, itunes, itunes 9, itunes custom install, ituneshelper, quicktime

Palm Defies Apple – iTunes Working Again

Martin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:50:22 +0000

This is shaping up to be one hell of a war between Apple and Palm. For those of you who have the Palm Pre, you are aware that Apple recently sent out an update to the iTunes software (8.2.1) a few days ago that bricked the Palm Pre’s syncing feature.

It was noted for sometime now that the Pre could sync with the iTunes store based on a hack. And Apple did warn that it could be gone soon. Well they did and Pre owners found out that they could no longer sync with iTunes 8.2.1.

For those wondering, the problem that Apple had with the Pre’s syncing capabilities is the fact it tricked iTunes into thinking it was an iPod. When you connected the Pre to iTunes it would show up as “iPod” and according to the boys at Cupertino, this was unlawful. Apple made no bones about the update, calling Palm by name regarding the reason for the patch to the ever so popular music software.

Well it hasn’t been a good week and already Palm has answered Apple’s challenge. Just today I downloaded webOS version 1.1 and what would you know? iTunes tethering was back. Not only has Palm gone around Apple’s block they have specifically mentioned it as a reason for the update.

So of course everyone is asking what is going to happen next. First I gotta say that Palm has balls to be doing this, but on second their new CEO happens to be the former head of Apple’s iPod division so that could be a factor as to why they are so brazen. Jon probably knows exactly how to deal with Apple. And more importantly, since he was involved with iTunes and iPod for so long, knows all the dirty secrets about it.

I’m not sure what Apple is going to do now, because apparently Palm has made it clear that they are not going to go down without a fight. The only thing I could think of to permanently fix this problem would be for Apple to hard code software recognition into the iPod’s USB connector, and that could be too expensive. There other option is probably to try and sue Palm.

Either way, this is gearing up to be very interesting and its about bloody time. Never seen one of these in the gadget world before. So who are you rooting for? Care to say in the comments below?

Tags: apple, apple itunes, cell-phone, itunes, itunes pre, palm, palm pre

Automatically Import Music Into iTunes

Martin — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:14:35 +0000

The same software developer who created the iTunes Playlist Exporter has created another useful third party tool for Apple’s iTunes media manager. The software is called iWatchSyncer and its main purpose is to monitor a folder on the local hard drive for new music to synchronize it with the iTunes software. The software has been designed to be foolproof. All the user needs to do is to pick a folder on the computer system that should be monitored for new music files.

The only other available option is to select a playlist to be created or extended with the music that is found in the monitored directory. This is an optional step though and not required for the music import to work properly. The software will check the folder for new music periodically and add it automatically to iTunes whenever new music is discovered in that folder on the drive. It looks like the interval is set to 1 minute as music that is moved to the folder gets quickly added to iTunes all the time.

The program has to be running in the background for this to work properly. It uses quite some computer memory (34 Megabytes on a Windows XP test system) which might make it to memory hungry for some computer systems. Could be worth a try for users who regularly add music to a specific folder and its subfolders on a computer system though. The music does get added to iTunes regularly as well.

Tags: apple itunes, itunes, itunes music, iTunes sync, iwatchsync, music, windows software

iTunes Playlist Exporter

Martin — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:59:33 +0000

The popular music manager iTunes offers a great and easy way of creating playlists. It takes a few clicks to create and fill a playlist in the iTunes software. There is however no official way of exporting playlists from iTunes to the computer system. This might be interesting for users who want to transfer playlists to other devices or systems that cannot be connected to the iTunes software, e.g. a mp3 player or cell phone from another manufacturer.

Enter iExporter. The software program for the Windows operating system comes with the means to easily export playlists to the computer system. The only restriction of the program is that it currently only works with native mp3 files.

The software has to be connected to iTunes upon start. This is done by clicking on the Connect to iTunes button. The software will be opened if it is not open already and the two tabs playlists and artists will be populated. The playlist tab contains all playlists that are currently available in iTunes. The artist tab on the other hand offers the possibility to export selected artists from iTunes. This did not work on the Windows XP SP3 test system though.

iExporter is a great software for iTunes users that want to export some or all of their playlists to their computer system.

Tags: apple itunes, iexporter, itunes, itunes playlist, itunes playlist export, playlist, playlist export

Install iTunes Without Quicktime And Bonjour

Martin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:28:04 +0000

Apple’s iTunes software will only install and run if additional Apple products are installed on the computer system as well. This includes Apple Quicktime and Bonjour. A user installing iTunes will notice that the installer will also install Quicktime and Bonjour on the host system with no obvious option to opt out of their installation.

There is however a way to install iTunes without Apple Quicktime, Bonjour, MobileMe support and iTuneshelper process running at startup. This can be achieved with a custom installer that can be downloaded from the Custom Installers page which contains installers for the English and multi-language versions of iTunes 8.0.2.20 and 8.1.0.52. The only requirement other than running the installer to install iTunes is an installation of Quicktime Alternative and the Quicktime Alternative iTunes add-on which makes the program compatible with iTunes 8.

The correct sequence for installing iTunes without Quicktime and Bonjour would be therefore to install Quicktime Alternative, then the Quicktime Alternative plugin and finally iTunes using the custom installer. The custom installer will skip the installation of aforementioned programs and services. This is great news for users who do not want to have those programs running in the background or those who prefer to run the Quicktime Alternative program instead of the original.

The iTunes customer installer is only available for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It comes as a msi file that allows a silent installation with the switches /qb /norestart.

Tags: apple itunes, bonjour, install itunes, itunes, itunes custom install, itunes installation, ituneshelper, mobileme, quicktime, windows software

Apple iTunes Songs Cleanup

Martin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:09:11 +0000

Apple iTunes is one of the most popular media managers which can largely be attributed to the success of the iPod and iPhone product line. We have covered iTunes in the past, explained for example how to Create A Free US iTunes Account or mentioned the program iTunes music library cleanup for it. Songs Cleanup is another free software program to cleanup the song tags of iTunes libraries.

It does require an installation of Apple’s iTunes software to work which is the only requirement. The main interface is divided into a library selector that provides access to all playlists that are currently configured in the installed iTunes version on the computer system. A click on the Clean button will initiate the scan of the songs that are listed in the library.

Users who want more control can access several configuration settings before which define the value that null fields will be replaced with and which also allow the selection and deselection of several cleaning filters.

The application is definitely a work in progress and could need some additional information to guide the user and explain what it is doing. The homepage of the software developer lists several of the features and plans for future versions. The download on that page is currently broken but will hopefully be fixed by the developer soon. Here is the direct link to the page containing the download.

Tags: apple, apple itunes, itunes, itunes cleanup, itunes libraries, itunes songs, itunes tips, music, windows software

Apple iTunes Music Library Cleanup

Martin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:25:45 +0000

If you are a heavy Apple iTunes user your iTunes music library might contain music that is not longer on the computer system or duplicate music. Teridon’s iTunes Scripts are a collection of scripts for Apple iTunes that can perform various tasks like scanning the iTunes music library for duplicate music or removing music that is no longer on the computer system. The script collection is completely portable and can be executed right after downloading and unpacking.

A total of 19 different scripts are available that can be executed from the interface. The scripts usually spawn a dos window that will execute the selected script. A selection of the script itunes_not_found will for example scan the iTunes music library for music that is no longer available on the local hard drive. Other cleanup scripts include the search for duplicate music in iTunes. Some scripts require user input like removing songs based on a playlist or location. The script collection will usually list the available options and wait for keyboard input to continue executing the script.

Teridon’s iTunes Scripts provide a great way of cleaning up the music collection in Apple iTunes. The script collection does contain several additional scripts that might be worth a try. One interesting script is for example the one that will create a playlist containing all songs of a connected iPod.

The scripts are also available as Perl scripts for users who do not like to download the executables. They have been tested both with iTunes 6 and 7 but most should work fine if iTunes 8 is installed on the computer system as well.

Tags: apple itunes, itunes, itunes library, itunes library scripts, itunes music, music, music library cleanup, portable software

How To Anonymize iTunes Songs

Martin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:30:28 +0000

One of our readers pointed out that the application that we reviewed a while back to anonymize iTunes songs had been down for a while. He suggested another method of getting rid of user identifying data in iTunes. The iTunes plus songs contain three obvious fields that can be used to identify the user. The EFF is suspecting that each song might contain even more fields that can be used to identify the user.

The actual process of anonymizing itunes songs involves the usage of two different programs: Atomic Parsley and Hexfiend. Atomic Parsley will be used to remove the application ID which is usually the email address of the user who purchased the song and the purchase data. The software is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

A basic command that can be very helpful is to display all information about a song using the software. To do this run the following command:

atomicparsley song.m4u -t

This will list all tags and their values in the same command window making it easy to spot the identifying ones.

Tags can be removed with the command

atomicparsley song.m4a –manualAtomRemove “moov.udta.meta.ilst.TAG”

where TAG has to be replaced with a valid name. To remove both the application ID and purchase data from an iTunes song one would issue the following command:

atomicparsley song.m4a –-manualAtomRemove “moov.udta.meta.ilst.apID” –-manualAtomRemove “moov.udta.meta.ilst.purd” -W

An alternative would be to remove all tag information at once using the following command which is currently the only way to ensure that the song will not contain user identifying information afterwards. It will however clear all tags including title, artist and other related tags.

AtomicParsley song.m4a –metaEnema

After finishing the first step of anonymizing iTunes songs we still have to remove the name of the buyer that is contained in the songs. To do that a hexeditor like Hexfiend is needed. Simply open the iTunes song in Hexfiend and search for the name. Once the name is found replace it with other chars that match the exact length of the name. Save the file under a different file name and check out that it still plays fine in your favorite music player.

Tags: anonymize itunes songs, apple itunes, atom remove, atomicparsley, itunes, itunes anonymity, itunes privacy, privacy, privatunes, software

How To Use Multiple iTunes Libraries

Martin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:43:33 +0000

Not many iTunes users know that it is possible to use multiple iTunes libraries on the same computer system. There is virtually no information about running multiple iTunes libraries once iTunes has been started. Before we explain how to setup multiple iTunes libraries we should analyze why someone would want to work with several iTunes libraries instead of just one.

The main reason to use multiple iTunes libraries would be to divide specific data into different libraries. This can be dividing losless and lossy music, libraries for specific occasions, specific music genres or types like bootlegs or live music only.

It is actually very easy to create a second iTunes library. All that needs to be done is to press the Shift key (Alt on Macs) before launching iTunes. A small popup window will be displayed asking the user to choose or create a library.

Selecting the create a library option will create a new iTunes library that acts independently of all other iTunes libraries. It should also be noted that iTunes will always open the library that has been used the last time iTunes was executed. Switching libraries would again require pressing the Shift key during launch.

Tags: apple itunes, itunes, itunes libraries, itunes library, itunes tips

Take Keyboard Control Of iTunes With iTunes Media Keys

Martin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:31:59 +0000

We covered iTunes Media Keys about two month ago. The software made it possible to control iTunes with some keyboard shortcuts even if iTunes was minimized. The verdict back then was that it did work quite well but missed customization and options. The software developer did promise a new version and released a new version of the software yesterday.

Version 1.2 of iTunes Media Keys adds the option to select the hotkeys to perform the various actions. Several new actions have been added which can be used to rate songs, forward or rewind them.

The software will add the shortcuts as system wide shortcuts. All that needs to be done to use the software is run it in the background.

The software itself uses less than 1 Megabytes of computer memory while running but about 12 Megabytes of virtual memory, still acceptable for heavy iTunes users. The software requires an installation of the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5. Should run fine on most Microsoft operating systems.

Tags: apple itunes, control itunes, itunes, itunes hotkeys, iTunes media keys, itunes shortcuts, itunes software, windows software

Create A Free US iTunes Account From Any Country

Martin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:37:58 +0000

If you have a US iTunes account you can get all sorts of freebies like new songs or media that is only being made available for US users. We previously mentioned how to get a free US iTunes account but Apple soon after disabled that option. You see, if you want to create a new iTunes account you usually have to add one of your credit cards to that account. The problem for non-US iTunes users is that the billing address of the credit card has to be located in the country that you are claiming to be a user of. Most non-US users do not have a credit card that has a billing address in the United States of America which essentially means that they cannot sign up as a US user.

There is however a very easy and straightforward way to create a US iTunes account without having to add a credit card or any other means of payment during the account creation phase. The famous None option will be selectable during account creation. Start by visiting the iTunes store. Make sure you are in the United States store. If you are not scroll down to the bottom and change the store to United States. Access the App Store that contains applications for the iPhone. Select a free one from the list of Top Free Apps and click on the Get App link in the detail view. The next window is the login window with the option to create a new account.

Click on the Create New Account button and on Continue in the next window. Accept the license agreement and click continue once more.

Now fill out basic account details, like the email, username and password of that account and click on Continue again.

After that the screen with the payment information and address will appear. Select None as the payment and fill out the address information using a address in the United States. The easiest way to do that is to search in Google for hotels, e.g. Miami hotels, New York hotels and use the address of the hotel as the address.

Verify the email in the last step and you are set to use the US iTunes account. Here is a quick recap:

Open the United States iTunes store
Download a free iPhone application
Select to create a new account
Enter username, password and email
Select none option and add a US address with matching zip, town and street.
Verify the email

This should work from any country. If you got problems or tips let us know in the comments.

Tags: apple itunes, create itunes account, itunes, itunes account, itunes store, itunes store account, itunes tips, itunes us, itunes us account, us account

Speed Up iTunes Downloads With Autobahn

Martin — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:26:40 +0000

Autobahn – a German word for motorway – is a software application for Windows and Mac OSX that can speed up downloads and streams of several popular services including Apple’s iTunes service, the video portal Veoh and MySpace TV. The developers are not revealing lots of information about how the application is speeding up the transfers. They do give only one example.

Autobahn speeds up iTunes downloads and transfers by establishing multiple connections to the iTunes server. This stabilizes streams and increases downloads from iTunes which is especially important for large downloads or streams.

The only indicator that Autobahn is running is a system tray icon after its installation. It depends largely on the Internet connection if the service is able to speed up the transfers noticeably. It is obviously not possible to achieve higher transfer rates than possible.

The application is using quite some computer memory while running (26 Megabytes) and it is therefor recommended to only run it when it is needed.

Tags: apple itunes, autobahn, itunes, itunes downloads, itunes streams, myspace tv, speed up itunes, veoh

Create A Free US iTunes Account

Martin — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 08:55:22 +0000

The iTunes software is performing a check when a user creates a new account to verify that the address of the user and his payment address are related. A credit card for instance would have to be from the United States as well if the user would select the United States as his country of residence. It is therefor not possible to create a US iTunes account the “normal” way unless US address and credit card are at hand. One way to get past this verification is to buy gift certificates and use them to create the account.

Some users probably prefer not to pay any money for the account because they just want access to the free contents and never make a payment in the store. The good news is that it is possible to use used coupons as well to create a free US iTunes account. Gift certificates could later still be used to add money to the account in case a purchase has to be made.

The benefits of having an US account are access to free songs which are updated regularly, to better promotions and music, movies or tv shows that are not available in other iTunes store yet.

The first thing you do is to download the iTunes software and install it. Once that is done start it and locate the Redeem link in the top right Quick Links menu.

This will load a page with a form that accepts coupons and gift certificates. All you need to is to paste a coupon code into the form and click on Redeem to send it to iTunes. Coupons can be found here or here.

The iTunes software will throw an error message if the gift certificate or coupon is no longer valid. That however is not a problem at all. Return to the homepage by clicking on the home icon in the upper left corner of the iTunes store.

Once the homepage has loaded it is time to create the account. You can do that by clicking on the Sign In button on the upper right corner of the iTunes store. It offers you login possibilities and a button to create a new account. Click on that button.

Click continue on the welcome page and accept the terms and conditions of the iTunes store in the second. This finally leads to the account creation page.

Enter your details on that page and continue to the next and final step of the account creation.

If everything went well you should now see the page where you can select a payment method and enter the address of the account. The payment method has to offer None as one option for this to work. If that is the case choose none. Now you need to enter an US address in the last step to create the account.

The zip code, state and city have to match. Everything else does not. Just select the location of a friend or relative to be on the safe side but it is practically possible to enter any information you like.

The account will be created in the last step and the contents of the US iTunes store are now available.

Tags: apple itunes, apple store, itunes, itunes accounts, itunes coupons, itunes gift certificates, itunes store, us account itunes

Fix The Folder iTunes Cannot Be Found Or Created

Martin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:24:22 +0000

Starting iTunes after a recent installation returned the error message “The folder iTunes cannot be found or created”. It was referring to the My Music directory that is usually located in the My Documents folder on the partition containing the operating system. The iTunes software creates an iTunes folder in the My Music directory on first start and if that directory is not accessible it will throw the error message and fail to load.

Since this error is related to the My Music folder it is important to check the directory path of that folder in the Windows Registry. This is best done by using the shortcut [Windows R], typing [regedit] and hitting the [enter] key.

The fastest way of location the two locations that contain path information for the My Music folder is to use the search by pressing [F3] and entering [My Music] in the search box. A click on [Find Next] will start the search and reveal the two locations.

The test computer system did not have path information listed at all. This can be changed by double-clicking the My Music key in the Registry and changing the path to an valid path manually.

The two Registry locations that list the My Music path are the following two:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Make sure both point to a valid path on the system. Once the path has been changed iTunes will create the iTunes folder in that location and start up without this error message.

Tags: apple itunes, itunes, itunes error, itunes first start, itunes fix, itunes folder, itunes installation

Au Revoir, Bonjour!

Martin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:43:21 +0000

If you have installed Apple software on your computer system running Windows lately, or software from Adobe or a few other software developers, chances are that you already have a service running called Bonjour which is responsible for the process mdnsresponder.exe that appears in the Windows Task Manager.

Bonjour enables automatic discovery of network devices and services on IP networks. The service is usually not needed on most Windows installations and remains installed even if the application that installed it gets uninstalled on the system. Other means of identifying the service is the Bonjour folder in the program files folder of the Windows installation.

Bonjour can be uninstalled manually which is explained in the link above or by running Au Revoir, Bonjour.
The small application for Windows stops and uninstalls the Bonjour service and removes the winsock namespace layer provider as well.

The program can be executed directly. It scans the system for traces of the Bonjour service and uninstalls them if found. The software program is compatible to Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista.

Tags: adobe photoshop, apple, apple itunes, bonjour, bonjour service, mdnsresonder, mDNSResponder.exe

Free iTunes Alternative Froddle Pod

Martin — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:03:37 +0000

Most users would probably agree that Apple’s iTunes software is not a lightweight application. To the contrary. The application is huge and some will see it as an overkill if you only want to transfer music from and to an iPod. That’s where iTunes software alternatives come into play.

Froddle Pod is such an iTunes alternative. It certainly is not as feature rich as iTunes but it provides access to the main features that iPod owners need: It can copy music and videos from and to an iPod which is definitely the main feature that any iTunes alternative should support.

The software can also backup and restore all data that is stored on an iPod. Another feature is music normalization for all or selected music on the iPod. It is currently unclear if it supports album art.

Supported are the following iPod models currently: iPod Nano (all), iPod Mini (all), iPod Classic (3rd to 6th generation). No support for the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch yet.

The software did check for and download the Microsoft Visual J# Distributable which takes up 80 Megabytes of space on the hard drive.

Tags: apple ipod, apple itunes, iPod, itunes, itunes-alternative, mp3-player, software

Giggle Music and Event Recommendations

Martin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:45:31 +0000

Giggle released a beta version of their music and event recommendation software that currently works only with Apple’s iTunes software and the event recommendations seem to be exclusively for locations in Great Britain. A registration is required before you can start Giggle for the first time. Giggle is picking up songs that are playing in iTunes automatically and is scanning its database for music recommendations. Up to four recommendations are shown in the main interface.

Each recommendation displays the cover artwork, name of the band and three icons. While the first icon does not seem to do anything the other two are linking directly to the iTunes store page of that band and to a event finder that is displaying the upcoming events for the artist or group. I had best results with well known groups and songs, especially those from Britain.

Most did not return recommendations yet. This will surely change over time when more users download and use the software. The events sometimes take some time to load and are currently only suggesting locations in Britain. Events are also accessible through their own icon at the top which does make sense because no one is going to play one song, switch to Giggle to see if there are any events and then continue playing songs.

The link displays all band names with events and users can switch to the recommendations that only display events of artists that have been played by the user. Events are directly linking to ticket shops on the Internet.

Giggle does offer something new and I really like the idea of event recommendations or reminders. If they manage to add events for a larger audience, say all of Europe and North America they surely could become a very popular service. Another feature that I would like to see is that Giggle will be compatible to additional music players like Winamp and XMPlay.

If you currently live in the UK you can already use Giggle. Everyone else should wait until they manage to add events for your country.

Tags: apple itunes, artists, event recommendations, giggle, itunes, mp3, music, music recommendations

iTunes Control

Martin — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 09:06:53 +0000

The application iTunes Control is an add-on for Apple’s iTunes software. It mainly adds two functions to iTunes, the first is a customizable on screen display of the track that is currently playing and the second are more than 20 hotkeys that make it easier to run iTunes in the background.

The on screen display is displaying information about the current song for several seconds. The position can be configured as can most other options like the font, the information that are displayed and the transparency of the display. The on screen display is not really appealing to me, it distracts to much and I’m not someone who needs to know those information about each song playing.

The hotkeys however make this iTunes add-on worthwhile. They can be used to pause and mute songs, play the previous or next one, turn the volume down or up, rate songs and set a sleep timer. It’s pretty useful if you consider that there are no global shortcuts for iTunes by default.

Itunes Control can be a great asset if you use iTunes regularly to listen to your music collection. It does not make that much sense to users who use it only to transfer music to and from their mp3 player.

Tags: apple, apple itunes, itunes, software, Windows

Scarddlg.dll error when opening iTunes

Martin — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:23:34 +0000

A friend of mine recently received an error message whenever he was trying to open iTunes. The error stated that the file scarddlg.dll was missing on the system and that a reinstallation of the application might fix the problem. A reinstall did not help and he asked me if I was able to come up with a solution to his problem.

A quick look on the Internet revealed that scarddlg.dll was related to the Windows Smart Card service. I asked him to load services.msc in the run box and search for that entry. It turned out that he had disabled the service. I asked him to enable it again and from then on iTunes loaded as usual again.

I also knew that a software called xp lite was offering a way to remove that service completely from Windows, I think it was in the Pro version of it. If that has been done the service would not appear at all in the services menu anymore. You need to use XP Lite to add that service again. Another option would be to install Windows XP again.

Tags: apple itunes, Scarddlg.dll, smard card

iTunes Folder Watch

Martin — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:58:35 +0000

Apple iTunes has no way of detecting new music additions to your music folders which means that you have to add them from within iTunes manually to be able to play them in the software or sync them with your iPod music player.

A software with the name iTunes folder watch comes to the rescue. Folders that contain music can be added to iTunes folder watch. Those folders are then scanned automatically – or if preferred manually – and music that has not been added to iTunes yet is listed under the New Tracks tab.

Those tracks can be imported to iTunes again with the choice to sync the music automatically or manually. It is possible to explicitly exclude folders from being scanned. This might be useful if you don’t want to add the music of a subfolder to iTunes.

The program can run as a background process as well which is something that I would not advise to do. This would be in my opinion only useful if you move new music into those folders regularly throughout the day.

I think it should be enough for most users to start the application manually. The decision to automatically scan the folders and sync new songs with iTunes can still be made in the options of iTunes folder watch.

Tags: apple ipod, apple itunes, itunes

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