iTunes is the center of your digital world if you use a Mac, iPad or iPhone, so you need to get to grips with it to have a happier digital life. Inspired by an iMobie infographic, here’s some pointers you may need.
Where’s the Sidebar?
You no longer have a Sidebar in iTunes 12, but you can get something similar when you select Playlists in the navigation window of iTunes. It’s not ideal – you lose the list when you leave Playlist view -- and apps, ringtones and other content don’t have this view at all.
Personal Toolbar
Just under the rewind/play/forward buttons in iTunes 12 sits this thing called “Toolbar." This offers Music, Movie and TV Show icons/buttons with three dots beside these. Click on the dots and you’ll get to access other content (Audiobooks, for example), and an Edit button. Select the Edit button and you can add icons to the defaults shown in the Toolbar, so you can access these items faster in future.
Access Column Browser
Remember when iTunes let you navigate your content in a view that showed Genre, Artist, Album and songs? You still can: In Songs view using the MyMusic or Playlists tab, select View in the iTunes menu and choose Column Browser>Show Column Browser (or use Command-B as it is faster).
Where is Music Video?
Open Music and choose Playlists in the navigation bar; you’ll find your music videos in the Music Videos list that appears beneath Music in the Sidebar.
Get Info
The Get Info (Command+I) window in iTunes 12 works slightly differently, though it looks prettier. For example, one quick way to add album art: drag the image to the square at the top left of the Get Info window and it will be used (and the top section of the window will change color to reflect this). More info here. You can get the old Get Info window back – just select the Option key while manually selecting Get Info (File>Get Info).
iTunes stuck on “Waiting for items to copy”
If iTunes gets stuck when waiting for items to copy or changes to be made you can sometimes resolve the problem by restoring your iOS device. (iTunes>Device Icon>Summary>Backup Now; once Backup is complete choose Restore).
This may be caused by duplicate files. Others report it can be a problem if you have different email addresses for the same Apple ID (you have a .Mac, me.com and iCloud address and log in using all of these). It sometimes helps to ensure you’re logged in using the same (.Mac/iCloud) email address on all your devices.
Music sync suggestions
Some iTunes 12 users report music is not transferring when they sync music with iTunes. There are several suggested fixes, but none claim to work consistently:
Solution 1
Restart your Mac and sync again.
Solution 2
- Ensure iTunes Match is off
- Connect your device and launch iTunes
- Select the device icon, select Music and uncheck Sync Music
- Click Apply or Sync
- Once sync completes recheck the Sync Music box and click Apply/Sync
For more ideas on the cause of these problems, read this.
Solution 3
Get rid of any duplicates of purchased songs.
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