EBOOK EXTRAS: v1.

8
Downloads, Updates, Feedback

TAKE CONTROL OF

macOS
MEDIA APPS
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M u s i c, P o d c a
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TV, and Books

by KIRK McELHEARN
$14.99
 Table of Contents
Read Me First ............................................................... 5
Updates and More ............................................................. 5
What’s New in Version 1.8 .................................................. 6
What Was New in Version 1.7 ............................................. 6
A Note on Terminology ....................................................... 7
Introduction ................................................................ 9
Quick Start ................................................................ 11
A Brief Introduction to Apple’s Media Apps................ 13
Play Music ................................................................. 15
Play Your Music ............................................................... 15
Control Music with the MiniPlayer ....................................... 22
View Lyrics for Your Songs ................................................ 25
Use the Full Screen Player ................................................ 26
Get Notifications as Your Music Changes ............................. 28
Search for Music.............................................................. 30
Let Genius Choose What to Play ........................................ 32
Use Playing Next to View and Manage a Music Queue ........... 38
Make Your Music Sound Better .......................................... 44
Stream Music in Your Home .............................................. 45
Control Music from an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch ............. 48
Display Eye Candy While Listening to Music ......................... 51
Minimalize the Music App .................................................. 51
Watch Music Videos ......................................................... 53
Stream Apple Music ................................................... 55
Discover Apple Music ....................................................... 55
Apple Music Audio Quality ................................................ 67
Listen to Apple Music Radio ............................................... 73
Watch Apple Music TV ...................................................... 79
View Your Music and Other Content ........................... 80
Use the Sidebar .............................................................. 80
View Your Music Library .................................................... 83

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 Use Contextual Menus ...................................................... 97
Store Your Music Library in the Cloud ........................ 99
Manage Music and the Cloud ........................................... 100
Sync Your Music Library to the Cloud ................................ 104
Use the iTunes Store ................................................ 117
About Your iTunes Store Account ..................................... 117
Shop in the iTunes Store ................................................. 118
Tag Your Music Files ................................................ 127
Understanding Tags ....................................................... 127
Add or Change Tags ....................................................... 130
Add Lyrics to Your Tracks ................................................ 139
Album Artwork and Music Files ........................................ 140
Rate Your Music ............................................................. 143
Organize Your Music and Create Playlists ................ 149
On Playlists ................................................................... 149
Create a Standard Playlist ............................................... 150
About Smart Playlists ..................................................... 155
Create Collaborative Playlists........................................... 165
Organize Playlists .......................................................... 168
Eliminate Duplicates From Your Library ............................. 171
Manage and Share Media Files ................................. 173
How the Media Apps Organize Files .................................. 173
Store Media Files on an External Drive .............................. 176
Manage a Huge Music Library .......................................... 179
Create More than One Music Library on Your Mac ............... 180
Share Your Music and TV Libraries over a Network ............. 182
Back Up Your Media Files ................................................ 186
Listen to Audiobooks ............................................... 188
Play Audiobooks ............................................................ 188
Manage an Audiobook Library .......................................... 191
Watch Movies and TV Shows in the TV App .............. 192
Browse Content in the TV App ......................................... 192
Add Videos to Your TV Library ......................................... 195
Listen to and Watch Podcasts .................................. 198
Find Podcasts ................................................................ 198

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 Manage Podcasts ........................................................... 202
Create Podcast Stations .................................................. 205
Sync Podcasts ............................................................... 206
Sync Media to Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod ................. 207
What to Sync to Your Mobile Device ................................. 207
Connect Your Mobile Device to Your Mac ........................... 209
Sync Your Content ......................................................... 211
Squeeze as Much Music as Possible on Your Mobile Device ... 215
Sync Multiple Mobile Devices with the Same Computer ....... 217
Put Music on an Apple Watch ........................................... 218
Access Media Content on an Apple TV ............................... 220
Rip, Burn, and Print ................................................. 222
How to Rip CDs ............................................................. 222
Compression Formats for Ripping CDs .............................. 223
Bit Rates for Ripping CDs ................................................ 227
Other Important Settings for Ripping CDs ......................... 230
How to Rip a Music CD ................................................... 231
How to Rip an Audiobook CD ........................................... 233
Convert Audio Files to a Different Format .......................... 240
Rip Just the Music from a Concert DVD ............................. 241
Burn Music CDs ............................................................. 242
Print from the Music App ................................................ 243
Extend the Music and TV Apps with AppleScripts ..... 245
Introducing AppleScripts ................................................. 245
Where to Find AppleScripts ............................................. 246
What You Can Do with AppleScripts .................................. 246
Learn More .............................................................. 249
About This Book....................................................... 250
Ebook Extras ................................................................. 250
About the Author ........................................................... 251
About the Publisher ........................................................ 253
Copyright and Fine Print .......................................... 254
Rogue Amoeba Coupon ............................................ 255

4
 Read Me First
Welcome to Take Control of macOS Media Apps, version 1.8, pub-
lished in February 2024 by alt concepts. This book was written by Kirk
McElhearn and edited by Joe Kissell.

This book shows you how to manage audio, video, podcasts, and
audiobooks on a Mac and in Apple’s cloud; stream tunes from Apple
Music; and sync content to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod.

If you want to share this ebook with a friend, please do so as you would
with a physical book: “lend” it for a quick look, but ask your friend to
buy a copy for careful reading or reference. Discounted classroom and
user group copies are available.

Copyright © 2024, Eyes of the World Limited. All rights reserved.

Updates and More

You can access extras related to this ebook on the web (use the link in
Ebook Extras, near the end; it’s available only to purchasers). On the
ebook’s Take Control Extras page, you can:

• Download any available new version of the ebook for free, or buy
any subsequent edition at a discount.

• Access the book in both PDF and EPUB formats. (Learn about
reading on mobile devices on our Device Advice page.)

• Read the ebook’s blog. You may find new tips or information, as
well as a link to an author interview.

If you bought this ebook from the Take Control website, it has been
added to your account, where you can download it in other formats
and access any future updates.

5
What’s New in Version 1.8
This is the eighth revision of Take Control of macOS Media Apps since
Apple split iTunes into multiple apps on the Mac. Released following
the availability of macOS 14.3 Sonoma in January 2024, version 1.8 of
this book is a minor update, and covers the following changes:
• Collaborative playlists: This new feature in macOS Sonoma and
iOS 17.3/iPadOS 17.3 allows friends and family to create playlists
together. This was delayed when macOS Sonoma was released, and
is now available. I discuss this feature in Create Collaborative
Playlists.

• New Edit icon on playlists: Apple has added a new Edit icon
on playlists. Click this icon to change the name, description, and
artwork for a playlist. I discuss this in Create a Standard Playlist.

• Sync library track requirements: Apple has quietly changed

the minimum bit rate and maximum size and duration of files that
can be synced to the cloud using Sync Library. I mention this in the
sidebar Changing Upload Limits.

What Was New in Version 1.7

Released following the availability of macOS 14.2 Sonoma in December
2023, version 1.7 of this book was a minor update, and covered the
following changes:

• Choose favorite artists on Apple Music: You can now keep

track of your favorite artists and get new music notifications and
improved recommendations. I cover this in Choose Your Favorite
Artists on Apple Music.

• Favorites are the new loved: Apple chose the odd term “love” to
mark a track that you like in past versions of the Music app, but has
changed this year to “Favorites.” Dislike, which you used to use to
mark tracks you didn’t like, is now “Suggest Less.” See Favorite/
Suggest Less Ratings.
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• Favorite Songs playlist: There is also a new Favorite Songs
playlist, which works like a smart playlist, collecting songs you have
favorited, and which has the advantage of syncing to mobile devices,
unlike other smart playlists. See Use the Favorite Songs Playlist.

• Apple Music radio shows on Apple Podcasts: If you’re a fan

of Apple Music’s radio shows, you can now follow them on Apple
Podcasts, to listen to new episodes as soon as they are released. See
Listen to and Watch Podcasts.

• New playlist creation process: The Music app has a new

method of creating playlists, which include suggesting songs to add
to a playlist. See Create a Standard Playlist.

• Collaborative playlists: Apple promised a new feature in macOS

Sonoma and iOS/iPadOS 17.2, where friends and family could
create playlists together, saying it would be available “later this
year.” They have now delayed the feature until 2024.

A Note on Terminology
As Apple has forked its mobile operating system into two versions, iOS
and iPadOS, this presents some problems in the way I describe the
portable devices you use to store and play music and other media files.
In previous editions of this book, I used the blanket term “iOS devices”
for all of these devices, even if they were non-iOS iPods. I did, however,
make special mention of features that differed between the iOS and
non-iOS devices when necessary.

While there is no difference in the way you manage or play media

content on iOS and iPadOS, it is important to be precise when refer-
ring to these devices. For want of a better term, and in the interest of
economy, I now generally refer to these them as mobile devices. In
some cases, this also includes iPods, though when old-fashioned
iPods—such as the iPod classic, nano, mini, or shuffle—are discussed
for any features they do or don’t have, they are specified as such. The
iPod touch, while still bearing the historic name of iPod, runs iOS, so it
is included when I talk about mobile devices.
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The distinction is less that of the actual operating system the devices
run, but is more the fact that the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch can run
apps and, especially, given the way you store and manage audio and
video content, access the cloud, something that older iPods cannot do.
This has a big effect on how you access media content on your mobile
devices. In the past, you were limited to the storage space on your
mobile devices; now your only limit is your internet access and band-
width. Nevertheless, all of mobile these devices, whether iPhones,
iPads, or iPods, can play all the audio content I cover, and on some
non-iOS iPods you can even watch videos and view photos.

I do, however, use the term iOS/iPadOS device occasionally, when I

refer to devices that can run specific apps, such as the Music app on
the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, or the iTunes Remote app.

There are a few cases where I use the more global term device, and this
is meant to include any Apple device that can access content. For
example, if you sync your music library to the cloud, it is available on
any Mac in the Music app, in iTunes on a Windows PC, on an iPhone,
iPad, iPod touch, but also on the Apple TV and the Apple Watch, on
the Apple Music app on Android devices, and on TVs, gaming consoles,
smart speakers, and set-top boxes.

8
 Introduction
We are now living in a post-iTunes age.

iTunes was introduced in 2001, based on SoundJam, an early Mac

MP3 player app that Apple acquired. In the beginning, it was a fairly
simple app. It allowed users to organize, browse, and play their music
collections. It could rip, play, and burn CDs; and it could play MP3
files and sync those music files to a handful of MP3 players. But the
only digital media files we used regularly when iTunes was released
were music files: we didn’t have podcasts or ebooks, and we didn’t
have libraries of video files. Digital audiobooks were available at the
time, and Apple added audiobook support to iTunes in 2002.

A lot changed over the years. As new digital media types became
common, iTunes became a media center that organized, played, and
synced not only music files (in several formats), but also videos,
audiobooks, ebooks, podcasts, apps, ringtones, and voice memos. And
along the way, Apple introduced Apple Music, the company’s stream-
ing service that offers access to more than 100 million tracks.

With the release of macOS 10.15 Catalina in 2019, Apple made the
biggest change ever to The App Formerly Known as iTunes. There are
now four apps, named for the types of content they manage: Music,
Podcasts, TV, and Books. (And the iTunes features for syncing mobile
devices have been moved to the Finder.) As a result of this, the way you
manage your media library has changed dramatically. Not just because
you need to use up to four apps whereas in the past you only needed
one, but also because these apps store their media files in four different
locations. If you have a large media library, this can complicate the
storage, management, and backup of those files.

I’ve long been a serious music fan, and I’ve amassed a music collection
that contains more than 100,000 tracks, made up of thousands of CDs
I’ve ripped and thousands of tracks I’ve purchased from the iTunes
Store and other sources. I’m a big listener of classical music (more
than half of my library), and one of my special loves is German art
9
songs, or lieder. But I’m also a Deadhead (a fan of the Grateful Dead)
and have hundreds of recordings of their live concerts. I like jazz, pro-
gressive rock, ambient music, vintage punk rock, and much more. I’m
learning to play the shakuhachi (a Japanese end-blown flute) and have
many recordings made with that instrument. I also regularly listen to
audiobooks and podcasts, and I enjoy listening to audio recordings of
Shakespeare’s plays. And I have a substantial video library, containing
movies, TV shows, and music videos.

I currently own two Macs, an iPhone, two iPads, several iPods (remem-
ber them?), an Apple Watch, a number of HomePods, and an Apple
TV. I also have several Sonos devices that I stream music to using
AirPlay. Over time, I have confronted the many hurdles that make
using digital content on these devices a challenge.

In this book, I share much of what I’ve learned about managing media
on a Mac. The wide range of music that I listen to, and the variety of
content in my music library, has led me to discover the most practical
and efficient solutions to the problems of ripping, tagging, organizing,
managing, playing, and syncing a large media library.

There are several aspects of these media management apps that I don’t
deal with. I mention only briefly apps used to play digital content on
mobile devices, such as Apple’s Music app. I discuss syncing in order to
show you how to put media—music, video, and audiobooks—on
Apple’s mobile devices, but I don’t cover syncing other types of data,
such as contacts, calendars, and photos.

If you’ve ever been frustrated while trying to efficiently manage media

files on your Mac, read on.

Compatibility: This book focuses on using Apple’s media manage-

ment apps in and macOS 14 Sonoma (which are similar to their
counterparts in macOS 13 Ventura, macOS 12 Monterey, macOS
10.15 Catalina, and macOS 11 Big Sur). If you are using a Mac
running macOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier, and want to learn how to use
iTunes 12, you can learn how to download a copy of my earlier book
Take Control of iTunes 12: The FAQ in this blog post.

10
 Quick Start
This Quick Start describes what you can learn in each chapter. You can
go to the beginning of any chapter to view a list of that chapter’s
specific topics. Click (or tap!) any chapter title to jump to the content.

Play music:
• Learn how to find and play and music in the new Music app in Play
Music.

• Explore the features in Apple Music, including on-demand stream-

ing, music discovery, curated playlists, and recommendations, plus
a live radio station. See Stream Apple Music.

• There are a number of ways you can view your music library: by
album, artist, genre, songs, and more. See View Your Music and
Other Content.

Learn how to use the cloud and the iTunes Store:

• You can store music you own and music you’ve added to your
library from Apple Music in the cloud, and then access it on multi-
ple devices. See Store Your Music Library in the Cloud.

• You can use the iTunes Store to add music, videos, and more to your
media library, and you can add content you own to the Music, TV,
and Books apps. See Use the iTunes Store.

Tag media and organize your files:

• Tagging media files, or adding metadata to them, is the most impor-
tant thing you can do to take control of your Music and TV libraries.
I’ll show you which tags you can change, how to change them for
single and multiple items, and more. Read Tag Your Music Files.

• Playlists let you organize your music so you can do more than play
songs by album, or at random. See Organize Your Music and Create
Playlists.

11
• The various media apps store files in different locations, and you
may need to change the locations for some of these files if you have
a large library. You can also share your Music and TV content over
your home network. See Manage and Share Media Files.

• Learn the best ways to import music and audiobook CDs, how to
burn CDs, and how to print from the Music app. See Rip, Burn, and
Print.

Enjoy audiobooks, movies, TV shows, and podcasts:

• You now store and play audiobooks in the Books app. See Listen to
Audiobooks.

• Movies and TV shows are now handled by the TV app. Read about
managing a video library and viewing videos on your Mac. See
Watch Movies and TV Shows in the TV App.

• Podcasts also have their own app now, and, as with audiobooks, you
may need special strategies to manage a large library if you want to
save podcast episodes. See Listen to and Watch Podcasts.

Sync media to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod:

• You can, of course, still sync media to your mobile devices, but you
now manage this process in the Finder. See Sync Media to Your
iPhone, iPad, or iPod.

Extend Music and TV with AppleScripts:

• You can do a lot with the Music and TV apps, but you may want to
go even further. Take advantage of AppleScripts to extend these
apps’ functionality. See Extend the Music and TV Apps with Apple-
Scripts.

12
 A Brief Introduction to
Apple’s Media Apps
In 2019, Apple made the biggest change to The App Formerly Known
as iTunes since its inception in 2001. Instead of grafting new features
onto iTunes and perpetuating what many users saw as “bloat,” the
company split the app into four media-specific apps:

• Music: This app, which retains the core features of iTunes, man-
ages both a local music library and a library in the cloud. And it lets
users stream more than 100 million tracks from Apple Music. The
Music app can also store and play music videos.

• TV: Inheriting the video management features from iTunes, the TV

app lets users manage a local movie and TV show library, as well as
providing storage for home videos (these can be videos of your
family, as well as rips of DVDs you own). In addition, it is the
gateway to Apple’s large offering of movies that you can buy or rent
from the iTunes Store and Apple TV+, Apple’s video streaming
service.

• Podcasts: Just as iTunes managed podcasts, allowing you to find,

subscribe to, download, and listen to episodes of your favorite
podcasts, the Podcasts app does this, and nothing more.

• Books: The Books app, which has existed since 2018 to manage
ebooks, has expanded its scope, and now manages audiobooks,
which had previously been the purview of iTunes.

In addition to these four new apps, the iTunes features for backing up
and syncing mobile devices are now available in the Finder.

There are two distinct styles of interface in the macOS media apps. The
Music app is fairly minimalist, with all navigation done from the
sidebar and controls in the toolbar. The Podcasts and Books apps
present similar stripped-down, sidebar-focused navigation, but the TV

13
app has tabs at the tops of its window to allow you to navigate between
local content and that available from the iTunes Store and Apple TV+,
Apple’s video streaming service. The Podcasts app has toolbar controls,
as does the Books app when you play audiobooks, but the TV app has
controls that display at the bottom of the window when you move your
pointer to that area while playing videos.

While the iTunes name is gone on the Mac desktop, the iTunes Store
still exists, and is broken up into content-specific stores in each app
(with the exception of the Podcasts app, which features a podcast
directory, but doesn’t call it part of the iTunes Store). And the iTunes
Store is not going anywhere soon, for two reasons. First, because Apple
has a lot of content to sell you; and, second, because Windows users
are not seeing this split into four apps. For them, iTunes continues to
function as before, and Apple has not said whether they are bringing
these new apps to that platform.

Much of this book discusses the Music app, and explains how you can
view and manage your content. The various ways you view your music
have been simplified compared to iTunes. While Apple made some
excellent choices to simplify the Music app, some users may not find
all these changes to their liking.

As a result of these changes, managing media on your Mac has become

either a bit simpler or a bit more complex, depending on how many
media kinds you have in your library. If you only stored music in
iTunes, then the new Music app is a “light” version of its predecessor.
If, however, you used all of these media kinds in the past, you may find
that you have to faff around a bit more, rather than finding all your
media in one app.

14
 Play Music
Playing music is simple, but there are some useful features that let you
mix your music up, run it on repeat, and make it sound better. In this
chapter, I look at the Music app, and explain the various ways you can
play music: songs, albums, playlists, and even CDs.
Note that to use some of the features I describe in this and subsequent
chapters, you will need to be signed into an iTunes Store account. I
discuss this in About Your iTunes Store Account.

Play Your Music

The Music app’s sidebar has three distinct sections where you can play
music: Apple Music, Library, and Playlists. You may use one or all of
these depending on how you find and launch the music you want to
hear. You play music in any of these sections by clicking a Play icon,
which may be on an album (hover your pointer over an album’s art-
work to display it; Figure 1), or by clicking a Play button near
the top of an album page in Apple Music, or above a playlist. You can
also click the Play icon in the app header at the top of the Music
window. Whenever you start playing music, the Play button in the app
header becomes a Pause icon that you can click to stop playing.

15
 Figure 1: When you hover your pointer over an album, a play
button appears. This icon is white on a translucent background, and
changes to a white and red Play icon when you move your pointer
over it, as you can see above on the album Murder Most Foul. Click it
to play the album.

To skip ahead one track, click the Next icon; to skip back, click the
Previous icon. To scrub (skip) ahead or back within a track, press
and hold one of these icons or drag the playhead in the app header.
And to change the volume, drag the volume slider in the app header.

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 About the Toolbar, App Header, and Play Controls
In Figure 1 above, the Music app window has a number of interface
elements that I refer to through this book. The top section of the
window—to the right of the sidebar—is the toolbar; it contains a
number of elements:
✦ On the left are play controls, the icons you click to play, pause,
and skip tracks. In most cases, I include inline graphics to show
you which buttons or icons to click, so it should be obvious which
ones are in this section of the toolbar. If not, I’ll call this section
the play control area.
✦ The app header is the section in the center, where you see infor-
mation about a track currently being played (its name, artwork,
and the artist and album it’s from). Apple doesn’t seem to have an
official term for this, which, in iTunes, used to be called the
“iTunes LCD.” In this book, I’ll use the term app header to de-
scribe this interface element.
✦ On the right are some other controls, which I refer to throughout
the book individually: a volume slider, the AirPlay icon, the
Lyrics icon, and the Playing Next icon.

In some views, such as Albums, Artists, or Composers, if you select an

album, you can start playing it by hovering your pointer over the first
track and clicking the Play icon that appears in place of its track
number. In any view, you can double-click any track to start playing
music in order in the list starting with that track. (See View Your Music
and Other Content for more on using the different views.)

Your Music library may contain a combination of tracks stored locally

and in the cloud. If the Music app reaches a song in the cloud, it
streams the song; depending on your bandwidth, there may be a brief
lag as Music starts pulling down the file.

17
Beaming to the Currently Playing Track
No matter what is playing in the Music app, and no matter where you
are—whether you’re looking at a different playlist, or a different part
of your library, or even the iTunes Store—you can always beam to
the track that’s currently being played, by pressing ⌘-L.
If you’re listening to music from Apple Music, this shortcut takes you
to the appropriate Apple Music page. If you’re listening to something
in your Playing Next queue, Music takes you to that track in your
Music library, even if you added it to Playing Next from a playlist.

Keyboard and Touch Bar Control

If the Music app is the frontmost window, you can press the Space
bar to play and pause music. You can raise the volume by pressing
⌘-↑, and lower it by pressing ⌘-↓.
You can also control the Music app with the media keys on Apple
keyboards and on some third-party keyboards. These are:
✦ F8: Play/Pause
✦ F7: Previous
✦ F9: Next
✦ F10: Mute volume
✦ F11: Decrease volume
✦ F12: Increase volume
If these don’t work, try also pressing the fn key. Or disable “Use all F1,
F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” in System Settings/System
Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Function Keys.
Another method of controlling playback is the Touch Bar, which is
available on certain older MacBook Pro models. With these laptops,
instead of pressing the usual function keys to control Music playback,
you can tap icons on the Touch Bar (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Touch Bar shows simple Music playback controls.

The vertical white line on the Touch Bar is the playhead. Use its
position to gauge how much longer the song will be playing, or drag it
to play a different portion of the song.

18
Play a CD
If you still listen to CDs, you can use the Music app to play them
through your computer, which may be connected to speakers or even a
stereo system, or which you may use to stream to listening devices
using AirPlay (see Stream Music in Your Home).

Launch Music, and then slide a CD into an external CD/DVD drive.

With a default setup, after a few seconds, Music displays the contents
of the CD (Figure 3). (If not, select the CD in the sidebar.)

Figure 3: Music displays the CD’s tracks in a list, with a Play icon on
the left side of the app header.

To start playing the disc, click the Play icon or double-click the first
track.

The Music app asks you if you want to import the CD, unless you have
told it, for such a dialog, to not ask you again. I discuss importing, or
ripping CDs in Rip, Burn, and Print.

To specify what happens does when you insert a CD in your drive, go to

System Settings/System Preferences > CDs & DVDs. For example, you
can have the Music app open automatically if it’s not already open.

19
Play Music Out of Order
You don’t always have to play your music in the order in which it
appears in a playlist or album. You have several options: you can
shuffle (play in a random order), repeat (loop and continue playing
until you tire of it), or even choose which tracks you want to play:

• Shuffle: When you’re playing a CD, album, playlist, or some other

grouping of music, a Shuffle icon appears in the play control
area. To shuffle tracks, click this icon; it turns red to show that
Shuffle mode is active. The track order shown in Music doesn’t
change, but if you click the Next icon, Music jumps to a differ-
ent track at random. To turn off Shuffle, click the Shuffle icon
again.

• Repeat tracks: The Repeat icon also displays in the play

control area when you start playing music; click this to loop your
music until your battery runs out or you stop playback. The first
time you click the Repeat icon it turns red to indicate that it is
on; this is repeat all mode, which will repeat the album or playlist
you are currently listening to. Click the Repeat icon again and a
small 1 displays in superscript; this is repeat one mode, where the
currently playing track will repeat ad infinitum. You can also choose
Controls > Repeat and choose All to repeat the entire album or
playlist when it’s finished or choose One to play the current song
over and over, until you simply have to turn it off.

• Play only selected tracks: If there are certain tracks that you
don’t want to listen to and you’re in a list view (such as Songs View),
uncheck the boxes next to them. Music plays only checked tracks. If
you don’t see checkboxes, Control-click the track(s) that you don’t
want to play and choose Uncheck Selection. (This works only if
you’ve selected the “Songs list checkboxes” box in Music > Settings/
Preferences > General.)
• Program your CD: As with a CD player (remember those?), you
can “program” tracks, choosing their play order. To do this, drag a
track to the position you want. (The CD must be sorted by track
order; if it is, the leftmost column header above the track numbers,

20
 which contains no text, will display a caret (^) pointing up. If you
don’t see this, click the header, and click again if the caret points
down.)

Shuffle Your Music

One of the best inventions of the iPod and iTunes—or the worst,
according to some—was shuffle mode. Sometimes, it’s good to be able
to play music at random, either enjoying the serendipity of shuffle
mode or waiting to find a song that grabs you and then playing its
album. You can play all the songs in your Music library in random
order or you can limit the shuffle to just an album or playlist:
• Shuffle your entire music library: Click Songs in the sidebar,
start playing any song, and then click the Shuffle icon. The icon
turns red to indicate that shuffle is on.
• Mix up songs in a playlist, album, artist, or genre: Click the
Shuffle button for that list, album, or other group, and the
Music app starts playing those tracks in random order. Shuffle
buttons come in a variety of shapes, but all contain the Shuffle
symbol within them.
When you play music in shuffle mode, Music jumps around in the list
of songs to be played, but leaves the songs displayed in their original
order. You can see the play order in the Playing Next list, which I
describe in The Song Queue and Playing Next.
To turn off shuffle while the music is playing, click the highlighted
Shuffle icon. Playback continues from its current position in the
order you see in the Music app.

Tip: To have Music pick a subset of your songs that go together, and
shuffle that list, turn on Genius Shuffle, described in Use Genius
Shuffle, later in this chapter.

Shuffle Albums
Sometimes it’s great to play a random album; you might hear some-
thing you haven’t played in a long time. To shuffle by album, choose

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Controls > Shuffle and then choose Albums from the bottom section of
the submenu. In the top section of that submenu, make sure to choose
On, or click the Shuffle icon in the play control area (if there’s
already music playing; if not, that button isn’t visible).

Next, click the Play icon to start playing music. When Music reaches
the end of the album, it plays another, randomly selected album. If you
don’t like this album, though, you’ll have to skip through all the tracks
to start another one.

There are some AppleScripts that do this better, allowing you to easily
choose a different album if the one Music proposes doesn’t match your
mood. (I discuss AppleScript at the end of this book, in Extend the
Music and TV Apps with AppleScripts.) Doug Adams, who creates and
curates a collection of AppleScripts for the Music and TV apps, offers
two scripts designed to play random albums:

• Play Random Album picks an album from your Music library, adds
it to a Some Random Album playlist, and starts playing it. You can
listen to this album, or run the script again to choose another one.

• Random Full Albums to Playlist takes a number as input (such as 5)

and then randomly picks that number of albums to add to a Some
Random Albums playlist. You can play them all, delete some and
play the rest, or run the script again to get another aleatory selec-
tion.

Control Music with the MiniPlayer

To focus on listening, you can hide the main Music window and use the
MiniPlayer, which displays album artwork and provides basic playback
controls (Figure 4).

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 Figure 4: The MiniPlayer shows artwork for the currently playing
track, and when you hover your pointer over it, displays basic play
controls.

To open the MiniPlayer:

• Click the album artwork in the app header at the top of the window;
if the audio you’re playing doesn’t have album artwork, you’ll see
just a blank artwork icon. If no music is playing, click the blank
artwork icon. This opens the MiniPlayer and hides the main
Music window. You can also choose Window > Switch to MiniPlay-
er.

• Option-click the artwork or the blank artwork icon, or choose

Window > Switch to MiniPlayer, to display the MiniPlayer above
the Music window.

To change the size of the MiniPlayer, drag any edge or corner; both the
maximum and minimum sizes of this window are limited.

Tip: By default, the MiniPlayer acts like a normal window, but you can
have it float over other windows so it’s always handy. To do this, go
to the Music > Settings/Preferences > Advanced and select “Keep
MiniPlayer on top of all other windows.”

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Other MiniPlayer options are these:

• Contextual menu: Click the More icon to love the current

track, rate it with stars, add it to Playing Next, start an Apple Music
Radio station from it, and much more.

• Volume: Click the Speaker icon and make your adjustment. If

you’re streaming your music using AirPlay, the Speaker icon
changes to an AirPlay icon; click this icon to access a volume
slider and to choose a different AirPlay target.

• Playing Next: Click the Playing Next icon to view or change

what’s in your play queue (see The Song Queue and Playing Next),
view your listening history, and see lyrics, if they are available for
the music you’re playing (see View Lyrics for Your Songs). Click the
icon again or press the Esc (Escape) key to close the Playing Next
list.

• Time info: The MiniPlayer contains a progress bar. A time display

at its right shows the elapsed time of the current track. If you click
the time display, you can switch between the track’s remaining time
and total time.

• Switch to the Music window: Hover over the MiniPlayer win-

dow and click the Close button.

• Switch to/from the compact MiniPlayer: Click the More

icon and choose Hide Artwork. The becomes smaller, without
artwork. This window displays the name of the current track, the
artist, and the album. If you hover over that window, the play
controls display.

When you hover over the MiniPlayer, you reveal, as in Figure 5,

playback and window controls.

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 Figure 5: Top: the MiniPlayer shows the name of the currently
playing track (“Hard to Handle”), and, below it, the artist (Grateful
Dead). Bottom: hovering over the window displays play controls.

To display artwork again, click the More icon and choose Show
Artwork.

Note: If you just want to see what’s playing and access basic play-
back controls, you may prefer to use The Control Center Now Playing
Widget instead of the MiniPlayer.

View Lyrics for Your Songs

You can add lyrics to your songs by pasting them into the Lyrics pane
of the Info dialog (see Add Lyrics to Your Tracks), and then view them
in the Lyrics pane. And, if you have an Apple Music subscription,
Music automatically downloads lyrics for many of your songs, and
displays lyrics for many songs you play on Apple Music.

To view lyrics while music is playing, click the Lyrics icon (Figure
6). (If lyrics aren’t available for a song, you’ll see “No Lyrics Available”
on the Lyrics pane.)

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 Figure 6: View lyrics for the song you’re listening to.

For some songs, you’ll see “time-synced lyrics,” which display in larger
fonts and where each line is highlighted when they are sung (Figure 8
below). Time-synced lyrics are like karaoke, but with the original
voices. You can view time-synced lyrics to finally understand the words
you hadn’t made out, or to sing along with your favorite songs.

There’s no way to know in advance which songs have time-synced

lyrics; you just have to keep the Lyrics pane open and wait. For certain
artists, you’ll find time-synced lyrics for most or all of their albums.
Classic albums by top artists are more likely to have time-synced lyrics,
though there are some gaps, and recent popular albums are also more
likely to have time-synced lyrics. Since Apple added this feature in
macOS 13 Ventura, a large number of albums have added time-synced
lyrics, so you’ll find a lot of music with this feature now.

You can view time-synced lyrics, when available, in the Full Screen
Player, which I describe next.

Use the Full Screen Player

You generally don’t listen to music with the Music app frontmost on
your Mac, unless you’re organizing your library or creating playlists.

26
But there are times you may want to turn your Mac into a standalone
music player; this is great for parties.

You can use the Full Screen Player to display the album artwork for the
currently playing track, along with the artist, track, and album names.
To do this, choose Window > Full Screen Player, or press ⌘-Shift-F
(Figure 7). You can also activate the Full Screen Player by clicking the
green button on the MiniPlayer window (see Control Music with the
MiniPlayer for more about using the MiniPlayer).

Figure 7: The Full Screen Player fills the screen with album artwork
and information about what’s playing, but mostly a blurry back-
ground. Move your cursor to display play controls.

If time-synced lyrics are available for the current song (see the previ-
ous topic for more about time-synced lyrics), and you click the Lyrics
icon, these lyrics display to the right of the album artwork, as in
Figure 8. However, regular lyrics don’t display, and, depending on the
type of music you listen to, you may not often see timed lyrics. And if
you’re listening to a playlist, where some songs have time-synced lyrics
and others don’t, the display will shift as each new song begins. So the
best thing to do is click the Lyrics icon when you’re listening to
music; when you come across songs with time-synced lyrics you’ll see
them, otherwise you’ll just see the album artwork.

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 Figure 8: For some songs, you can view time-synced lyrics; it’s like
karaoke, but you sing along with the singer.

To exit the Full Screen Player, press Esc, or move your pointer to the
top of the window to display the Music app’s title bar and menu bar;
click the green button to close the Full Screen Player, and display the
MiniPlayer above the Music app’s window; or click the red button in
the title bar to go back to the normal Music app window. Note that
while using the Full Screen Player, you can use the macOS App Switch-
er, pressing ⌘-Tab to activate a different app. Or you can move your
pointer to the edge of the screen where the Dock is located and switch
apps by clicking an icon. When you return to the Music app, it will still
be in Full Screen Player mode.

Get Notifications as Your Music

Changes
The Music app hooks into Notification Center, so when a new song
begins playing, Music can send a notification in the form of a banner or
an alert (Figure 9). These notifications display only if Music is not the
frontmost application.

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 Figure 9: Above is a banner, below is an alert. The banner goes
away after a few seconds, but the alert stays visible until you hover
over the notification and click either the Close or Skip button
(skipping plays the next track). You can also hover over the notif-
ication and swipe to the right to dismiss it.

Instead of receiving a banner or alert (or in addition to receiving one),

you can collect these notifications in Notification Center.

To turn on Music notifications, choose Music > Settings/Preferences >

General, and check “When song changes” next to Notifications (Fig-
ure 10).

Figure 10: You can turn on notifications for the Music app in its
preferences.

To refine these notifications, go to System Settings/System Prefer-

ences > Notifications, then select Music to view its notifications set-
tings. You can choose whether you want to use banners or alerts,
whether to show notifications on the lock screen, and how you want
notifications grouped in Notification Center.

To view songs in Notification Center, click the Notification Center

icon on the right side of the menu bar (or swipe left with two fingers
from the right edge of your trackpad). The songs appear in the Notifi-
cations view.

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 The Control Center Now Playing Widget
Control Center offers a number of widgets you can access from the
menu bar. One of these is Now Playing.
This widget (Figure 11) provides simple play/pause and next track
controls. If you click the widget, it expands to show an additional
control to go to the previous track, plus time elapsed and time
remaining in the current track. This widget also shows what’s cur-
rently playing in the Podcasts app, and in the Books app, if you’re
listening to an audiobook.

Figure 11: The Now Playing widget shows what’s playing and pro-
vides basic controls.
If you go to System Settings > Control Center and choose Always
Show in Menu Bar (macOS Sonoma and Ventura) or click Show in
Menu Bar in System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar > Now Playing
(Monterey or earlier), a small Music Widget icon displays in the
menu bar; click that icon to bring up this widget on its own.

Search for Music

The Music app has a Search box above the sidebar: you can click in
that search field, on press ⌘-F, to search for content. By default, if you
have Apple Music visible, it starts searching in Apple Music. When you
search for something, you’ll see live search suggestions as you type. For
example, search for “Pink…” and you’ll see search suggestions for pink
floyd, pink, pink guy, and so on, in the top section of the menu, and
artist, song, playlist, and album suggestions below.

But there are three tabs in the Music app, allowing you to narrow your
search to one of three locations: Apple Music, Your Library, and the
iTunes Store (Figure 12).

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 Figure 12: You can select one of the search suggestions, or click
one of the tabs near the top of the Music window to refine your
search.

Initially, the Music app searches Apple Music, but if you click Your
Library or iTunes Store, you can also search those areas. The next time
you use the Search field, the Music app remembers the last area you
searched, and begins its search there. Music displays a search sug-
gestions menu, as shown above, when you search Apple Music; when
you search the iTunes Store, the menu contains only the top section;
and no suggestions menu displays when you search your library.

Search results depend on which area your searching, but include some
or all of the following: artists, albums, songs, playlists, radio stations,
music videos, TV episodes and movies from Apple Music, radio
episodes from Apple Music Radio, shared playlists, and people. (Yes,
you can find my profile, and playlists I’ve published, if you search my
name on Apple Music.) Click any item to explore it, or press Return to
see search results in the Music app’s main window. You can play any
item in your library or on Apple Music (if you are a subscriber), or go
on to purchase any item in the iTunes Store.

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Search Your Library with the Filter Field
Searching using the text field above the sidebar allows you to search in
three areas: Apple Music, your library, and the iTunes Store. But if you
want to search in a specific view in your library, you can use the Filter
field.

For example, click Albums in the sidebar to view all the albums in your
library. If you want to filter the view to show only those albums by
Brad Mehldau, click the Filter icon, press ⌘-Option-F to display the
Filter field, and type his name. This is a live search, and you will see
the content of the main pane of the Music window change as you type
(Figure 13).

Figure 13: Search within a view using the Filter field.

You can use the Filter field in any view in your library, except for
Recently Added, and you can also use it in a playlist to narrow down
your content.

Let Genius Choose What to Play

Genius takes much of the effort out of deciding what to listen to. Don’t
want to spend time creating a custom playlist? Just pick one song and
make a Genius playlist from it. Or, don’t think at all and let chance

32
dictate your listening: start Genius shuffle and the Music app picks the
songs for you.

Genius works with your own music as well as tracks from Apple Music
that you have added to your library. Apple claims that Genius “search-
es your Music library to find songs that go great together” and uses this
information to create on-the-fly playlists: Genius playlists and Genius
shuffle.

To use any of these Genius features, you must have an iTunes Store
account. If you don’t have an account, you can create one when you
turn on Genius. When you turn on Genius, Music sends information
about your library to Apple. It compares your library with other users’
music libraries, and it finds similarities in order to propose playlists.

Turn On Genius
To turn on Genius, choose File > Library > Turn On Genius. If it wasn’t
there already, Music displays and selects the Genius icon in the side-
bar. Follow the prompts to turn on Genius. Music examines your
library and sends information to Apple. After a few minutes, or longer
for a large library, Apple sends back information, which is stored in
certain files in your Music folder.

The Music app automatically updates Genius once a week, but if you
add a lot of music to Music, you might want to update Genius manual-
ly. You can do this by choosing File > Library > Update Genius.

If you tire of Genius, turn it off by choosing File > Library > Turn Off
Genius.

Note: If you’ve enabled the Sync Library option in the Music General
preferences, Genius is on and you cannot turn it off.

Create Genius Playlists

You can create a Genius playlist based on many songs or tracks in your
Music library, but Genius doesn’t work with some obscure music.

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There are a lot of tracks in my Music library where Genius doesn’t offer
any suggestions.

Say you’ve got an itch to listen to David Bowie. You love the “Heroes”
album, and you’d like to hear the title track and some other songs that
“sound great together” with it. Control-click the track, or click the
More icon next to a track, and choose Genius Suggestions > Save
as Playlist. The Music app creates a new playlist having the name of the
song you used as the germ for the playlist, fills it with 25 related songs,
and then shows you that playlist (Figure 14).

Figure 14: A Genius playlist gives you a selection of songs that go

together, more or less. If you ask me, that’s a pretty good selection.

You can change the Genius playlist:

• Change the length: On the left side of the list’s header, you can
choose 50, 75, or 100 songs from the pop-up menu that defaults to
“25 songs” for a new playlist.

34
• Get a new set of songs: On the far right side of the list’s header,
click the Refresh icon—this rebuilds the playlist with other songs
that go with the “Based on” song.

• Remove songs: Select a song that you’re not in the mood to hear,
and press the Delete key (this doesn’t delete it from your library).

You can sync the Genius playlist to your mobile device. If you change it
in Music—for example by removing songs or adding songs—subse-
quent syncs will make the same changes on your mobile device.

To delete a Genius playlist, select it in the Playlists sidebar and press

Delete. Music deletes the playlist, but not the tunes it contains.

Genius Playlists vs. Apple Music Radio Stations

Genius playlists are based on music in your library, whereas Apple
Music Radio stations (see Listen to Apple Music Radio) allow you to
seed a playlist with a song, track, or album, and get a similar range
of “songs that go together,” but in the latter case they are chosen
from the 100-million-track Apple Music library. Use Genius playlists
when you want a selection of music that you know; use Apple Music
Radio stations when you want to discover a bit of music you might
not know, or that you are familiar with but that isn’t in your library.

Note: To see a short list of related songs, Control-click a song and

then choose Genius Suggestions. From the Genius Suggestions
submenu, you can choose a song name to switch to that song as well
as turning the entire list into a playlist by choosing Save as Playlist.

Use Genius Shuffle

Genius Shuffle is a way of creating an on-the-fly Genius playlist from
random songs. For example, I started Genius Shuffle once, and it
played a bunch of songs by the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Hot Tuna,
and others; these are all artists whose music goes together. The next
time, I got a playlist of my jazz artists. Another time, I got a playlist of
artists like David Bowie, Kate Bush, and Peter Gabriel. Genius Shuffle
changes each time you restart it.

35
Genius Shuffle is different from the general Shuffle feature. With the
Shuffle feature, you can, for example, shuffle your entire music library
(see Shuffle Your Music, earlier). But Genius Shuffle doesn’t shuffle
your entire library; it uses the Genius feature to play songs that “go
great together.”

Genius Shuffle picks a track at random, then creates a Genius playlist

from that track. It probably aims for a higher-rated track as a seed
track, and it probably takes into account the number of times you’ve
listened to a track, whether you’ve rated it, and even how recently
you’ve played it, but Apple has not shared any information about how
it works.

To activate Genius Shuffle, choose Controls > Genius Shuffle (Option-

Space). Music begins playing the first song in the new shuffle list and
the Previous icon in the play control area changes into a Genius
icon (Figure 15).

Figure 15: When Music is in Genius Shuffle mode, the Genius icon
replaces the Previous icon in the play control area.

If you don’t like what comes up, just click the Genius icon or press
Option-Space again… and again, if necessary, until your mood and
your Music picks are in sync.

To see what’s coming in your Genius Shuffle list, click the Playing Next
icon to the right of the app header (Figure 16). You can reorder
or delete songs from the queue (see The Song Queue and Playing
Next).

36
 Figure 16: Click the Playing Next icon to see what’s coming up
in your Genius Shuffle playlist.

The Previous icon returns to the play control area when you stop
playing the Genius Shuffle list and start playing something else.

The Music App Is Not a Genius About Skip When Shuffling

Genius Shuffle doesn’t respect the “Skip when shuffling” option you
can apply by selecting tracks and selecting this box in the Options
pane of the Info dialog. So your Genius Shuffle playlists may include
tracks that aren’t ideal for shuffling. For example, I don’t like to listen
to classical music in shuffle mode, because it splits up works that
contain multiple movements. And I have a lot of spoken word content
in my library, notably many recordings of Shakespeare plays, which
pop up in Genius Shuffle.
When I generate a Genius Shuffle playlist, if the first track is one of
these items, I press Option-Space again to generate a new selection.

37
Use Playing Next to View and Manage
a Music Queue
Playing Next lets you queue songs and music videos in an ad hoc
playlist. You can add individual songs or entire albums and move
tracks around or remove them as your listening session progresses.
You can even use Apple’s iTunes Remote app on an iOS/iPadOS
device, or Apple Watch, to manage the Playing Next queue.

The Song Queue and Playing Next

In Music, whenever you play any music—unless you are playing a
playlist or CD that contains just one track—there is a song queue. It
may be all the songs of an album, all the songs of a playlist, or all the
tracks in your library. You can see the song queue at any time by click-
ing the Playing Next icon on the right side of the app header, or on
the right side of the MiniPlayer window (Figure 17).

Figure 17: The Playing Next icon is on the right of the Music toolbar.

Add Items to Playing Next

You can add music tracks or music videos from any view of your Music
library to Playing Next. You can also add music from Apple Music or a
shared library. You can add audiobooks from your Music library, if you
have any there. (See Listen to Audiobooks for more on storing audio-
books in the Music app.)

There are several ways to add items to your Playing Next queue:

• Drag and drop on the app header: Select one or more items—
tracks, albums, playlists, or entire artists or genres—and drop them
on the center section of the app header, at the top of the window.
When you do this, the track(s) you drag get added to the top of the

38
 Playing Next queue. There’s no visual feedback when you do this,
but you can check the Playing Next queue to ensure that your tracks
have been added.

• Drag tracks to the Playing Next queue: If you display the Play-
ing Next queue, by clicking the Playing Next icon, you can drag
tracks there. The advantage of adding tracks this way is that you can
position them where you want in the queue, rather than just adding
them at the top. You can’t do this when the Playing Next queue is
empty, but if you have at least one track in the queue, then you can.

• Contextual menu: Control-click an item, and then choose Play

Next or Play Later (Figure 18).

Figure 18: Add a track to Playing Next by choosing Play Next.

If you choose Play Next, Music adds the tune to the top of the
Playing Next list and plays it immediately after the currently playing

39
 track ends. Or, if you choose Play Later, Music adds the track to the
end of the Playing Next queue.

• More icon: Click the More icon next to a track and choose Play
Next or Play Later as described earlier in this list. You’ll find the
More icon next to the names of albums in Albums, Artists, or
Genres view, next to artists’ names in Artists view, next to playlist
names, and so on, sometimes on its own, and sometimes in a circle.

• Option-click: Hold down the Option key and hover over a track. A
small Add to Playing Next icon appears to the left of the track
name. Click this icon to add the item to the end of the Playing Next
queue.

• Option-Return: If you select a track and press Option-Return,

that track gets added to the Playing Next queue.

When Add to Playing Next Doesn’t Put Your Tracks at the

End
If you were already playing a playlist, choosing Play Next or Play
Later adds tunes to the top of the queue, after the current song but
before the rest of the playlist—in effect, Music adds another Playing
Next list, prioritized ahead of the original list. You can see this in the
Playing Next popover where the new list is labeled Playing Next and
the earlier list has a Back To label.
If you now add a song with Play Next, it goes to the top of the new
Playing Next list; add a song with Play Later and it goes to the end of
that list.

40
 The Pesky Playing Next Dialog
At times, when you try to play some music, you may see a dialog
asking if you want to clear the Playing Next queue (Figure 19).

Figure 19: This dialog asks how you want to add songs to the
Playing Next queue.
Music opens this dialog when you’ve explicitly added music to the
Playing Next queue, and you then try to play something else without
first adding it to Playing Next. For example, you might have double-
clicked an album or playlist.
If you click Clear Songs, Music replaces your Playing Next queue with
the tracks in the item you just double-clicked. Or, if you click Play
Song, Music adds what you just double-clicked to the beginning of
the Playing Next queue; this is the same as if you had Control-clicked
the item and chosen Play Next. Of course, you can click Cancel to
keep listening to what’s currently playing.

View and Edit Your Playing Next Queue

Once you’ve added a bunch of songs to your Playing Next queue, you
may want to make changes to the queue, perhaps to make a favorite
song play sooner or to delete a track you don’t want to hear.

41
To view the Playing Next queue (Figure 20), click the Playing Next
icon in either the toolbar or the MiniPlayer. Or, press ⌘-Option-U
to toggle it open and closed.

Figure 20: Click the Playing Next icon to view upcoming songs in
the Playing Next queue. You can then hover over a song and Control-
click or click the More icon to view a menu.

You can scroll down in the Playing Next queue to see all the tracks
you’ve added.

42
 Tip: To see what you’ve listened to recently via Playing Next, click
History at the top of the Playing Next popover.

Here’s how to edit your Playing Next queue:

• Move an item: Drag it in the list. Or, to promote a track to the top
of the list, hover over it to show the More icon to its right and
choose Play Next. (You can’t reorder Apple Music playlists in this
way, unless you’ve added them to your library.)

• Delete an item: Hover over the item to reveal a Remove icon

on the left, as you can see next to the second track in Figure 20,
above. Click the icon. Or, arrow up or down in the queue to select a
track that you want to remove from the queue (but not from your
library) and then press the Delete key.

• Delete several items: To delete tracks from the queue, first select
them. To select tracks that are next to each other, click the first
track and then Shift-click the last track; to select noncontiguous
tracks, click a track and then ⌘-click the other tracks. Next, press
the Delete key to remove the selected tracks from the queue.

• Delete the entire queue: Click Clear, above the song list. If you
also want to clear the currently playing track, click Clear again or
press ⌘-period.

• Replay a tune: Click History at the top of the Playing Next

popover to view the Previously Played list. Hover over a song, click
the More icon (on the right), and choose Play Next or Play
Later. Click the Playing Next button to return to the Playing Next
queue.

You can also rate any track in the Playing Next list; click the More
icon to display the contextual menu for a track and rate it with stars
(use the Rating submenu), or you can choose Favorite or Suggest Less.
I discuss rating music in Rate Your Music, and I discuss Favorite and
Suggest Less in Favorite/Suggest Less Ratings.

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Use Autoplay
At the top of Figure 20, above, you see Playing Next, Clear, and the
Autoplay icon. If you click this icon, the Music app switches to
Autoplay mode, where it will continue playing music after your Playing
Next queue has finished. This is sort of like an endless Genius playlist.
If you click the Autoplay icon again, music will stop when the
Playing Next queue has finished.

Make Your Music Sound Better

The Music app offers several playback settings that can change the way
it plays music, or adjust the way the music sounds. You access these on
the Playback tab of Music’s preferences:

• Segue songs: If you turn on Crossfade Songs, Music segues songs

by playing the beginning of one over the end of another. You can
adjust the amount of time the crossfade lasts by dragging the slider,
from 1 to 12 seconds. This can work well with some music, but if you
have songs that have a few seconds of silence at the beginning or
end, the crossfade will happen during silence, and you won’t really
notice it. Also, Crossfade Songs does not segue tracks within an
album when you play them in album order. Note that Crossfade
Songs does not affect CDs that you burn from playlists.

• Enhance sound (or not): There’s a “Sound Enhancer” setting

with a slider that goes from low to high in the Playback preferences.
Sound Enhancer adds a sort of faux-3D effect to the music. Apple
says that “The Sound Enhancer increases the perceived ‘wideness’
of the stereo effect by modifying bass and treble response.” You may
or may not like this effect, or even notice it, depending on the type
of equipment you use to listen to your music.

• Normalize volume: The Sound Check feature normalizes the

volume of music during playback. When you turn it on in the Play-
back preferences, Music applies a positive or negative adjustment to
songs, based on their average volume, so they can match a baseline

44
 volume during playback, thus saving you from needing to frequently
change the volume.

Note: I’ve had some disappointing experiences with Sound Check. As

with the Equalizer, below, I’ve found that it distorts some music if it
has to raise the volume more than a few decibels.

• Equalize your music: You can make detailed adjustments to

music playback with an equalizer, and the digital equalizer in
Music—available by choosing Window > Equalizer—allows you to
choose presets for different types of music or speakers and to make
a preset of your own settings.

I’ve found that while the equalizer does alter the bass or treble a bit,
in many cases it also distorts music. If you don’t like the way your
music sounds, especially if you have small speakers or cheap head-
phones, give it a try, but don’t expect miracles.

• Get better equipment: Your music sounds only as good as the

equipment you play it on. The most recent Macs have greatly im-
proved speakers, and can even play music in Dolby Atmos. But, for
especially good sound, consider running your audio through a
stereo system.

If you use headphones, look into buying better headphones. You

may want different headphones for different places. While out and
about, you want light, portable headphones or earbuds. But for good
sound at home, you should look into larger, over-ear headphones.

Stream Music in Your Home

AirPlay is a feature in macOS, and particularly in the Music app, that
lets you stream music in your home to a stereo, a HomePod, an Apple
TV, or to a speaker or amplifier that supports AirPlay. AirPlay requires
only that you set up the requisite devices on your network. You can
even control Music playback with Apple’s iTunes Remote app on an
iOS/iPadOS device or Apple Watch.

45
In July, 2018, Apple added AirPlay 2 to iTunes. This new version of the
AirPlay protocol offers a number of playback improvements, and
notably allows you to use two HomePods as a stereo pair.

Note: The Music app also offers Home Sharing a method of sharing
libraries over a local network; I look at this feature in Share Your
Music and TV Libraries over a Network.

To stream with AirPlay, click the AirPlay icon at the right of the app
header and choose an AirPlay device (Figure 21). If you have multiple
AirPlay devices, you can stream to more than one at a time; click a
device’s checkbox to select it. You could, for example, stream music to
two rooms at the same time.

With macOS Monterey and later, you can stream music via AirPlay to a
Mac. You might want to do this if you have speakers or a stereo con-
nected to a Mac, and want to stream music from your iPhone. Or, if
you want to stream music to multiple rooms in your home, and one of
them contains a Mac. AirPlay streaming is activated by default in
macOS Monterey, but if you have any problems, go to System
Settings > General > AirPlay & Handoff (Ventura) or System Prefer-
ences > Sharing (Monterey or earlier) and enable AirPlay Receiver.
Here (in the Allow AirPlay for section in Ventura) you can choose
whether anyone can stream to the device, people on the same network,
or only the current user. Just below this section, you can set a pass-
word that is required to stream to the Mac.

46
 Figure 21: Music is playing on my MacBook Air, and is also stream-
ing to a pair of Sonos One speakers in the bedroom and to a Home-
Pod mini in the kitchen. If I want to stream to other devices, I can
click that their checkboxes on the popover. And I can adjust the
volume slider independently for each device.

You can see above that there are lots of items in my AirPlay menu:
HomePods in my office, kitchen, and living room (the two HomePods
together in my office show that they are set up as a stereo pair), Sonos
speakers in the bedroom and TV room (they have generic speaker
icons), my TV, an Apple TV, and I can even use this menu to stream
music to my AirPods Max. With macOS Monterey and later, you can
also stream to a Mac, so my iMac shows in the list.

Tip: To go beyond the streaming features in the Music app, check out
Airfoil and Airfoil Satellite from Rogue Amoeba. Use the Rogue Amoe-
ba Coupon near the end of this ebook to save $7 when you buy
Airfoil.

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Control Music from an iPhone, iPad, or
Apple Watch
If you’re using one of the above techniques to stream music, you may
not be in the same room as the computer where the Music app is
running. So you’ll need a way to control it from across the room or
down the hall if you want to pause, change tracks, or start listening to a
new playlist. You can use Apple’s free iTunes Remote app (Figure 22 )
on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.

Figure 22: The iTunes Remote app on iOS; there is a similar app on
the Apple Watch, called Remote.

If the iTunes Remote app doesn’t automatically find the device that
you want to control, turn on Home Sharing on the device you want to
control, or tap Settings, then Add a Media Library. (See Share Your
Music and TV Libraries over a Network for more about Home
Sharing.)

iTunes Remote lets you connect to an Music library and choose what to
listen to, be it a song, an album, music by a specific artist, or a playlist
(Figure 23).

48
 Figure 23: Here are two views of the iTunes Remote app on my
iPhone. On the left, I’m browsing through albums by Brad Mehldau.
On the right is the Now Playing screen, showing one of his songs
playing on my iMac.

If you tap a track in an album, the album will play in order starting
with that track. If you tap a track in a playlist, that playlist will play,
starting with that track, in order, or you can tap Shuffle to mix up
the playlist. You can also add items to the Playing Next queue.

You can also access minimal controls in the Remote app on an

Apple Watch. Open the app to see available devices, such as computers
running the Music app or Apple TVs. Tap a device to control playback
from its library, or tap Add Device and follow the directions.

49
To control playback, tap the Play/Pause icon, then the Next or Previous
icon, and you can control volume with the Digital Crown (Figure 24).

Figure 24: If you have an Apple Watch, you can control Music
playback and volume from it.

To control Apple AirPlay devices from the Remote app on an Apple

Watch running watchOS 10, turn the digital crown up, then tap the
Now Playing widget.

Control an Apple TV from an iPhone or iPad

There used to be an Apple TV Remote app for iOS and iPadOS, but
with iOS/iPadOS 14, Apple has removed that app. Instead, you can
access controls for your Apple TV in Control Center. To check that this
is enabled, go to Settings > Control Center, and, if you don’t see Apple
TV Remote in the Included Controls section, scroll down and tap the
green icon next to it.

On your iPhone or iPad, you invoke Control Center by swiping down

from the top right of the screen. You’ll see an Apple TV Remote icon in
control center, as in Figure 25.

Figure 25: Tap this icon in Control Center to invoke the Apple TV
Remote.

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You’ll be able to do everything with this interface that you can with the
hardware remote for your Apple TV.

Display Eye Candy While Listening to

Music
The Music app includes a visualizer, a trippy, real-time light show that
you can view while you’re playing music. While this would have been
way cool when I was a teenager back in the 70s, it can also provide
visual entertainment for parties of any size in this day and age.

To activate the visualizer, press ⌘-T. Press the ? key to see which keys
will make changes to the visualizer. Press Esc to exit the visualizer.
While this is interesting to watch for a while, you probably won’t want
to try it at work.

Minimalize the Music App

While many people criticized iTunes for having a lot of features, this is
also true of the new Music app. In some ways, it’s not less “bloated”
than iTunes was.

Some people want to make a minimal music player, with nothing

fancy: no Apple Music, no iTunes Store, no cloud; just their music
library. You can do so by removing a lot of the features you don’t need:

• Turn off the iTunes Store: Choose Music > Settings/Prefer-

ences > General, then deselect iTunes Store. You can no longer hide
the top Apple Music section, even if you are not a subscriber to the
service. However, if you don’t have an Apple Music subscription,
you’ll only see two entries: Listen Now and Browse; Radio won’t
display.

• Slim down the library: You may not need all the library views in
the sidebar. By default, the Music app displays Recently Added,
Artists, Albums, and Songs, but you can also add Genres, Com-

51
 posers, Music Videos, and, if you have Apple Music video content,
TV & Movies. You can edit the sidebar to display only what you
want. Hover over the word Library in the sidebar, then click Edit.
You cannot remove every Library entry in the sidebar; there must
be at least one visible. See Use the Sidebar for more on editing the
Library section of the sidebar.

• Hide Playlists: As with the Library section of the sidebar, you can
hover your pointer over the Playlists section and click the Disclosure
icon to hide the playlists. If you do use playlists, you can limit
them to just a few, or create playlist folders to keep that section
uncluttered. See Organize Your Music and Create Playlists for more
on managing playlists and creating playlist folders.

After the above changes, you will have a very limited Music app. For
example, you could only display Albums in the sidebar, and find all
your music by searching or filtering in Albums view. Figure 26 shows
what that looks like.

Figure 26: Here’s the most minimal way to play music with the
Music app.

You can search for and play music in your local library even with the
above changes, and if you’re an Apple Music subscriber, you can also
access music from that service.

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Watch Music Videos
In iTunes, you could manage a video library: you could purchase
movies and TV shows, and add your own videos. These features have
moved to the TV app (see Watch Movies and TV Shows in the TV App
for more on the TV app). The new Music app does allow you to watch
some videos: music videos from Apple Music or the iTunes Store; and
concerts, interviews, and some TV series that are available as part of
Apple Music.

Music videos are available in the Library section of the sidebar, below
the other view options (Recently Added, Artists, Albums, and so on). If
you don’t see Music Videos in this list, read Customize the Sidebar to
learn how to edit what appears at the top of the sidebar.

Watching music videos is just as easy as playing music. Double-click an

item, and it starts playing full screen on your Mac. Move your pointer
to the bottom the window to display a controller to play, pause, scrub,
or change volume. You can exit full screen by choosing View > Exit Full
Screen.

You can also play videos in their own window by going to Music >
Settings/Preferences > Advanced and checking “Keep video playback
on top of all other windows.” If you do this, you can resize the video
playback window, or even move it to a second display if you have one
(or if you use the macOS Sidecar feature, to use an iPad as a second
display).

You can take advantage of the Picture-in-Picture feature to minimize a

video to a small display at the corner of your screen while you work
with other windows. To do this, click the Picture-in-Picture icon on
the video’s window.

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Stream Videos with AirPlay
If your Mac supports AirPlay video, you can stream video via AirPlay
to an Apple TV, or to a smart TV that provides Apple’s TV app (see
this Apple technical document to find out which models support this
feature).
To do this, start playing the video in Music, click the AirPlay icon
on the controller in the bottom-left corner of the video window. You
can control playback from your Mac by pressing the Space bar to
pause and play, and you can change the volume with the volume
keys on your Mac keyboard. (Note that Music can’t stream just the
audio of an Apple Music video; it streams both the audio and the
video.)
The aforementioned Apple technical document tells you more about
using AirPlay and the various settings available.
For quite a lot of real-world information about streaming video to an
Apple TV through AirPlay, read Take Control of Apple TV.

54
 Stream Apple Music
The world of music has changed in recent years. People are slowly
shifting from owning their music—buying CDs or downloads—to
renting it. With Apple Music and other streaming services, you can
now access 100 millions of tracks for $10.99 a month. While not every
artist or label’s music can be streamed, you can access most of what
you want to hear. But is this the best way to spend your music budget?
Some people—myself included—still buy CDs and still want to own
music and listen on our own terms.

While much of what I explained about playing music in the previous

chapter also applies to Apple Music, in this chapter, I look at Apple
Music and explain how it works, plus how you can find great music and
help Apple Music recommend new music for you to discover.

Note: Although you can use Apple’s older iTunes Match service to
stream your own music, I discuss it later in the Store Your Music
Library in the Cloud chapter.

Discover Apple Music

Apple Music is Apple’s streaming music service, which combines
several features:

• Music streaming: You can stream more than 100 million tracks
from the Apple Music Library. Much of the music that’s for sale in
the iTunes Store is available to stream, but not all. You can stream
tracks on demand, such as a song or album, or you can stream
playlists curated by Apple Music editors and contributors. See
Stream Apple Music.

• Cloud storage: You can store up to 100,000 tracks in the cloud,

and iTunes Store purchases don’t count against this limit. If you
enable cloud sync of your music library, the Music app checks each
track in your library to see whether it can “match” a track that’s
55
 already in the Apple Music Library. If a track doesn’t match, it’s
uploaded. These tracks show in your library along with tracks
you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store and those you’ve down-
loaded from Apple Music. See Sync Your Music Library to the
Cloud.

• Listen Now music recommendations: With 100 million tracks

to choose from, you can have that kid-in-a-candy-store feeling,
where you want to stream everything but don’t know where to start.
Apple Music’s Listen Now feature can help you choose what to listen
to. See Personalize Apple Music.

• Radio: Apple offers three live streaming radio stations on Apple

Music: Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country.
There are a few dozen other radio stations you can listen to on
Apple Music, and you can create an Apple Music Radio station from
any song, artist, or genre. See Listen to Apple Music Radio.

• Music videos: Apple Music contains thousands of music videos,

which you’ll find on artist pages, and also offers Apple Music TV, an
MTV clone that plays music videos nonstop. See Watch Apple Music
TV.

An individual subscription costs $10.99 per month, and a family plan,

available to groups using Apple’s Family Sharing, costs $16.99 per
month for up to six people. If you subscribe or renew an individual
plan for one year, it’s only $109, saving you the cost of two months, but
there is no discounted annual membership for those with family plans.
A half-price student subscription is also available, after you have
submitted proof that you are a student. (Prices are different outside the
United States.)

You can also get Apple Music as part of Apple One subscription, which
will include Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and additional
iCloud storage. There are prices for individuals ($19.95 per month,
with 50 GB of storage) and families ($25.95 per month, with 200 GB),
as well as a Premier bundle that adds News+ and Fitness+, and in-
cludes 2 TB of storage ($37.95 per month). So if you want Apple Music,

56
you may find that for a few dollars more per month, Apple One will
also offer other services that you may want.

If you don’t subscribe, you can access a subset of Apple Music features.

Monthly or Annual Subscription?

Apple Music offers both a $10.99 monthly subscription and a $109
annual subscription, but it’s not clear if the annual subscription is
available when you first sign up to the service. They introduced the
annual subscription silently a couple of years ago, and an option to
subscribe annually shows up if you go to the subscription manage-
ment section of your iTunes Store account. To check this, choose
Account > View My Account, then, in the Settings section of your
account page, after Subscriptions, click Manage. Click Apple Music
Membership to see your options.

Not Everything on the iTunes Store Is Available to Stream

You can’t stream all the music that is available on the iTunes Store.
Not all artists and labels have signed up for Apple Music streaming.
Also some tracks within certain albums are unavailable for streaming,
likely because the labels want people to buy CDs or full album down-
loads, so they make only certain tracks available to stream. In
addition, you may have added some music to your library only to
find, at some point, that its Cloud Status is No Longer Available.

Turn On Apple Music

To turn on Apple Music, follow these steps:

1. Click one of the three entries under the Apple Music header in the
sidebar: Listen Now, Browse, or Radio.

2. Click Try it Free (or whatever option Apple happens to be offering),

and follow the prompts.

3. A lot of the benefit of Apple Music kicks in if you turn on Sync

Library. To learn about that, read Sync Your Music Library to the
Cloud.

57
Once you’ve turned on Apple Music, set up the Listen Now recommen-
dation feature, which I discuss next.

Personalize Apple Music

You have your favorites, and you may want to start by listening to them
right away. Or you may want to think back to music from years past
and check out some of the tunes you grew up with. An advantage of
being able to access more than 100 million tracks is the ability to listen
to almost anything you want. But you can also discover new artists or
composers with Apple Music’s Listen Now recommendation service.

When you first subscribe to Apple Music, you’re asked to choose a few
genres and artists so Apple Music can make recommendations to you.
You can also choose friends to follow, if they subscribe to Apple Music,
and see what they listen to. When you’re finished, the Listen Now
screen displays its initial recommendations.

Note: This onboarding process is overly simplistic; it shows only a

handful of artists, and you can’t add any that it doesn’t suggest. So
it’s important to refine Apple Music’s recommendations, as I explain
ahead, in Favorite Tracks on Apple Music and Tell Apple Music What
You Don’t Like.

Discover Music on Apple Music

Apple Music’s Listen Now recommendation feature displays recom-
mendations based on the genres and artists you selected when you
joined Apple Music (discussed just previously), music you’ve pur-
chased from the iTunes Store, and music you listen to. The recommen-
dations are refined as you listen to music, and, especially when you
“love” or “dislike” songs (explained in the next two topics).

Figure 27 shows my some of Listen Now content on a day in Decem-

ber 2023.

58
 Figure 27: Here’s the top of the Listen Now section.

The first thing you see in Listen Now is a section containing Top Picks.
This is a personalized selection of music containing your most recently
updated “mix” playlist (see just below), playlists and radio stations
corresponding to music you’ve listened to recently, and some new
releases. This section is dynamic, and if you listen to Apple Music
regularly, you should see changes there every day. Make sure to click
the > at the right of what’s visible in this and other sections to scroll
through more content.

Next comes a list of recently played albums and playlists. I currently

see 16 such items, and they update as you listen to music, so you can go
back and find what you recently played to listen to again, if you liked it.

Scroll down a bit and you’ll see Made for You, with your personal
“mixes.” These are created by algorithm, based on the music you and
your friends listen to. Currently, there are five mixes:

• Favorites Mix is a selection of tracks that you’ve listened to a lot

and/or loved.

• Get Up! Mix is a playlist of music to get you moving.

59
• Chill Mix is a selection of relaxing music, picked from multiple
genres. It may include jazz or ambient music, dub or classical, or
other types of downtempo tunes.

• New Music Mix is a playlist of recommended new releases, in the

genres you have selected, and by artists you like, but also by artists
Apple thinks you will like.

• Friends Mix is a selection of tracks your friends have listened to, if

you have followed anyone. (I explain how to do this in Follow
Friends on Apple Music.)

Each of these mixes updates once a week, and each one shows which
day it updates.

A bit further down is Friends Are Listening To; this shows what your
friends have been checking out recently. I explain how to create an
Apple Music profile, and follow friends, in Follow Friends on Apple
Music.

In addition, in various locations in the Listen Now section, you’ll see

some or all of the following (as of November 2022; Apple may change
this content in the future):

• Selections by artist, genre, or mood: Listen Now offers a num-

ber of music selections by artist and genre. For example, I see Rock,
Ambient, More by the Grateful Dead, Instrumental Music, and
mood sections, containing playlists named Be Productive and Stay
Calm. These selections include albums and playlists, and depend on
the music you listen to, and the music you add to your library.

• New Releases: This section displays new albums you might want
to listen to. In some cases, these are albums by artists I know and
love, but others are music that I never listen to (which suggests paid
placement of new releases, perhaps). But I have discovered some
artists and albums I wasn’t familiar with in this section.

• More like: You may see sections labeled More Like album name.
This will show music that Apple Music thinks is similar to an album
you have listened to recently.

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• Stations for you: Apple Music radio stations based on artists
you’ve listened to, as well as your personal Apple Music radio
station. (See Make Custom Radio Stations for more on your Apple
Music radio station.)

• Your Replay Playlists: Apple Music creates “replay playlists” for

you at the end of each year, containing the music you listened to the
most over that period. Since 2020, it has built a playlist for you as
the year progressed. I’ve found these playlists to be a bit odd: while
I do see a lot of music that I’ve listened to, there are some tracks
that I have never heard.

To play an album or playlist, hover over any block and click its Play
button.

To learn more about an album or playlist, click its name. In the case of
a playlist, you see all its songs, with a bit of editorial introduction and
links to artists whose music it contains. To play the album or playlist,
hover over the artwork and click the Play icon. To play any individ-
ual track, hover over it and click.

Tip: You can also click the Browse button in the sidebar to see what’s
new in Apple Music and to search the entire Apple Music library for
new and old music.

Apple Music Mood and Activity Playlists

In late 2021, Apple added several hundred “mood” and “activity”
playlists to Apple Music. These playlists are not easy to find. If I go to
the Browse entry in the sidebar, then scroll down, I see a section
marked Music by Mood, with names such as Chill, Sleep, Feel Good,
Motivation, Fitness, and Feeling Blue. But I see only about a dozen of
these. I don’t see any listing for activities.

The MacStories website has a list of more than 250 such playlists that
they found, with what I think are strange names. There are playlists for
Feeling Confident, New Hair New Me, Checking Email, Monday
Morning, Square Dancing, Long-Distance Relationship, Swimming,
Golf, and much more. Many of these activities don’t really lend them-

61
selves to playlists. Do you seriously want to listen to a playlist someone
made when you check your email? And how does that swimming
playlist work?

In any case, you are meant to discover these by querying Siri, saying,
“Play music for…” The article linked above does give you direct links to
many of these, but other than that, I guess you can just try requesting
music for your mood or activity and see what turns up. (“Hey Siri, play
music for mowing the lawn…” “Sorry, I couldn’t find that speaker.”)

Add Personal Playlists to Made for You

The Listen Now section of Apple Music offers content based on your
listening habits and the music in your library. There are two special
categories in Listen Now: your personal mixes and your Replay
playlists. You can add any of these playlists to your library. To do this,
click the More icon on one of these playlist icons, or on a playlist
page, and choose Add to Library. These playlists display in the Made
for You section of the sidebar, as in Figure 28 below. (If Made for You
isn’t visible, see Customize the Sidebar to learn how to display it.)

Figure 28: A number of my personal playlists in Made for You.

Made for You is simply a shortcut to these two types of playlists. You
can’t add anything else there.

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Favorite Tracks on Apple Music
The key to tweaking your Apple Music recommendations is
“favoriting” tracks you like. Each time you find a track, album, or
playlist you like, click the More icon and choose Favorite to help
Apple Music refine its recommendations. You can also select any song
or album and choose Song > Favorite.

Note: For more about using the Favorite icon (and its obverse, the
Suggest Less feature), see Favorite/Suggest Less Ratings, later.

Choose Your Favorite Artists on Apple

Music
You can tag artists as favorites on Apple Music. To add artists, go to an
artist page—click the red artist’s name on an album page, for example,
or search for an artist—then click the ☆ icon on the right side of their
profile page.

Figure 29: It’s pretty easy to spot the ☆ icon on this profile, be-
cause there’s not a complicated image. With some profiles, it’s a bit
harder to see.

When you’ve favorited enough artists, the Listen Now section contains
a row of your favorite artists. You can click them to access their music

63
quickly, and, over time, you should be notified when they release new
music, and you should see more of their music in your recommenda-
tions.

Tell Apple Music What You Don’t Like

Apple Music recommends a lot of music, and you may not like it all; to
refine your recommendations, tell Apple Music which songs are your
favorites and which you don’t like. You can give feedback in the Music
app: just click the More icon next to any album or playlist recom-
mendation and choose Suggest Less. If you downvote a track you’ve
accidentally favorited, then the Favorite rating will go away and vice
versa.

Follow Friends on Apple Music

It’s one thing to find music on Apple Music, but it’s even better if you
can see what your friends are listening to and discover new artists,
albums, and playlists that they’ve been enjoying. Not only does Apple
Music Listen Now have a section showing what Friends Are Listening
To, but if you follow a few friends, you also see the Friends Mix, which
I described above.

To share your listening history and follow friends, do the following:

1. In Music > Settings/Preferences > General, check Use Listening

History. This lets Apple Music share this history with others, but
also helps refine your Listen Now recommendations.

2. In Apple Music Listen Now, click the My Account button (it looks
like a photo or monogram) in the top-right corner of the window.

3. Click Edit. Here, you can enter your name, a username, and you can
choose who can follow your activity. If you want anyone to be able
to follow you, select Everyone; if not, select People You Approve,
and you’ll have to authorize each person who wants to follow you.

4. You can also change your photo or avatar by clicking the camera
icon in the circle to the right of the window (see Figure 30).

64
 Figure 30: Adjust your Apple Music profile settings here.

5. Click Done to save your changes.

After you click Done, you’ll be on your main profile page, which shows
playlists you’ve created, people you follow, and people following you.
Click the More icon and choose Share Profile to share your profile
with friends. You can copy a link to your profile and send it manually,
or you can send the link via email or Messages. If you’re curious about
my eclectic musical tastes, free to follow me; I’m @mcelhearn.

Add Apple Music Tracks to Your Library

With an Apple Music subscription, if you’ve turned on Sync Library
(see Store Your Music Library in the Cloud for more on storing your
music in the cloud), you can add any music in the Apple Music Library
to your library when Sync Library is turned on. Once you’ve added it,
you can listen to it again offline and add it to playlists, and you can
listen to it on any Apple devices you are signed in to (and even Android
devices, if you have the Apple Music app). These tunes remain avail-
able as long as your Apple Music subscription is active.

To add an album or playlist to your music library, click the Add

button next to it (Figure 31). You can also add an individual track by
clicking the Add icon that displays when you hover over a track.

65
 Figure 31: Add an album to your library with the Add button,
or add a track with the Add icon.

To remove an Apple Music track, album, or playlist from your library,

whether you’ve downloaded it or not, Control-click it or click its More
icon, and choose Delete from Library. The track is removed from
your cloud library and all the devices linked to your account.

Download Music for Offline Listening

Once you’ve added an Apple Music album, playlist, or track to the
cloud, as I discussed just above, you can download it. This allows you
to listen to it without an internet connection—and to avoid hiccups
over a slow connection.

To download an item, find and click its Download icon; this icon is
generally red and in a circle, and it displays in various sizes and loca-
tions. You’ll find them on album and playlist pages, and next to indi-
vidual tracks.
You’ll see these icons in other spots as well: to the right of an album’s
or playlist’s name in various views, or to the right of track names.
You’ll also see them in a column in Songs view (see Songs View).

You can also download items if you click the More icon, or
Control-Click an item, and choose Download from the contextual
menu.
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Apple Music Audio Quality
In June 2021, Apple Music added three new audio file formats to its
Apple Music catalog, available at no extra charge:

• Lossless: You can listen to lossless audio for the entire Apple
Music catalog. Lossless audio has the same quality as a CD, with no
compression that removes any of the original data. Apple Music
uses the Apple Lossless compression codec, which saves space
compared to uncompressed audio on a CD. I discuss lossless audio,
and what it means, in Compression Formats for Ripping CDs.

• High-resolution: High-resolution audio files contain more data

than CDs. This can be an increased bit depth (that’s the number of
bits per sample in an audio file) or a higher sample rate (that’s the
number of times per second music data is captured), or both. High-
resolution audio is controversial, with some people claiming they
can hear a difference between this type of file and CD-quality audio,
but most others not hearing anything. I discuss high-resolution audio
in detail in an article on my website, Music, Not Sound: Why High-
Resolution Music Is a Marketing Ploy.

• Dolby Atmos: Apple is offering some tracks in Dolby Atmos, a

format that Apple is also calling Spatial Audio. Dolby Atmos was
initially used for movies, and it provides a rich surround-sound
experience that is not just on the same plane as you, but also adds
height with sounds that seem to come from the ceiling.

You’ll see icons on album pages, such as in Figure 32, indicating the
quality of the tracks in the album.

Figure 32: These icons tell you which type of file you can play from
Apple Music.

Note that Apple Digital Masters are 256 kbps AAC files that Apple used
to call Mastered for iTunes.

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How to Listen to Lossless, High-Resolution,
and Dolby Atmos Music
We used to just have a stereo, or listen on our Macs or headphones, but
now, to benefit from these enhanced audio formats, you may need
special equipment. Here’s what you’ll need:

Lossless
You’ve been able to listen to lossless audio on Apple devices for many
years. iTunes, and later the Music app, have always allowed you to add
and play files in AIFF, WAV, and Apple Lossless formats. You can
listen to lossless audio from Apple Music on any Mac, iPhone, iPad, or
iPod touch, as well as on the Apple TV 4K. You need to enable this in
the settings (I discuss settings for these new audio formats below). You
will not, however, be able to listen to lossless audio on Apple’s AirPods,
AirPods Pro, or AirPods Max, nor will you get lossless audio on the
HomePod or HomePod mini. These devices stream audio using the
AAC codec, which is not lossless, and Bluetooth doesn’t offer the
bandwidth to play lossless audio at all. Apple has said that the Home-
Pod and HomePod mini will get a software update at some time in the
future to support lossless audio.

High-Resolution
You can able to play high-resolution files on a Mac running macOS 11.4
or later, an iPhone or iPad running iOS 14.6/iPadOS 14.6 or later, or an
Apple TV 4K running tvOS 14.6 or later. These devices will play tracks
at sample rates up to 48 kHz, and you can play files with higher sample
rates if you connect an external DAC (digital-to-analog converter), or,
in the case of an Apple TV, an amplifier with a built-in DAC.

Dolby Atmos
You can listen to Dolby Atmos or Spatial Audio files on some of the
same devices mentioned above. You need an iPhone XS or later
(though the iPhone SE doesn’t support this); or an iPad Pro 12.9-inch
(3rd generation or later), iPad Pro 11-inch, iPad Air (4th generation or
later) or iPad mini (6th generation). You need headphones that sup-
port Spatial Audio, such as Apple’s AirPods Pro or AirPods Max.

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You can also listen to Dolby Atmos using the built-in speakers on a
MacBook Pro (2018 or later), MacBook Air (2018 or later), or iMac
(2021), or an another Mac running macOS 11.4 or later, if you have the
right headphones.

To listen to Spatial Audio on an Apple TV 4K running tvOS 14.6 or

later, you need either a pair of HomePods set up in home cinema audio
mode (see this Apple support document), or a Dolby Atmos compatible
soundbar, AV receiver, or television. You can also use certain types of
headphones. Apple’s support document About spatial audio with Dolby
Atmos in Apple Music goes into more detail about Spatial Audio, and
lists other supported headphones.

If this all sounds complicated, you’re right: it is. Not only do you need
certain devices and operating systems, but your entire audio chain has
to be compatible with Dolby Atmos. You don’t have to listen to lossless,
high-resolution, or Dolby Atmos music if you don’t want to. I explain
below how to choose which quality you stream and download.

Note: You can listen to Dolby Atmos files on other speakers or

headphones, but you won’t get the full surround experience.

Audio Quality Settings

In order to listen to these new formats, you’ll need to adjust some
settings. If you choose Music > Settings/Preferences, then click Play-
back, you can access settings for these new formats. (See Figure 33.)

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 Figure 33: The Playback preferences let you choose which type of
files to stream and download.

Here are your options in the Audio Quality section of these

preferences:

• Lossless audio: Enable this to stream and/or download lossless

and high-resolution audio.

• Streaming: Choose the format you want to stream: High Quality,

for AAC in 256 kbps as before; Lossless (ALAC up to 24-bit/48 kHz)
for standard lossless audio; or High-Resolution Lossless (ALAC up
to 24-bit/192 kHz). Remember, these files are larger than the
standard AAC files, so you’ll be using more bandwidth.

• Download: You have the same three options as above. The in-
creased size of these files means that you’ll need more storage. Note
that existing Apple Music files in your library won’t upgrade auto-
matically to your selected format. You’ll have to delete the local

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 copies (right-click or Control-click a file or files and choose Remove
Download), then re-download the files.

• Dolby Atmos: Your options are Automatic, Always On, or Off. If

you choose Automatic, you hear Dolby Atmos if you are using a
device that supports this format. If you choose Always On, you can
play Dolby Atmos files on any device; if your device or headphones
don’t support the full Dolby Atmos experience, you get a sort-of
surround sound experience, but not the same as Dolby Atmos. If
you choose Off, you won’t get any Dolby Atmos files.

Note: these formats are only available for music you download or
stream from Apple Music; iTunes Store purchases are still in 256 kbps
AAC format.

On iOS and iPadOS devices, you have similar options in Settings >
Music > Audio, and on the Apple TV, go to Settings > Apps > Music to
enable these formats.

Some Thoughts on Dolby Atmos

While adding lossless and high-resolution options to Apple Music is a
good thing, even though most people won’t notice any difference,
Dolby Atmos is another story. For recordings produced and mixed with
Dolby Atmos, the effect can be interesting: it’s immersive, more so
than with quadrophonic or 5.1 surround sound, and it adds space to
the music. But, unfortunately, Apple has had thousands of older tracks
remixed for Dolby Atmos and most of them sound strange.

I listened to some old jazz recordings from the 1960s, where, if masters
were available, there were likely just in stereo. Dolby Atmos allows
producers to apply filters and phasing effects to create space in the
higher frequencies, and most of the older tracks I’ve listened to sound
artificial. For some reason, the volume on many of these tracks is quite
low, and that’s especially the case with some classical recordings I’ve
sampled. And with songs, the vocals are often buried, as the high
frequencies become more prominent.

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The soundstage created seems to be a lot more like what you hear
when listening with headphones, even when you’re listening on speak-
ers. (I have both a 2022 MacBook Air and a 2021 iMac that support
and play back Dolby Atmos.) It sounds less like you’re in a room with
performers and more like you’re on stage with them. Some tout this as
being a Good Thing, but unless you’re in the band, you don’t hear
music like that.

The real change comes when artists produce and mix albums specifi-
cally for surround sound. This has been the case for a couple of
decades, with 5.1 mixes of records, but that format never the achieved
critical mass required to convince most music lovers to invest in a
surround sound system. Dolby Atmos changes this, and more and
more artists are taking advantage of this format to create innovative
productions. Ignore the old music that has been Dolby Atmosified; try
out recent recordings that were mixed after Apple made this format the
Next Big Thing.

One advantage of Dolby Atmos recordings is that they are flexible.

While they may contain up to 128 channels of audio, most use no more
than 10 or 12 channels, and you can listen to them on devices with
fewer channels. You miss out on the detail you would hear with all
those channels, but you’re still getting much of the surround effect.

With the advent of Dolby Atmos soundbars, it’s affordable to set up a

music system around your TV. Even if you don’t add rear speakers, to
get the full surround effect, the music has more presence and space.
I’ve set up a surround system in my TV room, consisting of a Sonos Arc
soundbar, two Sonos One speakers as rear speakers, and a Sonos Sub
Mini, all of them working off my Apple TV 4K. Both for music and for
video, this is a very capable system, and the immersive sound of some
recent Dolby Atmos recordings is impressive.

Dolby Atmos is both simple and complex. It may be the biggest change
in the way we hear music since stereo came along, and it’s worth
exploring. Chris Connaker of Audiophile Style has written a lot about
what he calls immersive music, focusing on Dolby Atmos sound
systems and recordings. Yes, he has a pair of speakers that cost more

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than my car, but his thoughts on this format are worth exploring in his
Immersive Audio articles. While his audiophile approach is overkill for
most people, the principles he discusses give you a better understand-
ing of this new audio format.

Tip: If you have a Mac or headphones with Dolby Atmos support,

give a listen to Brian Eno’s album FOREVERANDEVERMORE, released
in October 2022, on Apple Music. Eno is an artist and producer who
has always been at the forefront of new technology, and this album is
an excellent showcase for what Dolby Atmos can do for music.

Listen to Apple Music Radio

Apple Music Radio plays music from Apple’s enormous repository of
songs. It also includes a few streaming stations run by Apple, such as
Apple Music 1, and a number of local and international radio stations.
Anyone can listen to Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, Apple Music
Country, and other live radio stations, even without an Apple Music
subscription. There are also a number of “Artist Shows,” by musicians
such as Elton John. If you check out some of the genres, you’ll find, in
News and Sports, for example, CBS News Radio, NPR, ESPN Radio,
and more.

Apple’s live radio stations have several live shows with disc jockeys,
and some well-known musicians also run shows where they get to play
their favorite tunes.

If you scroll down on the Radio page, you’ll see a list of genres; each of
these offers a number of algorithmically created stations, such as Pure
Jazz, Simply Piano (for classical music), Classic Metal, and Bollywood.
Check out these stations when you don’t know what you want to listen
to, but want a specific type or genre of music.

To start using Apple Music Radio, select Radio in the sidebar, and then
click a station to start listening.

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 Note: You must be signed in to the iTunes Store to listen to any
Apple Music Radio stations, even the free Apple Music 1 and Apple’s
other live radio stations.

While listening to a song on a radio station that isn’t live, you can
pause or restart playback (click the Pause icon, or press the Space
bar; to start playing again, click the Play icon, or press the Space
bar). If you’re listening to one of Apple’s live radio stations, the play
control area offers a Stop icon rather than a pause icon.

If you don’t like the song that’s playing, click the Next icon to skip
to the next song. You can’t skip ahead in a song; you can only skip to
the next song. You can skip as much as you like, but you can’t skip
when listening any “live” radio station.

If you’ve turned on Sync Library, you can add any track you’re listening
to your library. Hover over a song name in the app header and click the
More icon to display a menu (Figure 34), then choose Add to
Library or Add to Playlist > Playlist. If you do the latter often, you
might want to create a playlist specially for the purpose of adding
songs from radio stations so you can go back to them later.

New in late 2023 is the capability to listen to Apple Music radio pro-
grams in Apple’s Podcasts app. Some are available only to Apple Music
subscribers, and some to everyone. The advantage of listening to these
radio shows here is that you can have the Podcasts app alert you to
new episodes and download them for you. See Listen to and Watch
Podcasts for more on using the Podcasts app.

Note that when Apple’s live radio stations have interviews with musi-
cians, or when the DJs are talking, the menu shows only Share Station.
Once the music returns, you’ll see the full menu.

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 Figure 34: The More menu lets you work with tracks currently
playing in Apple Music Radio.

You can also show the current track in Apple Music or in the iTunes
Store, share the song, or create a new custom radio station based on
that song. And, you can use the Favorite and Suggest Less options to
fine-tune the Apple Music algorithm. This is especially helpful if you
play a personal radio station (see just below) and want to ensure that it
plays the music you want to hear.

Make Custom Radio Stations

Your Apple Music Radio listening can go beyond the featured stations
to those you create yourself, based on artists and musical groups that
you like: for example, if you like Bill Evans, Bruce Springsteen, The
Clash, and Alfred Brendel, you can create a station for each. Apple
Music Radio stations don’t play music just by that artist: if you choose
an artist for an Apple Music Radio station, you’ll get a couple of songs
by that artist and other songs by similar artists. And if you create a
genre station, you’ll hear a broad variety of music from that genre. As
such, their titles may display in Apple Music as, for example, Hot Tuna
& Similar Artists.

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These stations sync across your devices; so long as you’re signed in to
the same iTunes Store account, you can listen to the same stations on
any device.

You can create a custom station for any item in your library, or on
Apple Music. Click the More icon next to any song, album, or
artist and choose Create Station, and the Music app will begin playing
that station’s music. When you do this, the Music app restarts the song
you’ve used as a seed for that radio station, and then plays other,
related music after it is finished.

You can access your new station later in the Recently Played section of
the Radio view and in Listen Now. You cannot delete stations you
create in this manner.

Create Your Own Personal Radio Station

In addition to radio stations based on songs, albums, artists, or genres,
you can create a personal radio station that will be called “Your Name’s
Station.” To do this, tell Siri, on any mobile device or Apple TV, to
“Play some music.” A radio station will be created just for you, with
artwork as in Figure 35, based on your music library, listening histo-
ry, and loves and dislikes. You’ll find it, along with other radio stations,
in the Recently Played section of the Radio view, as well as in Recently
Played in Listen Now, if you have, indeed, played it recently. It also
displays in Stations for You in Listen Now.

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 Figure 35: Your personal Apple Music radio station looks like this.

This is one of my favorite features of Apple Music. When I want music

but don’t know what to listen to, I launch this radio station. This is
especially practical when I’m driving and don’t want to pick music. It’s
easy to skip tracks I don’t want to hear, and I never have to skip more
than a couple of times.

Note: If you’re a new Apple Music user, you may see a personal radio
station after you’ve used the service enough. But launching it with
Siri is the best way to get started using it.

In addition, while it took a while for the Apple Music algorithm to

really understand my eclectic tastes, there’s a lot of variety. Right now,
as I’m working on this book, I’ve been listening to my personal radio
station for about two hours, and there have been no repeats, and only a
handful of tracks that I don’t like.

My only issue with the personal radio station is that I listen to music
across a wide range of genres, and sometime my radio station plays
only classical music, others only rock, and others only jazz. I would
love to have multiple personal radio stations that play according to my
listening history, but filtered by genre.

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View Your Radio History
Apple Music Radio is about serendipity. Ideally, you’ll hear songs that
you like and haven’t heard for a while (and that aren’t in your Music
library), as well as songs and artists that you’ve never heard before.

Apple Music keeps track of your listening history so you can check the
songs you’ve heard, and potentially buy them or add them to the cloud.
To review what you’ve heard on all Apple Music Radio stations, click
the Playing Next icon on the right side of the app header when the
Radio view is active (Figure 36).

Figure 36: See what you’ve listened to on all your stations.

You can listen to any track again by double-clicking it, and if you hover
your pointer over the song and click the More icon, as you can see
next to the song at the top of the History list in Figure 36 above, you
can view info about the track, view it in the iTunes Store or in Apple
Music, share it, or share the radio station on which you heard it.

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However, you cannot add a track to your music library, so if you want
to do that, double-click it to play it, and add it from the More icon
on the app header.

What About Internet Radio?

iTunes long had a section where you could access internet radio
stations; stations that streamed over the internet. You could browse
these stations by genre, and even save them in playlists. That feature
is no longer available in the Music app, though you can stream a
station if you have its URL. Choose File > Open Stream URL, paste
the URL in the dialog that displays, then click OK.

Watch Apple Music TV

A few decades ago, a revolution in music consumption was launched:
MTV. It combined music videos, interviews, and live and filmed
performances in a 24/7 stream of music and images (and ads).

Apple Music TV is similar. You can access it from the Browse section of
the Music app, and also in the Home section of the TV app, and it is
available only in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom.
Apple Music TV (Figure 37) offers pretty much the same type of
content as MTV, but without ads.

Figure 37: Click this to view Apple Music TV.

As with Apple’s live radio stations, you don’t need an Apple Music
subscription to watch Apple Music TV.

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 View Your Music and
Other Content
Now that you have a substantial music library, you need to choose the
right way to view your music so you can find what you want to listen to.
In this chapter, I’ll show you various ways to view your music.

Use the Sidebar

The Music sidebar, which displays at the left of the app’s window
(Figure 38), helps you navigate your music library. It lets you view
your music in different ways.

Figure 38: Use the sidebar to access your music in different ways.

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The sidebar has four or five sections, by default, depending on how you
interact with Apple’s commercial offerings:

• Search: The search field is at the top of the sidebar, and cannot be
hidden. I discuss searching your music library, Apple Music, and
the iTunes Store in Search for Music.

• Apple Music: If you have an Apple Music subscription, you can

use the three elements of the Apple Music section of the sidebar to
access Listen Now recommendations, Browse Apple Music content,
and listen to Apple Music Radio. If you don’t have an Apple Music
subscription, this is still visible; Apple wants to tempt you to sign
up. I discuss Apple Music in Stream Apple Music.

• Library: This is your music library, which contains local tracks and
those in your cloud library, if you are using that feature. If you have
shared libraries on your network, you can click the Library header
to choose those libraries. See Share Your Music and TV Libraries
over a Network for more on using Home Sharing.

• iTunes Store: If you are signed into an Apple Music account, this
is hidden by default; if not, you will see it. You can show or hide it
by choosing Music > Settings/Preferences, and selecting or dese-
lecting iTunes Store in the Show section. I look at the iTunes Store
in Use the iTunes Store.

• Playlists: You may have playlists for your local music, or you may
have created your own playlists or added Apple Music playlists to
your library. If so, a Playlists section displays in the sidebar. I
explain how to create playlists in On Playlists.

Customize the Sidebar

As mentioned above, you can show and hide two sections of the side-
bar in Music’s preferences: Apple Music and the iTunes Store. But you
can also choose what to display in the Library section, and you can
collapse the Playlists section if you don’t want to see it.

To edit the Library section of the sidebar, hover your pointer over the
header and click Edit, which appears to the right of the word Library.

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In Figure 39, you can see the Library section of the sidebar in edit
mode.

Figure 39: You can show or hide any of the above views.

You may not need to see all these views for your music library. For
example, if you don’t have any music videos, you can uncheck that; if
you don’t listen to classical music, you can uncheck Composers. Note
that TV & Movies displays only if you download TV shows or movies
from Apple Music (and there aren’t many of these); otherwise you
don’t see it, as TV shows and movies are, for the most part, within the
purview of the TV app. Click Done when you’re finished editing this
part of the sidebar.

The only other change you can make to the sidebar is to hide the
Playlists view, if you don’t use playlists. Hover your pointer over the
Playlists header, then click the Disclosure icon that appears to the
right of that word. Click again to show your playlists.

Finally, you can reorder the views in the Library section. Just click and
drag a view to a new location. So you could put Recently Added at the
bottom of the list, or Songs just before Albums.

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 Hide the iTunes Store
If you don’t plan to buy any music, and want to remove the iTunes
Store from the sidebar, go to Music > Settings/Preferences > Gener-
al, then uncheck iTunes Store in the Show section of the preference
pane. You used to be able to hide Apple Music in a Restrictions tab of
the Music app’s preferences, but if you visit that tab, you’ll be told
that content restrictions are now managed in the Screen Time pane
of System Settings/System Preferences. Screen Time lets you set
content restrictions by age, but there is no longer an option to hide
Apple Music.

View Your Music Library

I explained just above that you can remove views you don’t want to
use, or don’t need, when accessing your music library. I now discuss
the various views, and how you can use them to access and play music.

Recently Added View

Recently Added view shows music you’ve added to your library in
reverse chronological order; the newest additions at the top. It has
bold headings, such as Today, This Week, This Month, and Last 3
Months, so you can scroll down to see your history of adding music,
going back to the earliest tracks or albums you have added to your
library.

Recently Added displays music by album (Figure 40); you cannot

change this display.

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 Figure 40: Recently Added view in the Music library displays music
as albums with the name of the album and artist below each image.

Note: In the figure above, you can see a status bar at the bottom of
the Music app window. If you display this, by choosing View > Show
Status Bar, you’ll be able to see information about the contents of any
view: the number of items (songs or albums), their total duration (in
days:hours:minutes format), and the total disk space the items take
up in MB or GB. This status bar shows these totals for any album,
playlist, artist list, or even your entire library.

I like to check my Recently Added view periodically for these reasons:

• Listening to new music: No matter how you add music—ripping

CDs, buying music from the iTunes Store, or adding it from Apple
Music—Recently Added will remind you of what’s new. To listen to
recent music, hover your pointer over an album and click the Play
button that displays.

• Noticing the delivery of pre-ordered content: If you pur-

chase music from the iTunes Store, and you’ve set Music to auto-
matically download new content, any albums you have pre-ordered
will appear in this view.

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 Note: To find out how to turn on automatic downloads, read Auto-
matically Download Purchases to the Music App.

Artists View
Artists view adds an artists column to the right of the sidebar and
displays a slightly expanded album view.
If you click an artist’s name, you see albums from that artist in the
right-hand pane (Figure 41). The header bar of that pane displays the
artist’s name, and the number of albums and songs in your library by
that artist. There is also a star icon, which you can click to mark your
favorite artists (see Choose Your Favorite Artists on Apple Music for
more on favoriting artists); here you can see that the outline of the star
icon is red, as Brian Eno is one of my favorite artists.

Figure 41: Artists view lists artists in an added column. When you
click an artist, you see the artist’s albums in the pane on the right.

Artists view is a bit limited. You can’t see much in the right-hand
section of the Music window, as songs are displayed with a lot of
spacing.

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 Tip: If you have a lot of artists in your music library and you want to
quickly select one, click anywhere in the list, then type the first few
letters of an artist’s name. For example, if I type JOHN, Music moves
down the list to show me artists whose names begin with John, such
as John Abercrombie, John Cage, John Cale, and John Coltrane.

You can customize Artists view from the View Options window, ac-
cessed by choosing View > Show View Options (⌘-J), or click the Sort
icon:
• Sort albums by: Choose an option from the pop-up menu to sort
the listings in the right-hand pane. You can choose to display only
your favorite artists in this view, which can be helpful to whittle
down your library. You can these choose Sort Options, and sort by
title, genre, year, or rating, and chose Ascending or Descending for
your sort criterion.
• Group compilations: To see all your compilations in the right-
hand pane, select the Group Compilations checkbox and then select
Compilations from near the top of the artists list. This option is
available only from the View Options window.

Filtering and Sorting Music

In all the library views except for Recently Added and TV & Movies,
you can use two tools to filter and sort your music. In the top-right
corner of the window, just below the toolbar, you see a Filter icon
and a Sort icon. The Filter icon lets you filter your music, as
I described in Search Your Library with the Filter Field. The Sort
icon gives you a shortcut to the View Options window, which I discuss
in each view section.

Albums View
Albums view (Figure 42) displays album art in a grid, with album and
artist names below each image.

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 Figure 42: Albums view shows album art, titles, and artist names.
Gotta love those covers for the Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72 concerts!

When you click an album, you see that album’s tracks (Figure 43).

Figure 43: Here’s a view of an album after clicking on it in Albums

view.

Tip: In the figure above, the red color of the artist’s name (Grateful
Dead) indicates that the name is a link. Click it to see the artist’s
other music in Artists view.

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To tell Music how to sort albums in Albums view, open the View
Options window (⌘-J) or click the Sort icon. You can choose to
display only your favorite artists in this view. And you can choose Sort
Options to display albums in order set by two criteria. With the de-
faults (Sort By: Artist and then: Title), Music first sorts your albums by
artist, and then, within each artist, by title. The options available are
Title, Artist, Genre, Year, and Rating. So you can sort by Year and
Artist, or Genre and Title, or any combination of those five criteria, and
choose whether the sort is by ascending or descending order.

Tip: As with Artists view above, you can type the first few letters of
an artist’s name to zip to that section of your Albums. For example, if
I type “MILES,” Music moves down and selects the first album in my
library by Miles Davis.

Genres View
Genres view is similar to Artists view (discussed above), though, like
Composers view, discussed below, there are no graphics to illustrate
the genre names. Click a genre to see all its albums to the right (Fig-
ure 44).

Figure 44: In Genres view, in the right-hand pane’s header bar, you
can see the number of albums and tracks in that genre.

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You can sort by Title, Artist, Year, or Rating in the View Options
window (⌘-J) or the Sort icon, but you can’t sort by two criteria,
as you can in Albums view. Note the red star to the right of the album
name; this is because I have favorited the album. See Favorite/Suggest
Less Ratings for more on how to mark albums and songs as favorites.

Composers View
Composers view displays music that has a Composer tag filled in.
Composers view looks a lot like Artists view (described above), though
it doesn’t display any photos in the left-hand column next to the names
of the composers. If you open the View Options window (⌘-J) or click
the Sort icon, you can sort albums in the right-hand pane by
Title, Artist, Genre, Year, or Rating.

Tip: As with Artists view above, you can type the first few letters of a
composer’s name to quickly move down the list to find a composer.
But the Music app looks at the first letters of the entries in the list, so
if all your composers are listed in lastname, firstname order, you can
find a composer by typing the first letters of their last name. If you
have composers in firstname lastname order, then type letters of a
composer’s first name. And if you have a combination of both, then,
well, type what you think will find the composer you’re looking for.

Music Videos
Music Videos displays videos you have added from Apple Music, so if
you don’t plan to view music videos, you can hide this section. By
default, this view displays music videos in a grid (Figure 45), but you
can also choose to display these videos in list form. Press ⌘-J to show
the View Options window (⌘-J) or click the Sort icon and
choose View As List. If you do this, you’ll have options to sort items by
two criteria, and the Sort icon gives you these sort options, and
lets you also filter videos by your favorites.

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 Figure 45: Music Videos view shows music videos in a grid; click a
video to play it.

TV & Movies
TV & Movies view displays only if you have downloaded TV shows or
movies from Apple Music. These include shows like Carpool Karaoke
and Planet of the Apps, and are actually quite hard to find if you don’t
search for them by title; there’s no TV & Movies section in Apple
Music.

Songs View
The default Songs view is a spartan list of songs, with user-config-
urable columns showing tags and other metadata (Figure 46).

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 Figure 46: Songs view is drab, but can be rich in information.

Songs view is great if you want to sort all your music in specific ways,
since it lets you display columns for each kind of metadata about your
music; see Show Columns in Songs Views, shortly ahead, for more
about controlling which columns appear.

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 Displaying Artwork in Songs View
To display artwork in Songs view, open the View Options window (⌘-
J) and select Show Artwork. This adds a column with album artwork
to the left of the song list. Use the Artwork Size slider to choose a
size for your artwork. The Artwork column has some limitations: it
can take up a lot of space if you keep it wide enough to show the
album and artist name; you can choose from only three artwork sizes
in the View Options window; and you may not like seeing some
albums with artwork and others without artwork. Depending on the
size you choose for the artwork, and the number of tracks in an
album, Music determines whether it can fit the album artwork in the
available space.
You have some control over this last limitation: the “Always Show”
checkbox in the View Options window forces iTunes to display artwork
no matter how many tracks you have.
To see only the album artwork, drag the column divider to the right
of the Artwork column header as far toward the left as it will go; this
is how I’ve got my Songs view set up in Figure 47, ahead. Limiting
this column to just artwork is useful if Music is set to display columns
for Album and Artist, because it hides duplicated information.

Songs view becomes a great way to view and navigate a large music
library if you activate the Column Browser, and display artwork. To do
this, choose View > Column Browser > Show Column Browser (⌘-B)
(Figure 47).

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 Figure 47: Songs view is more practical, and more attractive, when
you display the Column Browser and artwork.

Tip: The default Column Browser lets you drill down through Genres,
Artists, and Albums. To see Composers and/or Groupings columns,
turn them on in the View > Column Browser submenu.

Using the Column Browser is an easy way to play entire albums. You
successively constrict your selection from genre to artist to album, and
as you do this, the list of tracks displayed below the Column Browser
shortens until you’re left with only the album you want. Then click the
Play button or double-click its first track to listen.

The Column Browser is also a good way to navigate your library when
you’re deciding what to put in playlists, or what to sync to a mobile
device. As with the other views, you can open the View Options win-
dow (⌘-J) or click the Sort icon to sort your music in Songs
view. But you can also click column headers to sort music; click Title to
sort by title, click Artist to sort by artist, and click the Album column to
toggle through Album, Album by Artist, and Album by Artist/Year.
This latter option sorts by the year albums were released, if your music
has that metadata.

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 Tip: As I’ve mentioned above for Artists, Albums, and Composers
view, you can type the first few letters of an album or artist name to
quickly move down the list and home in on music you’re looking for.
With Songs view, this works a bit differently: it depends on which
column is clicked to sort the music. If you’re seeing your songs in
alphabetical order, typing a few letters moves to those letters in the
Name column. If your songs are sorted by artist, then you can type
letters of an artist’s name. And so on.

Playlist Views
When you view a playlist, you have a number of options for how you
want it to display your music. The default Playlist View is similar to the
way individual albums are displayed (Figure 48).

Figure 48: Here is an Apple Music playlist in the default Playlist

view.

Playlist view is particularly interesting for playlists you save from

Apple Music because a description can appear above the list, giving
you more information about the artists or tracks it contains. (To add a
description to your own playlists, click Add Description and type.) In
addition, tracks in Apple Music playlists contain Add icons so you
can add them to your library, if you like.

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You can view playlists in other ways, however. Press ⌘-J to display the
View Options window. In the View As popup menu, you can choose
Playlist, Songs, Albums, Artists, Composers, or Genre. All of these
views display as described in their respective sections above, and offer
the same sorting options. If you click the Sort icon, you can sort
the playlist by title, genre, artist, year, and other criteria, and choose to
display only your favorite songs.
When you view playlists that contain music from multiple albums—
whether in Playlist view, or another view—Music displays a montage of
the playlist’s album artwork in the playlist header. You can change this
artwork if you want, so long as the playlist isn’t from Apple Music. Just
drag a graphic from the Finder, or from a webpage, to the location
where the artwork is in the playlist header, or click the artwork to open
a popover, where you can click Other to select a file on your Mac.

All Playlists
The All Playlists entry, at the top of the Playlists section in the sidebar,
provides an at-a-glance view of all your playlists. Displaying like
Albums view, with artwork for each playlist either generated from the
artwork the playlist contains, or custom added, this view groups all
your playlists. There are headers for Genius playlists, My Playlists
(playlists you have created), and Apple Music Playlists (playlists you
have added from Apple Music). You’ll also see headers for any playlist
folders you have created.
This is a more visual view than what the sidebar shows you, and you
may want to use this view when searching for a playlist, rather than
look in the sidebar. I think this All Playlists entry should really be in
the Library section of the sidebar, to make it more accessible.

Show Columns in Songs Views

If you use Songs view, you can choose which columns display. Each
column corresponds to a tag, or a type of metadata. (I discuss tags in
Tag Your Music Files.)

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You can show or hide a column by Control-clicking any column header
and choosing a column name; a visible column has a checkmark next
to its name in the contextual menu. Because you have to individually
choose to show or hide each column by selecting its name, you may
find it easier to work with the View Options window.

Open the View Options window by pressing ⌘-J. The top section of the
window lets you choose the sort order and whether and how artwork
displays. The lower section lets you show or hide columns (Figure
49); you see different options depending on which view is active.

Figure 49: You can choose among the many metadata columns.

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 Tip: When you display a lot of columns in the Music window, you may
need to scroll horizontally to see them all.

After adding columns, you may want to reposition them by dragging

them left or right in the column header area, and resize them to show
all the information they contain or to make them fit in the window.

One way to resize columns is to Control-click a column header, then

choose Auto Size Column or Auto Size All Columns. Music fits the size
of one or all visible columns to hold the longest text that they contain.
Or, drag the divider between any two column headers.

Use Contextual Menus

Quite a few commands in the Music app are available in contextual
menus. These menus are worth paying attention to, since it’s often
faster to open a contextual menu than to work with a menu bar menu,
especially since a contextual menu can appear in the MiniPlayer or in
full-screen mode. I often use a contextual menu to rate songs or to add
selected songs to the Playing Next queue.

A contextual menu appears when you Control-click (right-click) the

appropriate location. If you have a trackpad, you may prefer a different
method, such as a two-finger tap.

For example, if you Control-click the app header on a track name while
playing a tune, a contextual menu opens (Figure 50). When you
Control-click that same tune in your Music library, the contextual
menu has a few additional items.

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 Figure 50: Left: Music displays a contextual menu when you
Control-click the app header over a track name. Right: the contextu-
al menu that displays when you Control-click a track has more
options.

Contextual menus also open when you Control-click other items:

playlists, artists, genres, and so on. Each menu has options appropriate
to the selected item. And you see similar menus when you click the
More icon in various locations in the app.

The options available from contextual menus are also accessible from
the menu bar, on the Song menu. Note that not all of the menu items
in the figures above display for all music; Download displays only if a
track is in the cloud; Genius Suggestions displays only if such sug-
gestions are available for the track. Likewise for Show in Apple Music
and Show in iTunes Store; these won’t display if these are tracks you’ve
added to your library from CDs or other download sources.

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 Store Your Music Library
in the Cloud
Your music library can be on your Mac, or it can be in the cloud, if you
enable Sync Library, or it can be in both locations. The Music app blurs
the distinction between the two, because it can upload your own music
to the cloud, and you can also add music from Apple Music to your
library. While you aren’t required to use the cloud for your music
library, it’s a powerful tool that allows you to have a huge music library
accessible on all your devices. (Provided you have the bandwidth and
data allowance to access it.)

This chapter looks at the two ways you can store your music library in
the cloud, via Apple Music and iTunes Match. Both these options allow
you to enable Sync Library, which lets you store up to 100,000 tracks
that you can access from any Mac running the Music app, any Win-
dows PC running iTunes, an Apple TV, any iOS/iPadOS device, or an
Android device running the Apple Music app. You can even listen to
Apple Music on a Google Nest device or an Amazon Alexa device, and
other devices may support Apple Music as well; for example, Sonos
devices support Apple Music, and other hi-fi streamers may offer
access to Apple Music. In addition, the iTunes Store keeps your pur-
chased content in the cloud, so you can stream or re-download it at any
time.

Note: In the previous chapter, Stream Apple Music, I looked at

Apple’s streaming music service. Although some of those sections
touched on cloud-based aspects of Apple Music, this chapter has
detailed information about storing your music library in the cloud
when you enable Sync Library.

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Manage Music and the Cloud
In recent years, Apple has expanded its cloud-based media offerings,
and, while you can certainly use the Music app without ever accessing
the cloud, many of its features depend on Apple’s data centers.

Here’s a quick look at the current options for digital media:

• Sync Library: If you subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match,

you can enable Sync Library, which commingles tracks from the
following sources, making them available on all computers and
mobile devices that are signed in to the same iTunes Store account:

‣ Tracks in your Music library that didn’t come from Apple, such
as tracks from CDs you’ve ripped or downloads you’ve purchased
from sources other than Apple, which are uploaded to the cloud
or matched with existing tracks on Apple’s servers

‣ Music you’ve added from Apple Music, as long as you maintain

your Apple Music subscription

‣ Music you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store

Before you start iTunes Match or turn on Sync Library, read Before
You Enable Sync Library.
• Apple Music: This is the streaming arm of Apple’s cloud music
offering. Without a subscription, you can listen to Apple Music 1
and other live radio stations. Subscribers can listen to Apple Music
Radio, gain access to the 100 million tracks in the Apple Music
Library, get Listen Now recommendations, and can turn on Sync
Library. See Discover Apple Music to learn how to use this service.
• iTunes Match: With iTunes Match, you enable Sync Library to
store your music library in the cloud. The tunes that you store and
access are only those from your library; you can’t access the Apple
Music Library. Because iTunes Match’s cloud features are included
in Apple Music, if you’ve subscribed to Apple Music, you won’t see
an iTunes Match option. See Use iTunes Match for more.

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• Automatic downloads from the iTunes Store: This feature
has been around for a few years, so even though it’s cloud-based,
you may not think of it that way. It lets you download a new iTunes
Store purchase to more than one computer or device automatically.
See Automatically Download Purchases to the Music App.
• Re-downloads: You can re-download any music you’ve purchased
from the iTunes Store (assuming it’s still available) at any time. See
Re-Download iTunes Store Content.

Note: Not all of these services are available in all countries. See
Apple’s Availability article to find out what’s on offer for your country.

How to Tell If Your Media Is in the Cloud

A Download icon indicates that a media item is currently stored in
the cloud. For example, when you have enabled Sync Library, you may
see Download icons (Figure 51). You also see these icons on media
from the iTunes Store that you’ve bought but not downloaded to your
computer. In some views, where you only see album artwork, hover
your pointer over the artwork to see the Download icon.

Figure 51: The Download icons in the album header, and next to
each song when you hover your pointer over a song, as above, allow
you to download either the entire album or individual songs.

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You can click a Download icon to download content, or in the case
of an album thumbnail, you can expand the album—click the album
thumbnail if you’re in Albums view—to download individual tracks.

In list views, you also see Download icons, which you can click to
download content.

Note: For more information about the cloud status of each of your
tracks, such as whether a track is one you’ve bought or one you’ve
added from Apple Music, look at your music in Songs view. For help
with this, skip ahead to Understand Cloud Status Labels.

Re-Download iTunes Store Content

You have two options. You can re-download from within your Music
library or from the iTunes Store. Also, if you use Family Sharing, you
can find other family members’ purchases in the iTunes Store.

Note: If you don’t see your purchases in your library, choose View >
All Music. If you choose View > Only Downloaded Music, you can hide
all music that’s in the cloud.

Before you can download iTunes Store purchases, you must sign in to
the appropriate iTunes Store account, so check the Account menu to
see whether you are signed in. If you are, you’ll see your name and
Apple ID in gray at the top of the menu. If you aren’t signed in, choose
Account > Sign In. Once you are signed in, you can re-download
content in several ways.

Re-Downloading from the iTunes Store

You can re-download many of your iTunes Store purchases in the
Music app. At the top of the Music app’s View menu, you can see two
options: All Music and Only Downloaded Music. If you choose All
Music, any iTune Store purchases you have made will show in your
library, with download icons if they are not physically on your Mac.

If you choose Only Downloaded Music, you’ll only see the music that is
on your Mac. But you can see all your iTunes Store purchases by

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choosing Account > Purchased. In the header for the Purchased list,
click Albums or Songs to view the content available (Figure 52).

Figure 52: Some of my iTunes Store purchases. Note that the

iTunes Store still uses cloud Download icons, rather than the
newer Download icons that appear elsewhere in the Music app.

Note: If you are using Family Sharing, you can access any family
member’s purchases by choosing that person from the pop-up menu
located next to “Purchased” in the header bar.

You can click Recent Purchases to see your most recent iTunes Store
acquisitions, or you can scroll through the artist list to find specific
artists. You can also type the name of a song, album, or artist in the
Search Purchased Items field.

When you’ve found the item that you want to download, click its
Download icon. For example, in Figure 52, above, each album has
a Download icon on its corner.

Apple states that “Previous purchases might be unavailable if they’ve

been refunded or aren't on the iTunes Store.” I have seen a few of my
purchases become “unavailable,” presumably because artists or record

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labels decided to no longer sell through the iTunes Store, or, in some
cases, newer versions of albums have been released, and the older ones
have been removed. So it’s best to ensure that you have backups of all
your music; see Back Up Your Media Files.

Tip: If you frequently buy content on one device and then have to
download it in the Music app on another device using the above
steps, you might want to turn on automatic downloads. Automatically
Download Purchases to the Music App, ahead, has directions.

Hide Content You’ve Purchased from the

iTunes Store
If you’re using Apple Music, you see all the music you’ve ever bought
from the iTunes Store in your library. You may not want to see every-
thing, especially if you’ve downloaded a lot of free songs. (For many
years, the iTunes Store offered a free single every week. They don’t do
this any more.)

To hide any item, choose Account > Purchased (or Family Purchases).
Find the item you want to hide, hover your pointer over it, and click
the x that appears in the top-left corner of the item’s artwork.

If you ever want to un-hide something, choose Account > View My

Account. In the iTunes in the Cloud section, to the right of Hidden
Purchases, click Manage, and you can un-hide any hidden purchase.

Sync Your Music Library to the Cloud

Apple allows you to maintain your music library in the cloud by en-
abling the Sync Library setting. If you subscribe to iTunes Match,
Music enables Sync Library automatically for you as part of the match-
ing process. Or, if you subscribe to Apple Music, you can optionally
enable Sync Library, but you don’t have to if you just want to manage a
local library.

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In either case, here’s what you can store in the cloud if you enable Sync
Library:

• Purchased tracks: Music that you bought from the iTunes Store.

• Matched or uploaded tracks: Music from your personal Music

library. These may be from CDs you ripped or downloads you
acquired from sources other than the iTunes Store.

• Apple Music tracks: If you’ve subscribed to Apple Music, you can

add any Apple Music track to your cloud library. You can use these
tracks just like music that you own, except that you’ll lose them if
you cancel your Apple Music subscription.

You can play these files by album, you can shuffle them, and you can
make playlists with them—and you can do all these things on a com-
puter running the Music app, on an iOS/iPadOS device, or on an Apple
TV.

Storing your music library in the cloud blurs the line between what’s
on your device and what’s on Apple’s servers. One of the biggest
advantages to this feature is the capability to have a library much
larger than the available space on your Mac or your mobile devices.
This allows you to ignore which files are where, as long as you have an
active internet connection.

Use iTunes Match

The $24.99-per-year iTunes Match is more affordable than the $10.99-
per-month Apple Music, but it does not give you access to music from
the enormous Apple Music Library. What it does is provide you with
access to all your music on all your devices—any computer running the
Music app, iTunes on Windows, any iOS/iPadOS device, or an Apple
TV—so you can stream music or download it. As long as your devices
have an affordable and speedy internet connection, you don’t have to
think about whether a device has enough storage space to store more
music or how to copy the music to it.

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iTunes Match also stores music in the cloud, but unlike Apple Music,
you only have access to two types of music files:

• Purchased tracks: Music you have bought from the iTunes Store.

• Matched or uploaded tracks: Music from your personal Music

library. These may be from CDs you ripped, or downloads you
acquired from sources other than the iTunes Store.

Note: If you subscribe to Apple Music, you effectively already have

all the features in iTunes Match, so Apple won’t let you sign up.

Before You Enable Sync Library

Whether you are contemplating turning on iTunes Match or you’ve
subscribed to Apple Music and are considering syncing your music to
the cloud, consider these warnings before you proceed:

• Tags may revert: If you’ve previously bought music from the

iTunes Store and changed its tags, Music may revert those tags to
the way they appear on the iTunes Store. You can change them
back, but it’s a headache. Many users (including me) have also run
into problems with artwork and tags being changed on tracks
ripped from CDs or purchased elsewhere, and with ripped albums
being split into different groups of tracks.

If you’ve put effort into organizing and tagging your library, you
may not want to store your music in the cloud.

• Bandwidth issues: When you enable Sync Library, any tracks in

your Music library that don’t match a track in the Apple Music
Library (or your iTunes Match library, if you already have one) will
be uploaded. Make sure you won’t hit an important bandwidth cap
before you turn on this feature. You may also want to turn it on at a
time when it’s okay if it hogs your internet connection. If you quit
Music, it will stop uploading your tracks.

• File formats may be different: If you store music in formats

other than AAC and MP3, read Lossless Files and the Cloud before

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 you let Music start matching your music. That way, you won’t
experience any surprises.

• Size: you can match and/or upload up to 100,000 tracks to the

cloud, not counting tracks you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store.
This will satisfy most people, but some have larger libraries. If
you’re in that situation, you can’t store your library the cloud unless
you create two libraries. And the only easy way to do this is to have
two different computers and two different iTunes Store accounts, so
I don’t recommend it for most people.

• Matching: Any Apple Lossless, WAV, or AIFF files will be up-

loaded as 256 kbps AAC files, if Music can’t match them.

• Syncing: When Sync Library is enabled on a mobile device, that

device can no longer sync music from your Mac. You have to down-
load any music you want on that device from the cloud.

• Backups: Naturally, storing music in the cloud should not replace

backups (see Back Up Your Media Files for more about backing up a
music collection).

Changing Upload Limits

In previous versions of this book, I said that you could not match or
upload tracks with bit rates of less than 96 kbps, with durations over
two hours, or with a file size over 200 MB. Apple changed this at
some point, and no longer seems to have any limits on the files that
it can match and upload. I haven’t tested this extensively, but I have
matched and uploaded tracks at bit rates of 32 or 64 kbps, and
uploaded tracks as low as 8 kbps. I have also uploaded tracks of
more than two hours and larger than 200 MB. A section of the Apple
Music User Guide mentions the 200 MB limit, but no longer mentions
bit rates. You may have trouble uploading large files, but it seems
that this limit has been removed.

Start Using iTunes Match

Click Store in the sidebar. Under Music Quick Links in the right-hand
sidebar, click iTunes Match. Click the subscribe button and follow the

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instructions to log in with the Apple ID that’s associated with your
music purchases.

After an initial scan, iTunes Match populates your library with any
music that you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store that’s not on that
computer. It then proceeds to analyze and “match” your music files, as
described below, in How Music Files Are Processed.

Enable Sync Library

To enable Sync Library, go to Music > Settings/Preferences > General
and select Sync Library. You’ll need to be signed into your iTunes Store
account; if you’re not, Music will ask you to authenticate.

If it’s the first time you’ve enabled Sync Library, Music will take a while
to scan and match or upload your tracks. If you’ve already enabled
Sync Library on another computer or mobile device, and are simply
adding a new computer, it won’t take as long. Eventually, you’ll see all
the music in your library.

The only indication that anything is happening is the small Activity

indicator below the sidebar. You can click this to display the Activity
window to see your progress.

How Music Files Are Processed

When you enable Sync Library, the Music app begins what can be a
lengthy process of analyzing your music, looking for matches between
your tracks and tracks in its online repository of music:

1. The Music app analyzes your music to determine what your library
contains. It doesn’t look at the tags—Album, Artist, Song Name, and
so on—on your music files; instead, it uses “acoustic fingerprinting”
technology to determine what each track is. This ensures that even
if your tags don’t match those in the Apple’s music library, your
music can be matched.

2. Music sends this data to the mothership, which slices and dices it.
For each track, Music determines whether it can make a match and

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 adds this information to your cloud library (see Understand Cloud
Status Labels).

3. For tracks that match, Music uploads artwork, if you have applied
your own album art.

4. Finally, for tracks that have not matched, Music uploads the files.
This can take a long time if you have a large library. The actual time
depends on how many tracks were not matched, the size of those
tracks, and how fast your internet connection handles uploads.

When Music has finished, a message displays telling you how many
matches it was able to make. Click Done to dismiss the message.

To add another computer, follow the same procedure. If you have two
computers with different content in their Music libraries, enabling
Sync Library on each of them will bring together all this content in
your cloud library, making all the music available to both computers.
Make sure this is what you want to do.

Lossless Files and the Cloud

If you have music files in Apple Lossless, AIFF, or WAV formats,
Music may match them to 256 kbps versions, if lossless versions are
not available. If Music can’t make a match, it converts the files to 256
kbps AAC and uploads the converted versions, but leaves the lossless
or uncompressed versions in your Music library.
So, if you care about keeping music in lossless or uncompressed for-
mats, you may want your tracks to be matched so you can listen to
them on mobile devices, but don’t delete the originals or re-download
the matched or uploaded files to your computer.

With Sync Library enabled, you play music from your computer the
way you are used to. Select a song or album and click a Play icon, or
double-click a song to start playing. You can also play and edit playlists
as you are accustomed to. You can add songs that are in the cloud to
playlists—either smart or dumb—along with songs on your computer.

If you play music that is on your computer, you won’t notice anything
different. If you play music that’s in the cloud, playing a song will start

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streaming that song; this may take a few seconds to begin, and may or
may not be practical depending on your internet connection.

To play music that is in the cloud, yet not stream it, you must down-
load it: either click the Download icon next to a song, or select a
group of songs, Control-click, and choose Download. How long this
takes depends on your internet connection. Once the music has down-
loaded, you can play it without worrying about streaming speeds.

Access Music in the Cloud on Mobile

Devices
To access your cloud library in the Music app on iOS/iPadOS devices,
open the Settings app, tap Music, and then turn on the Sync Library
switch. If your device already has music on it, the dialog offers two
options: you can either Keep Music, to retain the tracks on your iOS/
iPadOS device and have them merged into your cloud library, or Delete
& Replace, to erase your local library and replace it with your music
already in the cloud.

Note: Enabling Sync Library doesn’t affect music you may have
downloaded to your mobile device with an app from another stream-
ing service, such as Spotify.

In the Music app, you see all your music by default: music on the
mobile device, and music in the cloud. To only see music that you have
downloaded to the device, tap the Library icon on the toolbar at the
bottom of the screen, and then tap Downloaded.

Tip: For an iPhone or iPad with a cellular plan, you may want to turn
off music downloads when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi: tap
Settings > Music > Cellular Data, and toggle off Use Cellular Data. In
these settings, you can also toggle on or off High Quality Streaming;
if this is enabled, music streamed from the loud is at the best quality,
256 kbps AAC. If you disable this, your music may stream at lower
bit rates if your bandwidth is limited.

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Access Your Cloud Library on an Apple TV
When you sign into your iCloud account on your Apple TV, it automat-
ically accesses your cloud library, if you have enabled Sync Library on
any device.

If you want to change which iTunes Store account is signed in to the

Music app, open Settings > Users and Accounts > iCloud, and sign out.
Then sign in with another account.

“Upgrade” Your Music with the Cloud

An aspect of iTunes Match that Apple initially touted was the capability
to “upgrade” tracks that have been matched to 256 kbps AAC files,
“even if your original copy was of lower quality.” This covers two types
of tracks. The first are tracks purchased from the iTunes Store prior to
April 2009, which had DRM and were sold at 128 kbps. The second is
tracks you’ve ripped from CDs—or obtained by other means—which
you can match and then re-download in upgraded versions.

This tacit upgrading still exists with iTunes Match. Not all tracks are
available for upgrade; and the music must still be available for sale on
the iTunes Store.

To upgrade tracks, simply match, delete, and re-download:

1. Select the tracks you want to upgrade.

2. Control-click (right-click) the selected tracks.

3. Choose Remove Download. The tracks are no longer on your com-

puter, but they are listed in your library with the Download icon
next to them.

4. Click the Download icon for a track you want to download, or

select a group of tracks, Control-click them, and choose Download.

You get new files at 256 kbps, without DRM, and you can continue to
play these files even if you cancel your iTunes Match subscription.

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Understand Cloud Status Labels
When you enable Sync Library and send your music to the cloud, each
of your tracks displays a status label. You can see these labels in Songs
view: click Songs in the sidebar. You may need to add the Cloud Status
and Cloud Download columns: open the View Options window (⌘-J),
and then in the Music section, select the checkboxes for Cloud Down-
load and Cloud Status (Figure 53).

You may have to scroll to the right to view the columns in the Music
window.

Figure 53: Here’s a look at some typical icons and status labels that
appear in the Cloud Status column. The Download icon for the
first track displays because I’ve hovered my pointer over that track;
if not, there’s no indication if your tracks are on your Mac or in the
cloud.

Cloud Status labels help you understand the status of a track:

• Apple Music: You added this track from Apple Music. You can
stream it or download it for offline listening, but it has DRM, so if
your Apple Music subscription lapses, you won’t be able to listen to
it.

• Exceeded Limit: If your Music library contains more than

100,000 tracks (not counting iTunes Store purchases), you can no
longer add music to the cloud, and new music and displays this
status for tracks you add to the Music app on your Mac.

• Ineligible: For some reason, your track cannot be uploaded to the

cloud. The track might have too low a bit rate (less than 96 kbps), it
might be too large (more than 200 MB), it might be too long (more

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 than two hours), or it may belong to a different Apple ID and have
DRM.

• Matched: The track was matched with a track in the iTunes Store
or Apple Music Library.

• No Longer Available: The record label or artist has withdrawn

permission to stream this track. It may become available to stream
again in the future. Tracks that are no longer available are also
dimmed. In some cases, this occurs when a record label releases a
newer version of an album, so if you see this, search Apple Music to
see if another version is available.

• Not Uploaded: The track was added to your library on an iOS/

iPadOS device, but it’s not on your computer to upload.

• Purchased: You purchased this track from the iTunes Store.

• Uploaded: The Music app doesn’t have this track in the iTunes
Store or Apple Music library, or it didn’t match your track with its
version, so it uploaded yours. You can stream it or download it. If
you download the track, it shows up in its original format (unless
the original was in Apple Lossless, AIFF, or WAV format, in which
case you download a 256 kbps AAC version of the file).

• Waiting: The Music app is working its magic in the background

and hasn’t yet determined the track’s final status.

Manage Your Music in the Cloud

Once you’ve turned on cloud sync for your music, if you’re strapped for
space—say on a laptop—you can delete some or all of the music in your
Music library. (Select some tracks, Control-click your selection, and
then choose Remove Download.) Previously, deleted tracks displayed
with a Download icon next to them, but there is now no indication
of whether tracks are on your Mac or not.

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 Note: With the removal of the cloud icons in the Music app, you now
have no way of seeing, at a glance, which tracks are stored on your
Mac and which are in the cloud. I recommend that you create some
smart playlists if you want to know the location of tracks. I explain
how to make cloud status smart playlists in Interesting Things You
Can Do with Smart Playlists.

You may want to delete some of your music in this manner. You can
have, say, a 100,000 track library on your main computer, and have
access to all that music on a laptop, or iOS/iPadOS device, without
using much or any space at all, and without worrying about choosing
which music each mobile device contains. But, remember, when you
want the music back, downloading it again may take a while unless you
have an extremely fast internet connection.
And also remember that this cloud library is not a backup, so don’t
delete the original copies of your music files.

What Happens if You Disable Sync Library

After you disable the Sync Library option in the Music General prefer-
ences, your library may get a lot smaller. Any tracks that are physically
on your computer remain in your library, but any music that has been
matched, or uploaded and deleted, or never downloaded to that com-
puter (assuming you enabled Sync Library on a different computer) is
no longer visible. However, those tracks are still in the cloud, and you
can turn Sync Library back on to access them again.

Don’t forget that iTunes Match is an annual subscription service, and

that Apple Music has a monthly or annual fee. If you don’t renew, you
will no longer have access to your music in the cloud. So when sub-
scription renewal time rolls around, if you don’t plan to renew, make
sure you download everything before it disappears—you should get a
warning before the renewal.
If you decide that you don’t want to renew, you don’t have to wait for
Apple to warn you about it. Instead, choose Account > View My Ac-
count to go to your iTunes Store Account Information page. In the

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Settings section, on the Subscriptions line, click Manage. Click Apple
Music Membership or iTunes Match, then click Cancel Subscription.

Share an Apple Music or iTunes Match

Account
If your household has several computers, and you want each one to
access the same music library, you can subscribe to iTunes Match or
Apple Music, and sign in on each computer using the same iTunes
Store account. Each computer will add its content to the joint library in
the cloud. Each user will see all the music and can decide which tracks
to download. During setup, only one computer can actively match
songs at a time. If one computer is matching songs, and another
computer tries to match songs, the latter will display an alert asking if
you want to continue matching and stop the other session, or cancel
the session.

Note: One Apple Music limitation that affects this scenario is the fact
that you can stream Apple Music on only one device at a time (with
an individual subscription). If Alice starts listening to music on her
iPhone and Bob starts listening on his Mac, Alice’s stream will stop.

If you don’t set up each computer with the same iTunes Store account,
each computer will have a different Music library. For example, Alice
and Bob could each add music to their libraries, and their kids, Carol
and Dave, could each also have a library free of the music their parents
like to listen to.
Or, as a hybrid, Apple’s Family Sharing service lets each family mem-
ber maintain their own library but allows each member to download
any Apple media or apps that anyone else has bought. If a family is
signed up for Family Sharing, it can also sign up for a $16.99-per-
month Apple Music family plan, a savings over the $10.99 monthly
individual subscription. Each member gets a separate library to sync
their music to the cloud, and the one-device-at-a-time streaming limit
goes away.
Apple’s Apple One bundles include Apple Music along with Apple TV+,
Apple Arcade, and additional iCloud storage. The family plan for this
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bundle costs $22.95, so many families will find this an even better
option than simply opting for an Apple Music family plan.
There is no iTunes Match family plan; each user would need to sub-
scribe to that service individually in order to use it.

Note: For more ideas related to families sharing music and other
content, read Share iTunes Store Content with Family Members.

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 Use the iTunes Store
The iTunes Store sells music in the Music app, movies and TV shows in
the TV app, and ebooks and audiobooks in the Books app. It also offers
movie rentals, and podcasts are technically supplied by the iTunes
Store, even though Mac users don’t see an actual storefront when using
the Podcasts app. (Windows users still access podcasts in iTunes.) In
other countries, the content available varies, but music is sold in all
countries where the iTunes Store is present.

In this chapter, I look at using the U.S. iTunes Store. I also explain how
to move digital content you’ve purchased elsewhere into Music, in Add
Your Own Files Own to the Music App.

About Your iTunes Store Account

Everyone who has an Apple ID has an associated iTunes Store account.
You use this Apple ID to purchase or rent items from Apple’s various
stores, which are still considered part of the iTunes Store, but also for
the Mac App Store, iOS/iPadOS App Store, the Books Store, and other
Apple services.

You will need to be signed into your iTunes Store account to use some
of the features I describe in this book. In most cases, the Music, TV,
Podcasts, or Books app will prompt you to sign into your iTunes Store
account when you first try to access such features, but, if not, you can
do so by choosing Account > Sign In Music, TV, Podcasts, or Books.
You can also access your Apple ID settings on the Apple ID pane of
System Settings/System Preferences.

For more on what your Apple ID is used for, see the Apple support
document, Manage and use your Apple ID.

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Shop in the iTunes Store
When Apple split up iTunes into multiple apps, they changed the way
users see the iTunes Store. If you have an Apple Music account, you
will not see the iTunes Store in the app’s sidebar by default. If you
don’t subscribe to Apple Music, you will see the iTunes Store, but you’ll
also see the Apple Music section in the sidebar.

If you are an Apple Music user and do want to see the iTunes Store—
many people both rent and buy music—go to Music > Settings/Prefer-
ences, click General, and select iTunes Store in the Show section. Note
that while you can browse the iTunes Store at any time, you must be
signed into your iTunes Store account to purchase or rent any content,
or download any free content. See About Your iTunes Store Account
above for more on signing into your iTunes Store account.

Click iTunes Store in the sidebar to enter the store. You’ll see what
Apple is currently touting, with new music, discounted offers, per-
orders, and more. You can navigate the store by genre (there are lots of
navigation links in the right-hand sidebar), look at the top songs and
albums (also in the right-hand sidebar), and browse in other ways. To
learn more about an item, or to buy it, click it to open its page.

When viewing an album’s page (Figure 54), you can preview a track
by hovering over its track number and clicking, or you can preview the
entire album by clicking “Preview All” beneath the track list. And if you
have an Apple Music subscription, and the album is available to
stream, a banner at the top of the page allows you to click a button to
listen to the album on Apple Music.

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 Figure 54: An album page in the iTunes Store.

To buy an item, click its price button. Notice that the price is part of a
pop-up menu. Open the menu to give the item as a gift, tell a friend
about it via email, add it to your Wish List, share it on Facebook or
Twitter, and more. You’ll find that some music tracks are available only
with full album purchases. In this case, there’s no price by the track,
but rather “Album Only.” In general, tracks longer than 10 minutes are
album-only tracks.

To exit the Store, click a different item in the sidebar.

Where iTunes Store Purchases Are Stored

iTunes Store purchases that you’ve downloaded appear in your library
just like any other media. For example, to see a downloaded song, click
one of the views in the sidebar, such as Artists, Albums, or Songs. Or,
type its title in the Search box at the upper right. Or, if you’ve just
downloaded it, click Recently Added in the sidebar.

For purchases that are not downloaded, see Re-Download iTunes Store
Content, earlier.

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Automatically Download Purchases to the
Music App
Re-downloading is nice, but what is nicer is when new purchases
download automatically to a different computer or iOS/iPadOS device.
This means that when you buy a new album or app on your computer,
it can automatically appear on your iPhone or iPad, and vice versa.

For automatic downloads to occur, you must turn the feature on. This
is a good thing, because you may not always want automatic down-
loads. One particular case is when two spouses, for example, share an
iTunes Store account. Alice may not want all of Bob’s purchases on her
iPhone, and Bob may not want Alice’s new music on his Mac.

To turn on automatic downloads in Music on your computer—which

affects only that copy of Music on that computer—go to Music >
Settings/Preferences > General (Figure 55). If you check Automatic
Downloads, the Music app downloads any purchases you make from
the iTunes Store automatically; it also downloads music you add to
your cloud library, so you may not want to do this on a Mac where you
don’t have a lot of storage. You can also tell the Music app to always
check for available downloads, even if it does not download new
content automatically. If new downloads are available, the app alerts
you.

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 Figure 55: Choose whether you want the Music app to download
new content automatically.

There are similar settings in the TV app, in TV > Settings/Preferences >

General, where you can choose to automatically download movies and/
or TV shows, and in the Books app, where, in Settings/Preferences >
Store you can turn on a similar setting.

Which iTunes Store Content Has DRM?

Back in the day, DRM, or digital rights management (also known as
copy protection), was quite controversial. In the early days of the
iTunes Store, all content sold was protected with DRM. Since April
2009, all music sold on the iTunes Store has been free of DRM. All
other content sold by the iTunes Store, however, does use DRM:
movies, TV shows, audiobooks, most ebooks, and so on. (Though this
and other Take Control books sold via the Apple Books Store do not

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have DRM.) This includes movie rentals, which have DRM and are
time-limited. Podcasts, which are provided for free, do not have DRM.

DRM prevents you from sharing movies, audiobooks, or other protect-

ed content with friends or family members, unless they use the same
iTunes Store account as you—or you are a Family Sharing group (see
the next topic for more).

Because iTunes Store music no longer has DRM, you can share it with
friends, though it’s up to you to decide whether this is ethical. Apple
embeds your Apple ID (the email address linked to your iTunes ac-
count) in the music files that you purchase, as well as those that are
matched in the cloud when you re-download them. So, theoretically, if
music you buy ends up on peer-to-peer networks, Apple could trace it
to you, though I haven’t heard of this happening.

Note: The audio files you download from Apple Music also have DRM.
Since you haven’t bought these files—you’re only renting access to
them while you subscribe to Apple Music—they are copy protected.

Share iTunes Store Content with Family

Members
Here are some ideas for sharing iTunes Store content within a family:

• Use one iTunes Store account for all purchases: In this sce-
nario, you designate a single iTunes Store account to hold all media
and apps from the iTunes Store. Everyone signs in to the iTunes
Store with that account’s credentials; this method will work well
with up to five “authorized” computers at once—Mac or PC—and
(generally) on up to ten iOS/iPadOS devices (see the next two
topics). If you have children, you should manage the purchases,
since you may set up an iTunes Store account using a credit card,
and you probably don’t want to give your kids your password.

• Use Family Sharing: This feature allows everyone in a designated

family (as many as six people) to share all purchased iTunes Store

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 content, and an Ask to Buy option can be enabled to limit what
children can buy.

Note: To subscribe to Apple Music with a family plan, you must use
Family Sharing.

• Use Home Sharing: With Home Sharing, each family member

has a separate iTunes Store Apple ID, but Home Sharing is mediat-
ed with just one of those Apple IDs. Each person can load other
Music libraries that are shared on the same network, and play or
copy items. Also, a Home Sharing library can be accessed locally on
an iOS/iPadOS device or Apple TV. Find out more in Stream Music
in Your Home.

Authorize and Deauthorize Your Computer

for iTunes Store Purchases
You must authorize your computer to play iTunes Store content that
contains DRM or to sync such content to a mobile device. The first
time you try to perform one of these operations, a dialog asks you to
enter your iTunes Store password. You can authorize a total of five
computers—Macs or PCs—with the same iTunes Store account.

When you authorize a computer, iTunes looks at specific hardware

information on the computer to identify that device. The authorization
is connected to the physical computer, not to a specific Mac or
Windows user account. So when you sell or give away a computer—or
even if you send one in for service—make sure to deauthorize it first, by
choosing Account > Authorizations > Deauthorize This Computer.

If you forget to do this and reach your five-computer limit, choose

Account > View My Account. In the “Apple ID Summary” section, on
the Computer Authorizations line, click the Deauthorize All button.
You then must reauthorize any computers that use iTunes content, in
order to access the media. You can deauthorize all your computers only
once per year (though if, for some reason, you need to do this again,
contact Apple Support; they may be able to help you).

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Manage Mobile Devices Associated with
Your Apple ID
You can sync any iTunes Store content with DRM to an unlimited
number of mobile devices—they don’t have to be authorized, but the
computer they sync with must be associated with your Apple ID.

You can associate a total of ten devices with your Apple ID, only five of
which can be computers. Associated devices include computers (Macs
and PCs), iOS/iPadOS devices, and Android phones where you sign in
with your Apple ID, but not the HomePod, Apple TV, Apple Watch, or
non-iOS iPods (such as the iPod classic, nano, or shuffle).

Any associated device logged in to the iTunes Store with your Apple ID
can access your purchased items and your cloud library.

You can find out which devices are associated with your iTunes Store
account by choosing Account > View My Account. In the “Downloads
and Purchases” section, click Manage Devices on the right of the
Manage Devices entry. If you want to disassociate a device, click its
Remove button. For example, if you sell or give away an iPad, you
should sign out on the device and remove it from the list of associated
devices before you part with it.

Note that if the Remove button is dimmed, this means that your iOS/
iPadOS device has connected to the iTunes Store or App Store in the
past 30 days. Sign out on that device and try again. To do this, go to
Settings, tap your name, then go to Media & Purchases, scroll down,
and tap Remove This Device.

If you’ve already sold or given away a device and forgotten to disassoci-

ate it, you’ll need to wait 30 days to do so. (See this Apple support
document for more on managing associated devices.)

Add Your Own Files Own to the Music App

You may have files downloaded from other online vendors, or other
sources, or files stored on another computer. You can add files in the

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following formats to the Music app: AAC, MP3, AIFF, WAV, and Apple
Lossless; here are a few ways you can do this:

• Drop them—either grouped or in a folder—on the Music app icon.

• Drop the files anywhere on the Library section of the Music app
sidebar.

• Choose File > Import, and navigate to a file or folder. If you navi-
gate to a folder that contains audio files, click Open and all the files
in that folder are imported.

• Drop them on a normal (not smart) playlist in the Music app side-
bar to add them to your library, and to that playlist.

• Select files in the Finder, then copy (⌘-C), switch to Music, and
paste (⌘-V). If a playlist is visible, the files are added to that
playlist; if not, they are added to your library.

• Drop them in the Automatically Add to Music folder. This is located

in the Media folder, which by default is in your Music folder. Music
adds any new content in this “watched” folder to your Music library
and then deletes it from the folder.

Work Smart with a Temp Playlist

For audio files, I like to use the Temp playlist I mentioned in Simplify
Tagging with a Temp Playlist. Select that playlist in Music, switch to
the Finder, find your files, then drag them onto the Music app’s
window to add them to this playlist. This way you’ll know where the
new tracks are, and you can tag them as you want. Otherwise, you
may have to hunt in your library to find them.

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What’s a FLAC?
FLAC files are audio files compressed with the Free Lossless Audio
Codec. They are relatively popular on websites that sell lossless files
and those that provide live concerts for download.
If you want to convert FLAC files—or files in other audio formats—for
use with Music, I strongly recommend the free XLD (X Lossless
Decoder), which is the most powerful and flexible audio file conver-
sion tool for the Mac. (Look on the website for a download link for a
file with .dmg at the end.)
After Apple released the Apple Lossless format specifications as open
source in 2011, the use of this format become much more common.
Most online retailers of lossless or high-resolution music files offer
them in this format.
You should be aware that you can convert files in any lossless format
(WAV, AIFF, FLAC, or Apple Lossless) to another lossless format with
no loss in quality. So you can convert FLAC files to Apple Lossless and
lose nothing of the original music. This is even the case for high-
resolution lossless files.

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 Tag Your Music Files
Tagging media files is the most important thing you can do to take
control of your Music library. You could add all your music to your
library and play it at random, but without correct tags, you’d never find
what you want, and you wouldn’t be able to make smart playlists. To
correctly organize your music, tagging is essential.

In this chapter, I’ll show you which tags you can change, how to change
them for single and multiple items, and how to streamline tagging so
you can easily organize your library. Note that the information in this
chapter also applies to video files in the TV app, but you can no longer
change tags for podcasts in the new Podcasts app, or for audiobooks in
the Books app.

Understanding Tags
In order for the Music app to keep track of your media files, and for
you to know which ones to play, every item in your Music library has
tags. Tags are metadata—information about the files and their con-
tent—that helps Music sort tracks and keep albums together, and
more.

Note: Tags are part of the ID3 specification for storing metadata in
music files, and are also used in other types of files, such as videos
and ebooks. ID3.org (no longer online but available in the Internet
Archive) has information about the history of tags, and which tags
are available for music files. Note that the Music app only uses some
of the available ID3 tags.

At a minimum, for a song, you need tags specifying a song name, artist,
and album name. But you can add other tags: composer, year, genre,
track number, disc number, and more. You can also add comments,
lyrics, and album artwork.

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To see tags for any item, select it and press ⌘-I. Here’s a list of the
main tags for music, audiobooks, and videos, and what they commonly
contain:

• Title: This could be a song name, the name of a movement in a

symphony, a section of a movie soundtrack, and so on.

• Artist: This is the person or group who recorded the music.

• Album: The name of the album on which the track appears.

• Album Artist: Say you have a record by U2 with a song featuring

Luciano Pavarotti. The artist tag would mention both of these
artists, but the Album Artist tag would contain only U2, because the
song is on a U2 album. This tag helps you sort music correctly by
album, yet list additional artists on specific tracks.

• Composer: This is the composer of the music, whether a classical

composer or a songwriter.

• Grouping: Some music from the iTunes Store—usually classical

music—has this tag. For example, an album that has three piano
concertos by Mozart will have a single name for the album, but the
individual works’ names may be entered in the Grouping tag. You
can sort files by grouping in Songs view, and you can use this tag
with smart playlists.

• Genre: You can pick from a number of preset genres, or you can
add your own by typing one in this field. I’ve found that the Genre
tag is a great way to organize my music. Since it’s easier to look at
genres that contain less music, I’ve created plenty of nonstandard
genres. For example, I have genres for Dylan (Bob Dylan, and his
recordings with The Band), Dead (The Grateful Dead, and its mem-
bers’ solo recordings), Lieder (German art songs), and Chamber
Music (string quartets, violin sonatas, and other works for small
ensembles).

Another way to set up fine-grained genres is to use multiple words,

like Classical: Opera, or Blues: Electric. You’ll have all your genres
grouped by the first word, with the sub-genre visible after it.

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• Year: The year the music was recorded, performed, or released.

• Track Number and Disc Number: These should be self-

explanatory.

• BPM: Beats per minute; useful for DJs or others who want to
organize music by tempo.

• Comments: You can put anything you want in this field, up to a

maximum of 255 characters; you may want to enter specific infor-
mation to help with smart playlists. For example, my Bob Dylan live
albums have “live” in the Comments tag, so I can make a smart
playlist of Dylan’s live songs.

• Compilation: Selecting “Album is a compilation of songs by

various artists” tells Music to group the song with other songs in the
same album that are also tagged as a compilation, even if those
songs are by different artists.

• Artwork: You can add artwork for your music, and items pur-
chased from the iTunes Store and added to your library from Apple
Music come with artwork. See Album Artwork and Music Files.

• Lyrics: The Lyrics pane lets you add lyrics to music, and you can
view these lyrics when listening with the Music app, with an iOS/
iPadOS device, or an Apple TV. I discuss adding lyrics in Add Lyrics
to Your Tracks.

Where iTunes Stores Tag Information

Most tag information, including all the tags that identify files, is stored
within the files themselves. However, some tag data is stored in your
Music library file. This file holds copies of all the identifying tags, and
it keeps track of which files you have in your library and which playlists
you’ve created. It also contains the Last Played and Plays tags, as well
as your ratings and favorites. If you move files from one computer to
another, tag information stored in your library file doesn’t transfer
with the files.

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There are ways to get around this—you could create playlists by Rating
to record which files have 5 stars, which have 4 stars, which are Favor-
ited, and so on. You could set up playlists by Plays as well. But this can
be complicated, and, in most cases, you’ll lose some information when
you move files to a different computer. This is, of course, a feature, not
a bug; your spouse may not share your opinions about (and, therefore,
ratings of) the music you swap, nor care about how many times you’ve
listened to your favorite songs.

Which Tags Are Important

As I said above, your music needs tags for at least Title, Artist, Album,
and, perhaps, Genre. Any music you buy from the iTunes Store comes
with these tags, along with many others. Music from the iTunes Store
also includes Track Number and Disc Number (if needed) tags. If you
rip a CD, iTunes adds the Track Number tag automatically, but for
multiple disc sets, you should add the Disc Number tag if it’s not there,
to ensure that the discs are organized in the correct order. It’s also
important to set the Compilation tag correctly.

As for other tags, it all depends on how obsessive you are about orga-
nizing your content (I’m somewhat tag-obsessive), and whether you
want to use specific tags to create smart playlists. I’ll discuss the uses
of other tags next, and I’ll explain how to use them for smart playlists
in Organize Your Music and Create Playlists.

Just remember: the more complete your tags are, the more possibili-
ties you’ll have when you create smart playlists.

Note: You can also tag movies and TV shows in the TV app, which I
discuss in Watch Movies and TV Shows in the TV App. The names of
some of the tags are different: you see Title instead of Name, Direc-
tor instead of Artist, and so on.

Add or Change Tags

Content from the iTunes Store is tagged, as is most music from online
vendors. These tags might not be totally correct, or you may, for
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various reasons, want to make changes. In addition, if you don’t tag
music on a CD before you rip it, you can change the tags later.

Changing tags is easy. Select either one item, such as a music track, or
a group of items, and press ⌘-I to open an “Info” dialog.

If you select one track, a “single-item” dialog appears (Figure 56).

Figure 56: The Info dialog with a single track selected.

If you select multiple tracks, the “multiple-items” dialog appears

(Figure 57).

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 Figure 57: The Info dialog with multiple tracks selected.

In the case of music, two of the tags in the single-item dialog aren’t
available in the multiple-items dialog: Title (you can’t change multiple
items to the same song name at the same time) and Lyrics. Aside from
that, the same tags are available in each dialog.

Tip: If, when you open the Info dialog, you don’t see all the fields
shown in the above figure and you see a scrollbar on the right, just
drag any edge to make the dialog larger.

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 $ ❤ "
Move Quickly in an Info Dialog
To work quickly, press the Tab key to move to the next field or press
Shift-Tab to move to the previous field. To change panes, use ⌘-key
shortcuts: the first pane, Details, is ⌘-1, the second, Artwork, is ⌘-2,
and so on.

And, when the single-item Info dialog is open, you can move to the
next or previous track by pressing ⌘-Shift-N or ⌘-Shift-P, or by
clicking an arrow button at the bottom of the dialog.

Use Emoji in Tags

You know what emoji are, right? You can use those cute characters
in text messages and on Facebook, in any text on your Mac, and you
can even use them in Music ♫ tags. You may want to put them in
playlist names, to have colorful prefixes for your favorites. Or you
might want to use some symbols in the tags for album or song names,
to make certain tracks stand out. On a Mac, press ⌘-Control-Space
to display the Emoji & Symbols picker, and click any character to enter
it.

Which Tags You Should Add or Change

You may not need to change any tags, or, depending on your needs and
how you use the Music app, you may want to make substantial
changes. Here are some scenarios:

• You want to find music when you search: Make sure every-
thing is spelled correctly. Check the spelling of song titles, album
names, and artist names.

• You want to mark your favorite tracks: Click the Favorite

icon at the top right of the Info window to mark a track or album as
a favorite. Or use the rating stars to rate tracks from one to five
stars. See Favorite/Suggest Less Ratings for more on favorites, and
see Rate Your Music for more on using star ratings.

• You want to browse your library to choose music to play: If

you want to view your music by genre, your Genre tags should be
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 consistent; in other words, most of your artists should have all their
music in one genre (there are exceptions, of course). If you browse
by artist, make sure your Artist tags are complete and spelled cor-
rectly, so you don’t have multiple entries for certain artists.
• You’re into classical music and want to sort by composer:
If this is your case, then the Composer tag is for you. Fill it in for all
your classical music. Be consistent; if you tag some music with
Johann Sebastian Bach, don’t tag other music with J. S. Bach. I prefer
Bach, Johann Sebastian, because I find it easier to spot composers by
their last names when I’m scanning a list. Every time you add new
music to your library, make sure the Composer tag matches a name
you’ve used already.

Show Composers in Music Views

When tagging your classical music, consider checking “Show compos-
er in all views,” available just below the Composer field. If you check
this, Music displays the composer’s name in addition to the artist’s
name in views such as Playlist view.

• You have a lot of music by multiple artists: A lot of music

these days has multiple artists: as I write this, many best-selling
songs on the iTunes Store have a “feat.” (featured) artist, or an artist
who sings in a song but isn’t the “lead” singer. You’ll want to put the
main artist in the Album Artist field; otherwise, your music doesn’t
sort correctly. This is the case not only for popular music, but also
for jazz and classical; you may have a lead artist on an album, with
specific artists you want to note for different songs or works, such as
soloists on jazz recordings or singers in operas.

• You’re a DJ: If your job is to keep the beats going steady through-
out the night, you’ll probably want to use the BPM, or beats per
minute, tag. Be aware, however, that determining the actual BPM of
a song is not easy. This isn’t my bailiwick, but a web search will lead
you to a variety of options for detecting the BPM of your music.

• You want smart playlists based on the year or decade

music was recorded or released: Wouldn’t it be great to make

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 a playlist of everything Miles Davis recorded in 1959? You can do
that by filling in the Year tag for all his music. I do that for my
Grateful Dead collection, which has lots of live recordings. I can sort
their albums by year, and I have smart playlists for each decade, so
when I want to hear a great show from the 1970s, it’s easy to find.

• You like to shuffle, but don’t want certain tracks to play:

On the Options pane is an important tag: Skip When Shuffling.
Select this checkbox for any tracks you don’t want to come up when
you use shuffle. I do this for all my classical music, as well as for
spoken word recordings. (Although Apple might change this, at the
moment, Skip When Shuffling doesn’t work for Genius Shuffle.)

Use Tags to Make Classical Music Easier to

Manage
Classical music listeners have long struggled to fit their music into the
limited tag structure available in music apps. Classical music often has
works with movements, rather than albums with songs. While there
are plenty of songs in the classical repertoire—such as Schubert’s lieder
and Mozart’s opera arias—the majority of classical music doesn’t fit
this paradigm.

The Music app has specific tags for classical music. You can use them
with any type of music, but they make sense mostly with classical
music.

To use these tags, select a group of tracks that are all part of the same
work—a symphony, string quartet, or piano sonata—and press ⌘-I to
open the multiple-item Info dialog. Click Details. Select the “Use work
and movement” checkbox. As you can see in Figure 58, some new
fields are added.

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 Figure 58: The Work, Movement, and Title fields have been added
at the top of the dialog, and I’ve filled in the data that my selected
tracks share—the Work tag and some of the movement information.

Enter the appropriate tags for your work, and click OK.

You next need to work with individual tracks to apply movement

names. Select a track and press ⌘-I. The single-item Info dialog now
shows the additional fields (Figure 59).

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 Figure 59: When you view a single track with the Work and
Movement tags active, you see additional fields in the Info dialog.

Enter the movement number of the track (1 of 4 in the figure above),

and the movement’s title (Emerson in the figure above). Click OK to
save this, or click the left or right arrow button to move to
another track in the Info dialog.

When you’re finished applying these tags, the work displays differently
in certain views. For example, Figure 60 shows the album I’ve tagged
above in Albums view. There are three works on the album, and each
work shows its name, followed by the composer’s name, and then the
movement names indented below.

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 Figure 60: When you’ve applied the Work and Movement tags,
Music displays your music differently in certain views.

This different display also carries over to the iOS/iPadOS Music app,
so tracks you’ve tagged this way display in a similar manner, in some
views, when you sync them, or when you view them in your library on
other devices.

Understand the Compilation Tag

Nothing causes more confusion in the Music app than the Compilation
tag, which is labeled “Album is a compilation of songs by various
artists.” You set the tag in the Info dialog (⌘-I), in the Details pane.
But I’m not sure that this explanation helps to clarify this tag’s pur-
pose.

The Compilation tag tells Music to group tracks with the same album
name, even if they are by different artists. In other words, say your

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album Favorite Covers of Alvin and the Chipmunks Classics has 23
tracks by different artists. If the Compilation tag isn’t set for every
track of the album, there will be 23 album listings, one for each artist
and album combination. On the other hand, if the Compilation tag is
set for a song that’s not part of a compilation, it won’t be listed under
its artist, but only under the album name.

There are a few ways to see all your compilations. In Artists view, they
are grouped near the top of the list, or you can look at the Various
Artists entry. In Albums view, they are all at the bottom.

If you’re using Songs view, you can use the Column Browser to find
songs that are tagged as parts of compilations: Choose View > Column
Browser > Show Column Browser to display the column browser. Then
look in the View > Column Browser submenu. If Group Compilations
doesn’t have a checkmark next to it, choose Group Compilations. A
Compilations entry appears at the top of the Artists column. Click it to
see which albums Music considers compilations.

When you set the Compilation tag for files that you rip, Music stores
them, on your Mac, in a Compilations folder, with subfolders for each
album name.

It’s worth noting that you can’t have two compilation albums with the
same title. Music looks at the title, and the state of the Compilations
tag, to group these tracks. So if you have two different “Greatest Hits of
the 1840s” compilations, they’ll be grouped together.

Add Lyrics to Your Tracks

If a track doesn’t already have lyrics associated with it, you may want
to add them. To do this, select the track and press ⌘-I to open the Info
dialog. Click the Lyrics button, then click the “Custom Lyrics” check-
box at the bottom of the dialog. You can copy and paste lyrics from a
website—a quick Google search should turn them up—or you can type
them manually.

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You can add any kind of text to the Lyrics tag. The field seems to hold
an unlimited amount of text, although mobile devices can display only
24,800 characters. The classical record label Hyperion Records has
done interesting things with the Lyrics tag in the digital files they sell;
they include full liner notes and sung texts (if any). So if you download,
say, a disc of Schubert lieder from Hyperion’s excellent series of the
composer’s complete songs, you’ll have texts for each of the songs, as
well as copious notes for each album and track.

Album Artwork and Music Files

If you grew up in the LP era, like me, you remember how great it was
to look at the more imaginative album covers of the period. When CDs
came along, the available space shrank from 12" by 12" to 5" by 5",
making the more detailed artwork on LPs impossible to reproduce.
Now, with digital files, we don’t stare at the covers any more, but it’s
great to have album artwork to give a visual reminder of what you’re
listening to.
When you buy music from the iTunes Store, you get album artwork;
these 600-by-600 pixel files download with your music.

Figure 61 shows album art in Albums view. Album artwork also

displays in Artists view, Composers view, and Genres view. (See the
next chapter, View Your Music Library, for more about these views.)

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 Figure 61: In Albums view, you see nothing but album artwork, with
the album and artist name below it.

Add Missing Album Artwork

You have two options for adding missing album artwork. You can
either download it from the iTunes Store or you can hunt it down on
the internet and copy it to your music files.

Add Album Artwork from the iTunes Store

If you have an iTunes Store account, you can use Music to search the
iTunes Store for missing album art. To do this, switch to any view
where you can see an entire album (Albums view, Artists view, and so
on.), Control-click (right-click) an album’s artwork square, and choose
Get Album Artwork. If artwork is found, it is added; if not, you are
notified.

Sometimes this artwork is incorrect, in which case you’ll need to add

artwork manually, as I explain below.

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 Be Careful When Downloading Album Artwork
The Control-click contextual menu approach described just above is
not the only way to download album art: choose File > Library > Get
Album Artwork, and Music attempts to download artwork for your
entire music library. This may replace artwork you’ve manually added
to your music. You probably never want to do this, unless you’ve just
created a new library and want to check for artwork en masse.

If the iTunes Store can’t provide album artwork, here’s the easiest way
to add it:

1. Go to your favorite search engine and search for the name of an

artist and album. Click the Images link above the search results.
Google shows—if you’re lucky, and your album isn’t too rare—a
number of hits.

2. Choose an image that’s the size you want; I like around 600 by 600
pixels, as bigger files can take up too much space, and artwork at
this size displays well on mobile devices and on the Apple TV.

3. Control-click the image and choose Copy Image, or whatever menu

option your browser offers to copy the file.

4. In Music, select all the tracks of the album you want to add the
artwork to and then press ⌘-I. In the Info dialog, click Artwork and
press ⌘-V to paste the image. Click OK to save the artwork to the
tracks. (You can also drag a graphic file into the Artwork pane.)

Get More Album Artwork

A great place to find album artwork is Discogs, which is a huge
database and marketplace for music, containing a lot of user-submit-
ted content, including scanned album art.

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Make Added Album Artwork Stick
How you add album artwork will affect where it’s stored:

• When you add artwork manually, as described just above, it’s em-
bedded in the file itself. If you move the file to another computer
and add it to a Music library, you’ll see the album artwork.

• When you download music from Apple Music, buy music from the
iTunes Store, or download album art from there, it is stored on your
disk (stashed away in a folder in the Library folder of your home
folder: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.AMPArtworkAgent/Data/
Documents/Artwork). Music finds the album art there to display, but
if you move those music files to a different computer, the artwork
will not show up. Note that if you play a lot of different music from
Apple Music, this folder could swell, as each time a track is played,
if its artwork isn’t in the cache, it is downloaded.

If you want to prevent the art from potentially becoming separated

from the individual files, you need to embed it in all the tracks from
an album. To do this, select a track, display the Info dialog (⌘-I),
click the Artwork button, and copy the art (click it and press ⌘-C).
Next, close the window, select the entire album, press ⌘-I, and
paste the art as described just previously.

Rate Your Music

While not technically a tag, a rating lets you store information about
what you like and don’t like in your Music library. You can use ratings
to create smart playlists based on your favorite songs, or to find those
you like the least and remove them from your library. This information
is stored in your Music library file, not in the songs themselves, so if
you move files to another computer, the ratings get left behind.

You can apply two types of ratings to items in your Music library: star
ratings and Favorite/Suggest Less Ratings.

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Star Ratings
Before you can apply a star rating, you need to turn on this feature.
Choose Music > Settings/Preferences > General, and in the Show
section, select “Star ratings.”

There are several ways to set star ratings:

• Control-click one or more items, and then choose a number of stars

from the Rating submenu. For example, choose five stars for a top
song, or choose None to remove an existing rating.

• To set a number of stars for the currently playing tune, hover over
the track name in the app header, click the More icon, and then
choose a number of stars from the Rating submenu (Figure 62).
Note that you can’t rate tracks that aren’t in your library, or tracks
that you’re listened to on an Apple Music radio station.

Figure 62: You can rate tracks from the app header’s More menu.

• You can also access a Rating submenu if you Control-click the Music
app’s Dock icon when music is playing.

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• Use the rating stars, as shown in Figure 63. You can access these
stars in Artists, Albums, Genres, Composers views. If you have
applied ratings to tracks, the stars will be visible, but if not, hover
your pointer over a track to set a rating.

Figure 63: Ratings in Albums view.

To remove a rating, click just to the left of the leftmost star, or

Control-click the track and choose Rating > None.

• You can rate albums as well. In some views, as in Figure 63, above,
album rating stars display in the album’s header bar. If you hover
your pointer over that area, you can rate the entire album; or you
can click the More icon and choose Rating, and set a star rating
there.

• In Songs view, you can display a Rating column, where you can click
stars. See Songs View.

If you rate a song, but not its album, its rating stars are red, and the
album rating shows an average of your song ratings. If you rate an
album, but not its songs, all the songs of the album show stars equal to
the album rating. In Figure 63, above, I’ve rated the album five stars,

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but I’ve also rated individual songs, four and five stars each. If I hadn’t
rated the album, it would still show five stars, as that’s the average of
my song ratings.

Tip: You can also set half-star ratings in the Music app. To do so,
you’ll need to run a command in Terminal. I explain this in an article
on my website, Use Half-Star Ratings in macOS Catalina's Music App.

Favorite/Suggest Less Ratings

The Music app has two other types of rating: Favorite and Suggest
Less ratings. The Favorite icon lets you set a binary rating for any
track or album. This is a change from the previous Love and Dislike
ratings, which were a bit more self-explanatory. Favorite makes sense;
it’s a song you like or love; Suggest Less isn’t a rating as much as an
instruction; but use this to mark tracks that you would rather not hear
again.

Favorites and Suggest Less ratings are useful if you use Apple Music;
the service takes them into account when it makes music recommen-
dations, but it ignores any star ratings you have applied to your music.
You can, of course, dislike music that you own, but unless you care
about seeing which songs you hate the most, there’s not much use to
this. However, you can access Favorites and Suggest Less ratings on
iOS/iPadOS devices, so you may want to use both when rating your
music, then refine these ratings later with stars in Music.

You can set Favorites and Suggest Less ratings in many ways,
including:

• Control-click one or more items, and then choose Favorite or

Suggest Less.

• Click the More icon on the app header when a track is playing,
or next to a track, album name, or playlist, then choose Love or
Dislike. You can choose Favorite or Suggest Less for tracks that
aren’t in your library, such as when you’re listening to an Apple
Music playlist or radio station.

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• In views other than Songs view, hover over a track number, to the
left of a track’s name, to see a tiny Favorite icon display to its
left. If you click this, it shows a red star, as you can see in Figure
63, above.

• In Songs view, you can display a Favorite column (see Show Col-
umns in Songs Views to learn how to display this column). For an
un-favorited track that you want to favorite, hover over the track to
see a Favorite icon in the Favorite column and click the icon.
There is no column for tracks you’ve rated Suggest Less.

You can use both star ratings and Favorite/Suggest Less ratings, if you
like. This combination allows you to have very granular ratings: those
tracks that you really, really love, perhaps, and others that you rate
with stars.

Note: Favorites and Suggest Less ratings have special value when
you use Apple Music. I discuss how they work to refine your recom-
mendations in Favorite Tracks on Apple Music.

Plays and Skips

Plays are the number of times that you’ve listened to an audio track or
watched a video. The Music app increments this number automatical-
ly, whether you listen to it on your computer with Music, or on a
mobile device. Plays change when you’ve finished listening to an entire
track, or when you start listening to another track within the final 10
seconds of the current track. If you use iTunes Match or Apple Music,
plays increment each time a track is played on any mobile device that
has Sync Library turned on.

Note: You can view Plays and Skips in Songs view if you display their
columns (see Show Columns in Songs Views). You can also see a play
count if you select a track and press ⌘-I to display the Info dialog.
Play Count is near the bottom of the Details pane.

Skips are how many times you’ve skipped a track, by clicking or press-
ing the Next icon, either in Music or on a mobile device, after it has

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played for at least 2 seconds, but before the last 10 seconds of the
track.
You can use Plays and Skips as conditions for smart playlists; common
uses are smart playlists that collect songs with zero plays, songs you
haven’t listened to; and favorites, those with the most plays.

How to Reset Plays

You can reset Plays in the info window for any track. Select a track,
press ⌘-I, then look near the bottom of the Details tab. To the right of
the play count is a Reset button. Click this to reset the play count for
the track. If you select multiple tracks, then press ⌘-I to view the Info
window, you’ll still see the Reset button, but you don’t see play counts,
since they can differ for each track. However, there is no way to reset
Skips from the Music interface.
Mac users can easily manipulate plays for multiple items with the Add
or Subtract Play Count AppleScript from Doug Adams.
Select one or more tracks, then run the script. If you want to reset
plays, and you’ve selected tracks with different play counts, choose a
number higher than the largest number of plays. For example, if you
select 10 tracks, and the plays range from 1 to 15, subtract 16, and
they’ll all be set to zero. If the resulting number is zero, then the Last
Played Date or Last Skipped Date will be erased.

Note: For more info about AppleScript, see Extend the Music and TV
Apps with AppleScripts, later.

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 Organize Your Music and
Create Playlists
You’ve got your favorite music in your library, but you’d like to orga-
nize it better. In this chapter, I’ll show you how to make playlists, the
key to setting up your listening sessions. I’ll look at using tags to create
smart playlists that fill automatically with your favorite tunes. And I’ll
cover some special topics that will help you with tasks like finding your
media files on your disk, managing a large music library, and finding
duplicates.

On Playlists
You can listen to your music by album, or by selecting song after song.
You can play all the music by a specific artist, or you can shuffle your
entire library. But the Music app reveals its biggest strength when you
make playlists.

A playlist is a list of songs that you play together, one after the other,
with a first song and a last song. Pretty basic; kind of like a CD.

But playlists are more than that. A playlist is a self-contained unit, one
with a bunch of tracks you can always play in order or in shuffle mode;
a group of songs that you can listen to while dining or when chilling
outside; or your favorite lively songs to listen to when you work out.

A playlist can be the equivalent of an album, a double-album set, a live

concert, or an opera. It can be a compilation of favorite songs by
different groups, or a selection of music for a special occasion. It can
even contain all your songs, if you want. With smart playlists, you can
create an endless stream of music that flows as long as you listen. And
a playlist can also include videos from Apple Music.

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Let’s distinguish between two types of playlists:

• Standard: Standard playlists are groups of songs that you organize

manually. The key word here is manually: as you’ll see ahead, smart
playlists are automatically created from rules you select, but stan-
dard playlists require that you choose every track they contain, and
their play order. Standard playlists are also static; they don’t change
as you play them, unless you intervene or activate shuffle mode.

• Smart: Smart playlists are dynamic. You choose rules, and Music
scans your library for files that match these rules, based on the tags
your files contain. (Hence the importance of tagging your media
correctly.) In essence, the rules in a smart playlist tell Music to
search your library for items that match them.

Create a Standard Playlist

You create a standard playlist by choosing File > New > Playlist, or
pressing ⌘-N. Music adds the playlist to the sidebar, and highlights its
name. By default, Music names the new playlist Playlist (or, if that
name exists, Playlist 2, and so on). Type a name for the playlist in the
Playlist Title field, add a description and click the Plus icon to add
artwork if you want (you can do these later), then click Create to save
the playlist. (Figure 65)

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 Figure 64: Here’s a new playlist waiting to be filled with music.

It is possible to create multiple playlists with the same name, but try to
give your playlists unique names so you can tell them apart. To later
change the name of a playlist, find it in the Playlists sidebar, click it,
wait a moment, click it again, and type a new name.

Note: You can edit the title, description, or artwork of a playlist later
by clicking the Edit icon that displays on the playlist screen, as
shown in Figure 65 below.

Select the new playlist in the sidebar to work with it (Figure 65).

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 Figure 65: Here’s a new playlist waiting to be filled with music.

This is the first time that Apple has changed the way you create stan-
dard playlists since the launch of iTunes. The Music app suggests
songs to add to your playlist. I find this intrusive; I don’t know half of
these artists, and why would Apple even make suggestions when they
don’t know what sort of music I want to put in the playlist? You’ll
notice, after upgrading to macOS Sonoma 14.2, that all your standard
playlists contain suggested songs. For now, I have not found a way to
turn these suggestions off.

As you add music, the suggested songs change, and below that section
is a Featured Artists section, which also changes according to the
contents of the playlist.

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 Tip: To create a new playlist that already contains some music, start
by selecting some tracks in your Music library, in any view. These
may be an album or two, all of an artist’s music, or some disparate
tracks you’ve selected by clicking the first, then ⌘-clicking others.
Next, choose File > New > Playlist from Selection. Music creates a
new playlist with the selected tracks.

To add items to a playlist, you have two options. The first option has
you looking at your Music library as you normally would. When you
find an item that you want to add to your playlist, you drag it to the
playlist entry in the sidebar. With this way of working, you can’t see
what’s in your playlist while you add to it. With the second option, you
can see both your library and the contents of your playlist at once.

Drag Items to a Playlist in the Sidebar

You can drag items to a playlist in the sidebar:

1. Browse your library any way you want: Albums view, Artists view,
Songs view, and so on. You can also use the Search field to find
items. Drag the items you want to the sidebar and drop them on the
new playlist: you can drag songs, albums, artists, or entire genres.

2. When you’ve finished adding items, click the playlist in the sidebar
and check that all the right tracks are added.

3. Open the View Options window (⌘-J) or click the Sort icon
and choose a sort order, such as by Artist, Name, or Year. Or leave
the sort order as Playlist Order to either listen in the order in which
you’ve added items or to customize the order manually by dragging
items up and down in the list.

4. For more sorting options, choose Songs from the View As pop-up
menu. The View Options window expands, and you see your playlist
as a simple song list with several columns. You can sort your playlist
by any of the visible columns (click a column header to sort), and
add other columns by selecting their boxes in the View Options win-
dow. If you want to sort the tracks by the order in which you added
them to the playlist, you must sort by the item number column;

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 click the unlabeled area that contains a caret above the item num-
bers to do this.

Note: With Sync Library on, you can add a music track to a music
playlist whether it is physically on your Mac or in the cloud. This
means that you can use Apple Music tracks that you’ve added to your
Music library, even if you’ve not downloaded them. When you play
the playlist, Music will play any files that are on your computer and
stream those that are in the cloud.

Drag Items to a Playlist in Its Own

Window
You might find it easier to open a playlist in its own window and drag
items to that window.

1. Create a new playlist in the sidebar, then Control-click the playlist

and choose Open in New Window. Rearrange the main Music
window and the playlist’s window so you can see both.

2. Browse your Music library and drag tracks to the playlist window.

3. If you want to sort the playlist, follow the steps described just above.

4. Close the playlist window when you’ve finished.

Now that you’ve made a playlist, you can edit it at any time. You can
also add artwork and a description to your playlist. Click the Edit
icon; you see the New Playlist dialog as in Figure 64. You can drag
artwork to the empty artwork well, or you can click the forward and
back icons to view some artwork presets, which just contain the name
of the playlist with different colors and styles of typography. They’re
not very inspired, and I preferred the previous artwork, which was a
mosaic generated from the album artwork of the tracks in the playlist.
You can also chance the name of the playlist, its description, and if you
have an Apple Music account, you can check “Show on profile and in
search” so other Apple Music users can find and play your playlist. You
can see a finished playlist in Figure 66.

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 Figure 66: Here’s the Edit Playlist dialog with a title and description,
set up so Apple Music users can find it and play it.

To listen to your playlist, select it in the sidebar and click the Play
icon on the header bar, click the Play button, double-click the
first track in the playlist, or click the Shuffle button to play
the tracks in random order.

Note: Another way to add tracks to a playlist is to Control-click a

track or click the More icon next to a track, then choose Add to
Playlist, then choose the name of the playlist you want to add the
track to. When you do this, the next time you Control-click a track,
the top of the contextual menu will say Add to Last Playlist, followed
by that playlist’s name.

About Smart Playlists

While you can make your own playlists by manually choosing which
tracks they contain and the order in which they play, smart playlists
can make the process easier. They automatically choose songs, based

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on your desires. You may never want to use smart playlists, because
you listen to your albums only in their original order; or you might
want to use nothing but smart playlists, because music, like the uni-
verse, should obey other laws than linearity.

Smart playlists act like multi-criteria searches of your Music library,

automatically adding items that match rules you choose. Apple used to
include a few smart playlists (Figure 67) by default so you could have
an idea of what they can do. This is no longer the case with the Music
app, but I’ll use Apple’s old examples to show you how smart playlists
work. (If you upgrade an existing iTunes library, or turn on Sync
Library, you may see these playlists.)

Figure 67: iTunes used to create these smart playlists by default. If

you’ve upgraded from a previous iTunes library, and haven’t deleted
them, they’re still in the sidebar.

The best way to understand smart playlists is to look at some simple

ones to see how they work. To edit a smart playlist (or look at its rules),
Control-click it in the sidebar and choose Edit Rules, or select it and
click Edit Rules in the playlist header.

Let’s look at the Recently Played playlist that Apple used to generate
automatically in iTunes (Figure 68).

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 Figure 68: This is a simple smart playlist, but you can make much
more complex playlists in this dialog.

This playlist can be summarized like this:

Match [all] of the following rules

[Last Played] [in the last] 2 [weeks]

[Favorite] [is not] [Disliked]

As you can see in the figure just above, this playlist looks for items that
were played in the last 2 weeks. It also contains a rule to exclude tracks
you’ve “disliked;” see Tell Apple Music What You Don’t Like for more
or favoriting and disliking tracks.

Note: While Apple changed the “Dislike” rating to Suggest Less in

macOS Sonoma, they didn’t change the terminology in smart
playlists. So Disliked is still an option, as above.

The “Live updating” checkbox is selected, meaning the playlist updates

as you listen to songs. As a result, whenever a song in your Music
library is played (and, consequently, its Last Played date and time are
updated), it is added to the playlist automatically.

With this playlist, you can quickly find the songs that you’ve listened to
recently; here “recently” is set to 2 weeks, but you could choose 2 days,
2 months, or some other duration. (If you don’t select “Live updating,”
you can play the songs in the playlist as is, but the playlist doesn’t
change to reflect anything you’ve played since you created the playlist.
To update it, edit the playlist and then click OK.)

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There are other smart playlist options. You can select “Limit to” and
limit the number of items the playlist contains, its total time, or the
amount of data it contains. You can pick its contents by any of a dozen
criteria. You can also match only checked items, meaning that
unchecked items in your library aren’t added. (I talk about checking
tracks in the sidebar The Importance of the Little Checkboxes, ahead.)

The playlist shown above, like the other default smart playlists previ-
ously included in iTunes (My Top Rated and Top 25 Most Played) is
simple; it uses only two rules. But what if you want more complex
criteria? Read on.

Create Smart Playlists

To make a smart playlist, choose File > New > Smart Playlist (⌘-
Option-N). By default, the first condition is set up so that its rules
match all media, and the first rule is set to [Artist] [contains], with a
blank field following.

To begin setting up your playlist, you can:

• Use the first rule that Music offers by typing a name in the blank
field to match an artist.

• Change the first rule that Music offers by choosing a different tag
from the first pop-up menu in the rule. Depending on which tag you
pick, you get different options. Choose additional pop-up menu
items or fill in the field as needed.

When you type in a text field, Music auto-completes as you type, filling
in the closest result to what you’ve typed so far from the contents of
your library. If it’s what you want, you can stop typing. If not, keep
typing.

You can add either new or nested rules like this:

• New rule: Click the Add button following a rule, and then at
the top of the dialog, choose whether an item must satisfy all of the
rules you have specified or any of them to be added to the list. For
example, you could choose three artists—say Frank Sinatra, Dean

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 Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.—and have a smart playlist that choos-
es any one of them (any) or only tracks where all three appear (all).

• Nested rule: Hold down Option and click the More button that
replaces the Add button following a rule. Within a nested rule
group, you then choose whether an item must match all or any of
the rules in the group to be included in the playlist.

Below the rules are some important checkboxes:

• Limit to: With this option, you can limit your smart playlist. You
can choose a duration, a number of items, or a size (file size); the
latter is helpful for creating a playlist to fit on a mobile device with
limited capacity. For example, to fill a 64 GB iPhone, make a smart
playlist of songs limited to about 45 GB (because you never get the
advertised capacity on the iPhone, and you’ll also be using space for
apps, photos, videos, and more). In this section you can also tell
Music to pick items at random or to include them based on various
tags or by when, how often, or how recently they were played.

• Match only checked items: Use this checkbox to limit your

smart playlist to checked tracks. (I discuss checking and unchecking
tracks in the sidebar The Importance of the Little Checkboxes,
shortly ahead.)

• Live updating: This checkbox tells Music to update the smart

playlist every time a change is made in your Music library. Use it for
playlists that look at such information as play counts and last played
dates, but be aware that if you have a large library and a lot of
playlists with live updating set, Music may lag a bit when you make
changes to your library.

To make changes to your smart playlist, Control-click (right-click) it in

the sidebar and choose Edit Rules.

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Interesting Things You Can Do with Smart
Playlists
The basics of making smart playlists are simple, but you need to figure
out which ones will be useful for you. Here are some that I use, which
might give you ideas:

• Not-recently played music by specific artists: I’m a big fan of

Bob Dylan, and I have a playlist of his music that I haven’t listened
to in 3 months. Since there’s so much of his music—2,692 tracks,
currently—it takes me a while to listen to it all.

In my playlist, I set the following rules; the last one is because I

didn’t like the Christmas album he released in 2009:

Match [all] of the following rules

[Artist] [is] Bob Dylan
[Last Played] [not in the last] 3 [months]
[Album] [is not] Christmas in the Heart

I limit it to contain 3 hours of music selected at random, and I select

the “Live updating” checkbox.

I create similar smart playlists for several of my favorite artists, and

even for certain box sets of classical music. For example, I listen to a
21-disc set of Schubert lieder, recorded by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,
in the same way, though I don’t listen to much classical music in
random order.

• My 1972 Dark Star playlist: I’m a Grateful Dead fan, and I have
a couple hundred live Dead concerts in my Music library. 1972 was a
great year, especially for their signature song Dark Star, one of the
band’s best jamming vehicles. In the fall of 2011, there was an
official release of the band’s entire Europe ’72 tour, with 22 shows,
which contain 11 rousing versions of the song. But there are also
other officially released live recordings, so I have a total of 16 ver-
sions of the song from that year.

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 I have a playlist set up like this:

Match [all] of the following rules

[Artist] [is] Grateful Dead
[Name] [contains] Dark Star
[Year] [is] 1972

Note that I use [Name] [contains] Dark Star rather than [Name]
[is] Dark Star, because convention is that, when songs segue into
each other, one uses > following the title of the song that leads into
another song.

Whenever I want to choose one of these great versions of this long

song, I head to that playlist. Of course, for smart playlists like this,
you need to make sure all your music has a correct Year tag.

• My super-duper audiobook playlist: In How to Rip an Audio-

book CD, I explained how to set up an audiobook playlist for audio-
books you’ve ripped, and keep them in your Music library. I use this
a lot, setting up one playlist for each audiobook that I’ve ripped. It
makes it easy to listen to audiobooks without having to remember
which file I listened to last.

• My spot-the-skipped-songs playlist: Whenever you listen to

music in shuffle mode, you can skip tracks you don’t feel like listen-
ing to, by pressing the Next icon (or the right arrow key, if
Music is the frontmost app). I have a playlist set up with [Skips]
[is not] 0; this shows me which tracks I’ve skipped. This may tell
me about music I’m not that interested in listening to on the go, so I
can stop syncing it to my iPhone.

• The favorite songs playlist: This one is easy: just choose [Rat‐
ing] [is greater than] [***], to have 4- or 5-star songs, or [Rat‐
ing] [is] [*****], to have only 5-star songs in a single playlist. Or
choose [Favorite] [is] [Favorited]. Or combine both of these
criteria, to find tracks with star ratings that you have favorited.

• Studio versus live recordings: I’m a fan of jazz pianists Brad

Mehldau and Bill Evans. I have both live and studio recordings from

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 each artist. For the studio recordings, I add studio to the Comments
tag and for the live recordings, I add live. Sometimes I want to listen
to tighter studio recordings, and other times I want more open-
ended live jams. So I have playlists for each.

For example, I have one where [Artist] [is] Brad Mehldau and
[Comments] [contains] studio, another with [Comments] [contains]
live, and so on.

• Mono recordings: I like listening to mono recordings from the

early days when stereo was just starting to become common. Back
then, producers and engineers spent more time perfecting mono
mixes of records than they did the stereo mixes, and I’ve found that
many mono albums from this period sound better than the slap-
dash stereo mixes. I wrote about this on my blog, in an article
entitled In Praise of Mono Recordings.

I have named all my mono albums with (Mono) after the titles, and
I created a smart playlist with [Album] [contains] (Mono), which
lists all the one-channel recordings in my Music library. Sometimes,
when I’m in a mono mood, I’ll head over to that playlist and spin an
album by Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, or some classical or
jazz recordings from the 1940s or 1950s.

• Make playlists of artists based on the first letter of their

names: If you have lots of artists in your Music library, you may
find it annoying to browse the Artists list on mobile devices. One
way to get around this is to create smart playlists that gather artists
according to the first letter of their names.

To do this, create a smart playlist with the rule [Artist] [begins

with] A, and save it as, say, Artist A. Or, add rules to make a playlist
with several initial letters: add [Artist] [begins with] B and
[Artist] [begins with] C, and save the playlist as Artists A–C.
Make as many or as few as you like, choosing which letters you want
each to include. They’ll update automatically as you add more music
to your Music library.

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• Find which songs are on your computer, and which are in
the cloud: If you have enabled Sync Library, two conditions will
allow you to pinpoint the locations of your tracks. You can use
[Location] [is] [on this computer] or [Location] [is] [Cloud] to
set up playlists showing which music you have locally, and which
you need to download.

You can also create a [Cloud Status] rule that has one of several
possible values: [Matched], [Purchased], [Uploaded], [Ineligible],
[Removed], [Error], [Duplicate], [Apple Music], [No Longer
Available], or [Not Uploaded]. These conditions let you make a
smart playlist based on the cloud status of songs in your library.

• Find which songs are Apple Music files: If you use Apple
Music and download files for offline listening, or if you add music
from Apple Music to your music library and the music is still in the
cloud, you’ll have Apple Music files. You can find all of them by
creating a smart playlist with [Cloud Status] [is] [Apple Music].

Although the above examples only scratch the surface of what you can
do with smart playlists, I hope they give you ideas about how you, too,
can make your own.

Use the Favorite Songs Playlist

You saw above that you can create a smart playlist using the “favorite”
criterion. The Music app now has a built-in playlist, entitled Favorite
Songs, which replicates this for those who don’t want to create smart
playlists. Since smart playlists don’t sync to iPhones and iPads, this
built-in smart playlist gives you a quick way to access songs you love.

Figure 69 shows what the Favorite Songs playlist looks like.

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 Figure 69: The Favorite Songs playlist is a built-in smart playlist
grouping tracks you’ve marked as favorites.

There’s nothing you need to do to create this playlist; just favorite

some songs, as explained in Favorite/Suggest Less Ratings. Songs you
marked as Loved in previous versions of the Music app have been
converted to Favorites, and show up in this playlist.

Note: Apple promised a new feature in macOS Sonoma and iOS/

iPadOS 17.2, where friends and family could create collaborative
playlists together, saying it would be available “later this year.” They
have now delayed the feature until 2024.

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 The Importance of the Little Checkboxes
I’ve mentioned a few times that selecting those little checkboxes next
to your tracks has an interesting effect. Those checkboxes affect the
way the Music app works in several ways, and it’s good to be aware
of them:
✦ When ripping a CD, Music imports only checked tracks.
✦ When playing tracks from a CD, playlist, or your library, Music
plays only checked tracks.
✦ Smart playlists have a special option where you specify whether
the list should use only checked tracks or include all tracks that
meet the rules you set.
✦ You can choose to sync only checked music to a mobile device;
this option is available on the Summary pane when a connected
device is selected.
The checkboxes appear when Songs is selected in the sidebar, or
when you view a playlist in Songs view. In Artists or Albums view,
unchecked tracks are dimmed—they’re gray instead of black—so you
can tell which tracks are unchecked. You can still check and uncheck
tracks by selecting them, Control-clicking them, and choosing the
appropriate command.
To check or uncheck a track’s checkbox, you can select the checkbox,
but if you want to change a lot of tracks, it’s faster to select the
tracks, Control-click, and choose Check Selection or Uncheck Selec-
tion. You can also choose these commands from the Song menu or
hold down the ⌘ key and click a checkbox to change the status of all
visible tracks, such as those in a playlist. Be careful not to do this for
your entire library!
If you don’t see these checkboxes, go to Music > Settings/Prefer-
ences > General and select “Songs list checkboxes.” If you decide
you no longer want to see them, you can uncheck that option.

Create Collaborative Playlists

If you are an Apple Music subscriber, you can to create collaborative
playlists, inviting other subscribers to share a playlist, to add, remove,

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and reorder songs, and add emoji to react to individual songs. Collabo-
rative playlists are great if you’re preparing for a party or other event,
and want to allow friends to help choose the music. They are also a way
for friends to alert each other to new tracks they have discovered.

To create a collaborative playlist, start by creating a standard playlist,

as described earlier in this chapter. Add a title to the playlist, and then
add a description and artwork if you want. This playlist is added to
your library, and shows in alphabetical order among the other stan-
dard playlists in the sidebar.

Click the playlist, then click the Collaboration Management icon to

see the invitation dialog. (Figure 70)

Figure 70: Use this dialog to invite people to collaborate on a

playlist.

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Click Start Collaborating, then choose how you want to share the
playlist. You see options such as Messages, Mail, or AirDrop, and
people and groups you’ve had recent Messages conversations with are
listed at the top. You can click one of these to share the playlist with
them in Messages, click the Mail icon to send a link via email, or click
the AirDrop icon to send a link via AirDrop to someone physically near
you. If you enable Approve Collaborators, you must approve anyone
who wants to be part of the playlist group. This is useful in case some-
one you have invited shares the link with others who you have not
invited.

People you invite to your playlist receive a link that opens the playlist
in the Apple Music app on Mac, iPhone, or iPad. They can add any
tracks they want, rearrange the order of tracks, and react to tracks by
clicking the More icon, choosing React, then choosing an emoji.

Collaborative playlists display as in Figure 71, with the name of the

creator at the top, the number of other people collaborating, and their
photos. You can see who added tracks in the Added By column; you
may need to widen the Music app window to see this column.

Figure 71: A collaborative playlist shows tracks and who added

them.

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Whenever one member of the playlist makes changes to the playlist,
these are reflected in the libraries of the other members. Note that
playlist members don’t receive any notifications of changes made to
these playlists.

If you want to add people to or remove them from the playlist, click the
Collaboration Management icon to bring up the Manage Collabora-
tion dialog, which is similar to the one you used to invite people to
share the playlist. You can stop sharing the playlist, add new members
by clicking Share Invite Link, and remove members by clicking the
More icon to the right of their names and choosing Remove
Collaborator.

Organize Playlists
In the sidebar, Music sorts playlists alphabetically in two groups:
smart playlists first, then standard playlists. Within either of these
groups, you can use some tricks to move certain playlists to the top of
the list. I use dashes (-) before playlist names to force Music to put
them at the top of the list.
For example, these playlists, because of the dashes, sort in this order:
--Classical Rotation
--New Music
-Grateful Dead Europe 1972
-Hot Tuna live
Bob Dylan
Brad Mehldau

As you can see above, double-dashes sort before single dashes. This
lets me create several levels of sorting within a list of playlists.

You can do more, though: you can use folders to organize playlists. To
add a folder, choose File > New > Playlist Folder. Name the folder, and
then drag any playlists you want into it. You can show or hide a folder’s
contents by clicking its disclosure triangle. Folders display above
playlists in the sidebar.

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If you have a lot of playlists and a lot of folders, you may want to even
use subfolders. Just select a folder, then choose File > New > Playlist
Folder to create a folder within the selected folder. And so on. You can
have folders all the way down.

Coming back to those dashes, you can also use them to keep folders in
a specific order. Playlists that aren’t in folders will display below the
last folder, in alphabetical order. However, if you start using folders—if
you have enough playlists that it’s necessary—you may find it best to
create folders to group all your playlists.

Delete a Playlist
If you want to delete a playlist from your library, select it in the sidebar
and then press the Delete key. Music asks if you want to delete the
playlist. You can check the “Do not ask me again” box if you don’t want
to see this warning again. When you delete the playlist, you lose the
structure of the playlist; to get it back, you must rebuild it manually, or
re-create the rules for a smart playlist. However, deleting a playlist
does not delete the tracks in the playlist from your Music library or
computer.

You can delete a folder as well. This deletes all the playlists it contains.

Delete Songs from a Playlist

If you want to delete songs from a standard playlist, but retain the
playlist, select a song and press the Delete key. You get an alert, asking
you to confirm the deletion. Deleting a song from a playlist removes it
from the playlist, but does not delete it from your Music library or your
computer.

You can’t delete songs from a smart playlist directly; instead, to change
a smart playlist, you change its rules. One exception is in the case of a
smart playlist that has the “Limit to” checkbox selected so that its
tracks are constrained by a factor such as time or size. If your playlist’s
conditions match exceed that limit, deleting one or more tracks from
the smart playlist is possible (select the track in the playlist and press

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the Delete key). When you delete a track in this way, Music adds
another track to meet your limit.

Note: If the playlist’s rules use the “Match only checked items”
checkbox to include only tracks that are checked, you can uncheck
tracks to remove them. Remember, however, that unchecking a
track’s checkbox may have other effects. For details, read the sidebar
The Importance of the Little Checkboxes, a few pages earlier.

Delete Songs from Your Library

When you delete a song from your library, you have two options: you
can delete the its entry from the library and still keep the file on your
disk, or you can delete both the entry and the file. If you do the latter,
make sure you have a backup (though you may not want to back up
certain files, such as podcasts you’ve heard and don’t want to keep):

• Delete a song from your library: Select it in the library (i.e., not
in a playlist) and press Delete. You are asked whether you want to
keep the file or not. If you have enabled Sync Library, you’ll be
asked if you want to remove the download and still keep the song in
your library in the cloud. (If you have a local version of a song that’s
stored in the cloud and want to delete that local song, Control-click
the track and choose Remove Download.)

• Delete a song from both a playlist and your library at the

same time: Select it in a playlist and press ⌘-Option-Delete. You
see the usual dialog asking you whether you want to keep the file or
not.

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 Resetting Your Warnings
In the above topics about deleting playlists and files, you’ve seen that
Music displays a number of warnings when you try to delete items.
Many of these dialogs have a “Don’t ask me again” checkbox. You
may move too fast and select these boxes, but then realize that you
prefer having the warning.
To reset all these warnings—they appear in a number of situations—
go to Music’s Advanced preferences and click the Reset Warnings
button.

Eliminate Duplicates From Your

Library
You may have songs on both regular and best-of albums; you may have
studio and live versions of songs; or you may have—cough—down-
loaded songs more than once and added them to your library. The
Music app can help you find duplicates, items that have the same name
and artist in their metadata. It can also find exact duplicates, which
have the same name, artist, and album.
To find duplicates in your entire music library, select an item in the
sidebar that contains all your music, such as Artists or Genres. Or, if
you want to hunt down duplicates in, say, just a playlist, select that
playlist.
Now, choose File > Library > Show Duplicate Items. Music displays a
list of songs that meet this duplicate criterion in a list view. Click the
Name column header so songs with the same name group together.
Some may be real duplicates, such as the same song on an original
album and a best-of album. In such cases, you may want to keep only
one of these, or you may want to uncheck one, so it doesn’t play or
sync. If you have studio and live versions of a song, however, you’ll
probably want to keep both. To whittle down your duplicates to show
only those on the same album, click Same Album in the Header Bar.
To see exact duplicates—those where the song name, artist, and album
are the same—click Done at the bottom of the Music window. Then,
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hold down Option and choose File > Library > Show Exact Duplicate
Items.

Note: If you’ve enabled Sync Library, Music doesn’t match or upload

duplicate tracks, even if you want it to. I generally do want duplicates
when I have, say, a studio album and a best-of album, so I can listen
to the same tracks in both contexts. But the match process refuses
this, and chooses one of the two duplicates at random, so it may add
only the track from the best-of album to your cloud library, meaning
you can no longer play the original studio album in its entirety.

When you’ve finished examining your duplicates, you can decide

whether you want to delete any of them (see Delete Songs from Your
Library). When you’ve finished perusing duplicates, click the Done
button at the top of the window to see all your content again.

Power-Searching for Duplicate Items

The Music app’s feature that finds duplicates is a bit limited, though
it’s good enough for most users. If you want a more powerful tool to
find dupes in your library, check out Doug Adams’s $15 Dupin. This
useful tool for Mac users lets you choose your own criteria for dupli-
cates.
You can look for dupes not only by name and artist, but also by
album, time, size, bit rate, and more. You can save your “keeper”
tracks to playlists, export lists of dupes, and even scan for dupes in
other Music libraries on your network.

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 Manage and Share Media
Files
One of the advantages of apps such as Music, TV, Podcasts, and Books
is that you don’t need to think about files. When you add files to these
apps’ libraries, they are stored on your Mac in specific locations, but
you rarely need to manipulate them in the Finder. However, if you
have a large media library, you may need to consider offloading your
files from your Mac to an external drive.

In this chapter, I discuss how you can manage large media libraries,
and also how to share your music over a network to other devices.

How the Media Apps Organize Files

A useful aspect of the Music and TV apps is that they free you from
having to worry about organizing the actual files they manage. When
you add a file to Music or TV, the app stores a pointer to its location, so
all you need to think about is whether you want to play the file, and
how you sync it to your mobile device (if you still sync music and don’t
use the cloud).

Music App File Organization

By default, Music stores your files in a Media folder. When you down-
load files from the iTunes Store, they go there automatically; when you
rip CDs the same thing occurs. When you add files to your music
library from your drive, assuming you’ve left the “Copy files…” check-
box enabled (it’s described just ahead), Music copies them from their
original location, and you can delete the originals.

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 Where Are All Those Files?
With the new media apps, there are new locations for the storage of
media files, compared to the way iTunes stored them. However, if
you upgrade from an existing installation, created before macOS
10.15 Catalina, your music and video files will not be moved. You’ll
find them, and other support files, in ~/Music/Music/iTunes Media.
Your library files will, however, be in ~/Music/Music/ and ~/Movies/
TV. This can be a bit confusing.

If you do a clean install, music and TV files will be located as follows:

✦ Music stores its files in the Music subfolder of your home folder.
The default location of your Media folder is ~/Music/Music/Media/,
where ~ is a shortcut for your home folder.
✦ The TV app stores file in ~/Movies/TV/Media.
Each of the above folders contains several subfolders organizing your
content.
For the other two media kinds—podcasts and audiobooks—the paths
are a bit more complex. These folders are “hidden,” in the sense that
you are not expected to access them, regardless of how you install or
upgrade to Catalina or later.
Podcasts are stored in a cache folder in ~/Library/Group Containers/
243LU875E5.groups.com.apple.podcasts.

Since Apple spun off the Books app, ebooks have been stored in a
folder in your Library folder: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKA‐
gentService. Audiobooks are also stored there now.

One problem with audiobooks is the space they take up. If you have
a large audiobook library, you may not have room on your startup
drive, especially if it’s an SSD. So you might want to remove as many
audiobooks as possible and store them somewhere else, if you’re not
planning to listen to them soon.

If you have a large media library and already store your media files on
an external drive, when you upgrade to Catalina or later, both the
Music and Apple TV apps will remember the location of your existing
media, if you are using a different folder than the default. The Music
and TV apps each have an Advanced preference allowing you to choose
a location for its media folder. This means that you can store your

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music on one volume and your movies and TV shows on another
volume, which can be practical for many people with large libraries.

By default, the Music app puts files in its Media folder in a set of
subfolders by artist, and then, in each artist’s folder, by album. Some
people don’t want Music to put files in folders that way. Music’s Media
preferences have several related options (Figure 72).

Figure 72: These options tell Music how you to organize your files.

Here’s what the options do:

• Music Media folder location: The default location is that shown

in Where Are All Those Files?, but I’ll discuss why you might change
the location ahead, in Manage a Huge Music Library.

• Keep Music Media folder organized: This checkbox controls

whether or not Music will re-file your media after you’ve initially
added it to your Music library. With this checkbox selected, if you
modify certain tags for an item in your library (including Artist,
Album, Compilation, and Title), Music re-files the item so its loca-
tion in the Music Media folder matches its tags. This is probably the
best way for most people to organize files, because you can easily
sift through your music in the Finder.

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• Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library:
Finally, you can have Music copy files to the Music Media folder.
Why would you want to uncheck this box? Well, if you are uptight
about letting Music control your files, you can put them anywhere
you want (you’ll want to uncheck the first option too), then add
them to your library (see Add Your Own Files Own to the Music
App). When this option is unchecked, Music saves pointers to the
files, but it doesn’t move them, so you can have the organization
that you want, and be totally responsible for keeping files in the
correct locations. But, if you manually move any files after you’ve
added them to your library, Music may not be able to find them
again.

If you’ve prevented Music from copying and organizing files, but

change your mind, you can enable the two checkboxes and then choose
File > Library > Organize Library. Music will then copy all your files to
the folder structure that it uses.

File Organization for TV, Podcasts, and

Books
Your options for organizing files managed the TV app are similar to
that of the Music app, described above. However, you cannot change
the location where the Podcasts and Books apps store their files.

Store Media Files on an External Drive

If you have lots of media files—such as videos, which take up much
more space than music files—you may find yourself short on space,
especially if your Mac has an SSD instead of a more capacious spinning
hard disk. If you buy a few movies and a couple of season passes for
your favorite TV shows, you’ll be using up dozens of gigabytes. And if
you’re a music fan, like me, you’ll definitely need more room.

Fortunately, you can store your Music and TV Media folders on an

external disk, or even on a network volume.

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 Storing Media Files on a Network Volume
You may find it practical to store your media files on a network
volume. A number of routers let you connect a USB drive to the
device, and could store your media files there; this can be useful if
you use a laptop. You could also use a network-attached storage
device (NAS), which you can use to store other files.
You’ll need to mount the network volume before launching the Music
or TV apps. If not, the apps won’t see the files and will display icons
with exclamation points saying the songs can’t be found. If this
happens, quit the apps, mount the network volume, and then launch
the apps again. See my article Make Sure Your Network Volume Is
Mounted Before Launching iTunes (while it specifies iTunes, its points
are still valid for the new apps) for help and more details.
While I haven’t done this in many years, I often had problems with
my music files on a network volume. If the device wasn’t responsive,
or needed to restart, then the apps that play files can get confused.
And in some cases, iTunes—back in the day—would reset the location
where the music files were stored. So caveat listener.

I keep my media files on an external SSD that I use for just that one
purpose. You may reach the point where you’ll need to make this
move, a process that I’ve divided into two sets of steps. You can repeat
the same steps for both the Music and TV apps, if you have media for
both of them that you to offload to an external drive. (I cite only the
Music app below; the steps are exactly the same for the TV app, with
the exception of the folder names and paths.)

Move the Folder

Do the following to move your media folder to an external disk or
volume:

1. Back up your files, using whatever method you regularly use, just in
case. You do back up your files, right? (See Back Up Your Media
Files.)

2. Connect the external disk, or prepare the network disk by mounting

it. If you’re short on space now, plan ahead; if a 1 TB disk will hold
all your media without much extra space, get a 2 TB disk so you
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 won’t have to change again soon. Hard disks are cheap; these days,
a 4 TB external hard drive costs less than $100. SSDs are more
expensive, but starting to get affordable for 1 TB or 2 TB capacities.

3. Go to Music > Settings/Preferences > Files.

4. If “Keep Music Media folder organized” is not checked, check it.

(After you’ve moved your files, you can go back and uncheck this
option if you so desire.)

5. In the “Music Media folder location” section of the Files prefer-

ences, click Change.

6. In the dialog that appears, navigate to your external disk or network

volume. Continue navigating to where you want to keep your Music
Media folder (this may be at the root level of the disk). Click New
Folder, name this folder Music Media, and then click Open.

7. Click OK to save your changes.

8. Choose File > Library > Organize Library.

9. In the Organize Library dialog, select “Consolidate files” and then

click OK.

Music (or TV) copies all your media files to the new location. This may
take a while if you have a lot of files; go make a cup of tea or coffee. If
you have a very large library, you may even have time to make lunch.

Verify the Transfer

Make sure that everything has copied correctly, then delete the
original:

1. When the copy has completed, check in Music and TV to make sure
that the files are found correctly: Control-click a file and choose
Show in Finder. If the file is indeed in the correct location, then
everything’s fine. (If not, you may need to repeat the process; but if
you followed these instructions to the letter, you should have no
problem.)

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2. Working on your computer’s regular disk, move the original copy of
your Media folder to the Trash. (To find the folder, read Where Are
All Those Files?, a few pages earlier.) Don’t delete any of the other
items in your Music folder, such as the Music Library file.

3. When you’re double-certain everything is working correctly from

the new location, and when you’ve checked again (you can never be
too careful; you did make a backup, right?), empty the Trash to free
up the space that was used by the original files.

Now that you’ve moved these files, you’ll have a lot more room on your
startup volume, but you’ll need to make sure to back up the files in this
new location. I’ll talk about backing up your media files in Back Up
Your Media Files.

You may notice that, in step 2 just above, I said that you shouldn’t
delete files such as your Music Library file. Some people move the
entire Music or TV folders to an external drive or network volume,
then open the apps by double-clicking their library files on that drive.
The next time the apps launch, they’ll remember the location. Howev-
er, if the drive or network volume is not available, then the Music or
TV app will create new library files on your startup drive. It’s best to
move only the media folders and leave the library files in their normal
location to avoid confusion, and also because it’s easier to ensure that
your library files get backed up regularly.

Manage a Huge Music Library

My main Music library currently has some 70,000 music tracks. It
took a long time to rip the thousands of CDs I’ve added to the library,
as well as to buy music from the iTunes Store and other sites. My
library has gradually increased to what is, some might say, a disturbing
size. I’ve culled some music, creating a second library with, currently,
another 70,000 tracks, so neither library is too unwieldy. (To be
honest, I haven’t opened that library in ages, but I do occasionally copy
some of the files to my main library in the Finder.)

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There are two problems with a large library: one is managing all that
music in the Music app, and the second is syncing to a mobile device
that can’t hold everything. (I’ll look at the latter issue in Sync Media to
Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod.)

As far as managing music files goes, Music is a pretty good app for
dealing with a large library. The most important thing you can do is
carefully tag your music so you can find what you want. I find that
using a maximum number of genres makes it easier to sort and drill
down into my music collection. I mentioned earlier, in Tag Your Music
Files, that you can add a genre to Music by typing it in the Info dialog.

But do you need all that music in your library? Do you listen to it all?
Maybe you should check what you don’t listen to. Make a smart playlist
with the rule [Last Played] [not in the last] 6 [months] and see
what comes up. I do this occasionally and then remove music I don’t
listen to, placing it in a second Music library (see below, Create More
than One Music Library on Your Mac). Having multiple Music libraries
doesn’t change the amount of space the files take up, but it does make
my primary library less daunting. You can also back up those files to an
external drive and then remove them from your disk entirely, to save
space.

Create More than One Music Library on

Your Mac

Back in the days when the largest capacity iPod was 40 GB, I had one
iTunes library (and one iPod) for classical music, and one for the rest
of my music. I’d switch libraries to sync each iPod. When iPod capaci-
ties increased, I merged the two libraries. These days, however, I use a
second library to store music that I don’t listen to often, in order to
keep my main library more manageable.

If you use Sync Library, you can have up to 100,000 tracks, so proba-
bly won’t need a second library unless you have a special reason,

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perhaps to set up a simplified library for your kids, so they can more
easily find music that they want.

Note: You can also create additional libraries for the TV app, but not
for Podcasts or Books.

Here’s how to make an additional library:

1. Launch Music, and immediately press and hold the Option key.

Music displays a dialog, as in Figure 73.

Figure 73: This dialog lets you either create a new library or choose
an existing one.

2. Click the Create Library button, enter a name for the library, and
then click Save. The name you enter will be applied to a folder.

Music opens with that new empty library. You can add any of your
music files to it and make playlists, as you can with your main library.
(To populate the new library, open your original library’s Music Media
folder, find what you want to add, and then drag it to the Music win-
dow.) You can make several libraries like this.

When you create a new library, the option in the Music app’s General
preferences to Sync Library is disabled, and this setting is specific to

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each library you create. This means that have one Music library that
syncs your library to the cloud, and another that doesn’t. This allows
you notably to maintain one library of your own music and another of
Apple Music tracks, something that I do to not mix all my music with a
library that I use on mobile devices.

To switch back to the original library, quit Music, launch the app while
holding down the Option key, then click the Choose Library button and
select the folder for the main library.

Share Your Music and TV Libraries

over a Network
You can use a feature built into Catalina and later called Media Sharing
to share your Music and TV libraries over a local network in your
home, your dorm, or your office. When you activate this, anyone on
your local network can browse and play music from your library, as
well as movies and TV shows in your TV app.

Media Sharing lets your family members not only play your media, but
also copy your files to their libraries. If you buy new music, or rip a
new CD, others in your family can copy it to their libraries easily.
Media Sharing works not just on computers running Music (and TV),
but also with iOS/iPadOS devices and Apple TVs that are on the same
local network.

To activate Media Sharing, go to System Settings > General > Sharing

(Ventura) or System Preferences > Sharing (Monterey or earlier),
enable Media Sharing, then check Home Sharing (Figure 74).

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 Figure 74: Turn on Home Sharing in System Settings (shown here)
or System Preferences.

With Home Sharing, people can share your music on devices signed in
with the same Apple ID as you are. If you check “Share media with
guests,” you can allow anyone to access your Music library. Click
Options to require a password, and to limit what you share to selected
playlists.

Note: While you can use Media Sharing to share your Music library,
some other devices can also provide access to media files using a
similar technology. For example, some network-attached storage
(NAS) devices have an “iTunes Server” feature that allow you to place
music on the device and then access it like a shared library.

Mount a Shared Music or TV Library

To view a shared Music library on your local network, click Library in
the sidebar and select the name of the library you want to load (Fig-
ure 75).

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 Figure 75: The names of any shared libraries that Music has spotted
on your network appear in the Library section of the sidebar. Dark
Star is my iMac, and NAS is a library on a network-attached storage
device.

A shared library may take a while to load if it’s large and if your home
network isn’t speedy. It can notably take a long time for album artwork
to appear if you load a large library. When it’s loaded, you access its
contents via the Music app’s sidebar. If you click the library’s name in
the sidebar, you can switch back to your library.

Playing content is the same as from your own library. You can even
drag music from a shared library to your Playing Next queue. However,
if you load a shared library that contains Apple Music tracks on a
computer that is not subscribed to Apple Music, you will not see the
Apple Music content.

You can also access a Media Sharing library on a local Apple TV or

iOS/iPadOS device:

• Apple TV: On a second-, third-, or fourth-generation Apple TV, go

to Settings > Users and Accounts > Home Sharing and sign in using
the same Apple ID that your Mac is using for Home Sharing. You
can now play media from the shared library using the Computers
app.

• iOS/iPadOS device: Go to Settings > Music, or go to Settings >

TV, and sign in to Home Sharing at the bottom of either screen. You
can now play music and videos from the Music or TV app by access-
ing Home Sharing on these apps’ main screens.
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 Note: If you have trouble loading a shared library, it could be a
firewall issue. Apple has a technical note that explains how to get
around this problem.

Copy Media from One Music Library to

Another
Although you can transfer files over a network and add them to the
Music or TV app manually, Home Sharing is an easy way to copy
content across Macs or PCs in your home.

Set up Home Sharing, and load the shared library by choosing it in the
Library section of the sidebar. (If you need help, read Share Your
Music and TV Libraries over a Network and Mount a Shared Music or
TV Library, both earlier in this chapter).

Select a view in the sidebar, such as Albums, Artists, or Genres, in

Music; or Movies, TV Shows, or Home Videos, in the TV app. You’ll see
a pop-up menu and two buttons (Figure 76) in the bottom of the
window.

Figure 76: When you connect a Home Sharing library, the Music or
TV app window adds this bar at the bottom. You can use it to choose
what to display, and to perform actions on the files in the shared
library.

Let’s consider each option:

• Pop-up menu: Choose what type of content to display—either All

Items or Items Not in My Library. With the latter, you can see
what’s new or what you don’t have in your library, compared with
the library you’re sharing.

• Import button: You can import any item(s) by selecting them and
clicking Import. Music or TV copies them over the network and
adds them to your library. You can select Recently Added in the
sidebar, for example, to see new music in the Home Sharing library.

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• Set up automatic transfers: The real advantage to Home Shar-
ing, however, lies behind the Settings button. You can set your Mac
to automatically transfer music, movies, and TV shows, and this
content is placed in the appropriate app’s library. However, there’s a
hitch: automatic transfers apply only to iTunes Store content. If the
library’s owner buys a movie or an album from Apple, those items
will transfer. But if they rip a CD or add music from another music
vendor, that content will not transfer, though you can import it
manually. So it’s probably just as easy to turn on automatic down-
loads for this content on each computer (see Automatically Down-
load Purchases to the Music App to find out how to turn on auto-
matic downloads from the iTunes Store).

Back Up Your Media Files

No matter how you add content to your media library—whether you rip
your own CDs and DVDs or buy music and videos from the iTunes
Store or from other vendors—this content is as ephemeral as all digital
files. If you don’t back it up regularly, there’s a chance that you’ll lose
it. While this is less of a problem for CDs you’ve ripped, since you can
always rip them again, think of the amount of time you’d have to spend
to re-rip and re-tag your CDs. Backing up media files is as important as
backing up all the other files you have on your computer.

You can use any of a number of backup apps to back up your data
locally to an external disk or DVDs. On a Mac, you can use Time
Machine, which is a feature of macOS.

However, all manner of catastrophes can happen, so a local backup

may not be enough. If you live in California or Japan, you know that
the ground moves occasionally. Excessive rain may flood your home.
And in the U.S. state of Kansas, your computer could be taken to Oz
without warning. For these reasons, you should consider keeping a
backup of your media collection—if it’s as important to you as mine is
to me—in an offsite location. And I don’t mean in the house next door,
but, perhaps, at a friend’s or relative’s house a fair distance away, or in
a safe deposit box in a bank. You can rotate the backups regularly—

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every few months, for example, if you have to mail the hard disks, or
monthly, if it’s nearby—so you can always have a backup that’s more-
or-less up to date.

In any case, I urge you to back up your media library regularly. While
you can re-download some of your purchased content from the iTunes
Store, if, like me, you have spent a lot of time ripping and tagging CDs,
losing those files would be terrible.

Also, if you have the bandwidth, consider an online backup service

such as Backblaze.
I recommend that you read Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Backing Up
Your Mac for information about making effective backups.

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 Listen to Audiobooks
The Books app lets you listen to audiobooks, whether you’ve purchased
them from the Books Store or from Audible, or ripped your own
audiobook CDs. (See How to Rip an Audiobook CD for special infor-
mation about ripping audiobook CDs.)

Using the Books App for Ebooks

I don’t discuss reading ebooks in the Books app because this process
is fairly simple. The Book Store works like Apple’s other content
stores, the Library works like the library in the Music or TV app, and
Collections are like playlists.

Play Audiobooks
Listening to an audiobook is similar to listening to music, with two
small differences. The first is that when you listen to an audiobook, you
want to pick it up again later where you last paused. The Books app
manages this, so if you listen to a chapter on your Mac, you can come
back the next day and immediately begin with the next chapter. It
stores your precise location, so you can stop and restart your audio-
book at any time.

Not only does Books remember where you stopped listening to an

audiobook, but it also syncs this location to your mobile device. And
when you listen on a mobile device, Music finds the last location there
and syncs it back as well. So you can listen to an audiobook on an
iPhone, then sync and pick up at your last location on your computer.
Sync again before you go out, and you can continue on your iPhone.

Another specific feature of audiobooks is that many of them are chap-

tered, and when you play a chaptered audiobook, a Chapters menu
appears at the far right of the Books app header. If you click the Table
of Contents icon (see Figure 77), you can view your location in
the book, and click a chapter to start playing at that location. The

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header bar shows the title and author of the book you’re listening to,
and its chapter, and, if you hover your pointer over that area, the
amount of time elapsed and remaining in the current chapter.

Figure 77: The Chapters menu in the Books app lets you choose a
location in an audiobook.

Since Books stores your location when you stop listening to audio-
books, you may not use the Chapters menu often. It would be practical
for, say, a book of essays or short stories, but in my experience, very
few audiobooks have named chapters that help you navigate efficiently.

Note: The first time you play an audiobook from Audible, the Books
app asks you to authorize it by entering your Audible username and
password. If it doesn’t, you can authorize the app by choosing Ac-
count > Authorizations > Authorize This Computer, then follow the
instructions. And you may need to sign into your iTunes Store ac-
count in the Books app. You can manage your iTunes Store authoriza-
tion from the Account > Authorizations submenu.

Playback Options
The Books app header has play controls, similar to the Music app,
where you can play and pause your audio. But rather than have icons

189
to skip tracks, the Books app has controls that allow you to skip for-
ward or back 15 seconds (Figure 78).

Figure 78: The play controls for audiobooks in the Books app.

Additional controls are available from the Controls menu:

• Change playback speed: You can choose Controls > Playback

Speed to change the speed of your audiobooks. On this submenu,
you can choose 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, or 2x, where x is the normal
speed at which the book is narrated. I find that some audiobooks
are narrated too slowly and sound artificial; I often set my playback
to 1.25x. But in recent years, audiobook narrators have increased
their speed overall, so it’s more common that, with current books,
the speed is fine.

• Set a sleep timer: If you choose Controls > Sleep Timer, you can
tell Books to stop playing when the current chapter ends, or in a
range of durations from 5 minutes to 1 hour.

If you hover your pointer over the play area, just to the right of the
name of the current section or chapter of your book, then click the
More icon, you’ll see some playback options in a contextual menu:

• Skip Chapters: Choose Next Track to skip ahead to the beginning

of the next chapter, or Previous Track to go back to the beginning of
the current chapter, or to the beginning of the previous chapter, if
you’re already at the beginning of a chapter.

• Add audiobooks to collections: The Add to Collection sub-

menu lets you add a book to a collection. Collections are like
playlists, but you use them more to organize books than to play
them. You create collections by choosing File > New Collection.

• Share an audiobook: You can send an email or iMessage to a

friend, telling them about the book you’re listening to.

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Manage an Audiobook Library
As mentioned above, you can use audiobooks that you purchase from
Apple’s Books Store or from Audible, or books that you rip from CDs.
If you purchase books from Apple, they’re automatically added to your
library. If you purchase and download books from Audible, or rip your
own, click Audiobooks in the sidebar of the Books app, then click the
Library tab, then drag the files to the right-hand section of the window.

If you have a lot of audiobooks, you may run into problems, because
the Books app stores these files in a somewhat hidden location within
your user folder. If you have a large audiobook library, you may want
to store the books on an external drive (see Where Are All Those
Files?). Unlike with the Music and TV apps, you cannot choose a
different location to store your books, so the only way to do this is to
manually move them to a different location.

To do this, select an audiobook and drag it to your desktop, or to a

folder in the Finder. This makes a copy of the book. Move it where you
want to store it, then delete the book in the Books app: select a book,
press Delete, and confirm that you want to delete the book.

If you later want to listen to a book that’s not in the library, just add it
as described above. And remember that you can re-download your
purchases from the Books store (if you’re signed in to your iTunes
Store account in the Books app, you’ll see all your previous purchases),
and Audible lets you redownload purchases from their website.

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 Watch Movies and TV
Shows in the TV App
The TV app manages movies, TV shows, and home movies, and corre-
sponds to the Movies and TV apps on iOS/iPadOS and on the Apple
TV. You can use it to buy and rent movies and TV shows, and view
video content from your own library.

For many people, the TV app will be nothing more than a conduit to
access videos streamed from different services: Apple’s iTunes Store
offerings, of course, Apple TV+, but also a number of channels accessi-
ble via the TV app, such as HBO, Showtime, and Starz. The comparable
TV app on the Apple TV offers more content, through apps that can be
downloaded to that device.

Browse Content in the TV App

The TV app has four sections at the top of its sidebar: Home, Apple
TV+, MLS Season Pass, and Store. Below these sections is your Li-
brary, which stores content that you own or have rented (Figure 79).

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 Figure 79: The Home section of the TV app.

Here is what these tabs present:

• Home: This tab shows a poster frame of a recent or upcoming

Apple TV+ films or series, along with an Up Next list below it,
showing content that you have added to this list, such as films you
want to watch. When you add a series to the Up Next list it shows
the latest episode that you have not yet watched.

• TV+: This tab gives you quick access to the original content avail-
able from Apple TV+.

• MLS Season Pass: This section shows upcoming soccer matches.

Some are free, but most are only available to subscribers. You can
see past games and follow your favorite teams. The MSL Season
Pass costs $14.99 per month, or $99 for the entire season.

• Store: Here you can find movies and TV shows available to pur-
chase or rent from Apple’s offering, or watch on Apple TV+, as well
as on channels that you can subscribe to.

• Library: This section lets you access movies and TV shows you
have purchased from Apple, or movies that you have added to your

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 library manually. The Library view contains several entries that let
you access your library by type of content, genre, and in playlists
(Figure 80).

Figure 80: Movies in my library.

You can browse your library using the sidebar: you can see recently
added items, movies, TV shows, and items in 4K HDR, rentals, home
videos, and downloaded items, which includes videos that you have
added to your library manually.

The TV app has the Filter icon and Sort icon, which I dis-
cussed in Search Your Library with the Filter Field and in the View
Your Music Library section about the Music app. They are visible in all
library views except Recently Added.

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 About Apple TV+ and Subscriptions
Apple TV+ costs $9.99 a month, or $99 annually (or local equiva-
lents). Apple also offers Apple One subscription bundles. The three
tiers available all include Apple Music and Apple TV+, along with
other services.

Add Videos to Your TV Library

In addition to videos that you purchase from the iTunes Store or the
TV app, you can add your own videos to your library. These may be
videos that you have ripped from DVDs or Blu-rays, videos that you
have purchased without DRM, or videos that you have filmed yourself.
These must be files that have .mp4, .m4v, or .mov extensions. Ripping
DVDs is not complicated, though it may be illegal in your country, and
it requires third-party software.

Tip: One of the best programs to use is the free HandBrake, which
offers several options for picking which part of a DVD you rip. (Take
Control of Apple TV has directions for ripping a DVD with HandBrake.)

You can also rip Blu-ray discs, if you have an external Blu-ray drive
connected to your Mac. See this article by Rob Griffiths, Revisiting
ripping Blu-ray discs.

To add videos to your TV library, drag them from the Finder to the
Library section of the sidebar. The TV app will put all such videos into
the Home Videos section, but you can change this by adjusting the
videos’ tags.

Click Home Videos in the sidebar, then click a video to select it and
press ⌘-I. You see an info dialog, similar to that in the Music app
(Figure 81).

195
 Figure 81: You can edit tags for your videos in this window.

As you can see above, the fields in this dialog are labeled with terms
such as title and director. Depending on how you created or down-
loaded our video, it may contain some metadata, or none at all. So fill
in the fields for title, director if you like, choose a genre, and add a year
if you want. In the Artwork tab, you can drag a cover or poster image
for your video.

One important change to make is in the Options tab. From the Media
Kind menu, choose Movie, if you want the TV app to group your video
in the Movies library; choose TV Show, if you want it to be grouped
with other TV shows; or leave it as Home Video, if it is that type of
video. Click OK to save any changes you’ve made in the info dialog.

For more information about tagging files, see Tag Your Music Files.
While this discusses tagging music files in the Music app, the proce-
dure is similar; the names of some of the tags are different.

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View Videos in the TV App
To view a video in your library, hover your pointer over its artwork and
click the Play button. The video starts playing full screen on your
Mac. Playback controls are the same as I described earlier in Watch
Music Videos. You can pause your video at any time, and if you stop
watching, when you return to a video it will pick up where you last
paused.

You can view your video in a standard window by choosing View > Exit
Full Screen or return to full screen from a standard window by choos-
ing View > Enter Full Screen (the keyboard shortcut for both of these is
⌘-Control-F). And you can use picture-in-picture mode to shrink your
video to a thumbnail by moving your pointer over the window to
display the play controls at the bottom of the window and clicking the
Picture in Picture icon. Clicking the similar icon on the minimized
video returns it to full size.

Organize Videos in the TV App

As you grow your library, you may want to organize your movies and
TV shows. The TV app’s sidebar shows genres, so if you apply the
appropriate tags to your files, you’ll be able to find them by clicking
one of the genres in the sidebar.

You can also create playlists, both regular playlists where you add
items manually, or smart playlists, which use tags and other informa-
tion about the videos to group them. The process is similar to that of
creating playlists in the Music app; see Organize Your Music and
Create Playlists for more on creating playlists.

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 Listen to and Watch
Podcasts
Like music, books, and TV, podcasts have their own eponymous app.
The Podcasts app is similar to that on iOS/iPadOS and on Apple TV,
and you can use it to listen to individual podcast episodes and follow
your favorite podcasts. However, you no longer have direct access to
podcast files, so if you kept an archive of your favorites, you’ll need to
rethink your strategy.

Find Podcasts
To find podcasts to listen to, click Browse in the sidebar. You’ll see an
interface similar to that of the iTunes Store, with some featured pod-
casts at the top of the window, and other popular podcasts below.
Scroll down to the Categories section, and click a category to see what’s
available. Or use the search field to find podcasts that match specific
keywords.

You can click Listen Now in the sidebar to see your Up Next queue—
new episodes of podcasts that you follow—along with radio shows from
Apple Music, which you can follow in the Podcasts app, if you want to
keep up to date on your favorite shows.

If aren’t sure what to try, check out The Next Track, shown in Figure
82, a podcast about music and technology. My co-host Doug Adams
and I discuss various types of music, audio equipment, Apple’s media
apps, and more.

To view more information about the podcast, click its title or thumb-
nail.

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 Figure 82: Find podcasts to listen to in the Podcasts app.

To stream an episode and listen to it immediately, hover your pointer

over an episode and click the Play icon that displays to the left of its
name. If you click the Info icon on the right side of the app header,
you’ll see show notes for the podcast; and if you click the Playing Next
icon next to that, you’ll see what’s coming up in your podcast
queue (if anything).

If want to listen to a podcast regularly, you can simplify the download

process by following it. Click the Follow button, and the Pod-
casts app will download the latest episode. To add other episodes to
your library, hover your pointer over an episode and click the Down-
load icon.

If you click See All, you’ll see all available episodes of the podcast.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to add all episodes of a podcast to your
library; you’ll need to click the Download icon for each one.

The Podcasts app adds new episodes of your followed podcasts to your
library when they are published. You can have Podcasts download
these episodes automatically if you like. Go to Podcasts > Settings/
Preferences > General and choose a number of episodes to download,

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or a time period (last 24 hours, last 7 days, and so on) for automatic
downloads.

Following to a Podcast That’s Not in the iTunes Store

Some podcasters don’t list their shows in the iTunes Store (though
not many; there’s little point in not being listed there). You can still
have Podcasts follow such podcasts, though, as long as you can find a
URL on the podcast’s website. Find it, copy it, and then, in Podcasts,
choose File > Add a Show by URL. Paste the URL and click OK.
Podcasts checks if the podcast is available, and, if so, adds it to your
library. You can now listen to it as you would any other podcast.
There is an exception to this. Spotify has started to offer exclusive
podcasts, available only on their platform. Many podcasters and
listeners feel, however, that if it’s behind a paywall, it’s not really a
podcast.

After you’ve followed a few podcasts, click Listen Now in the sidebar to
see all your podcasts, and which ones have new episodes. Or click
Latest Episodes to see the most recent episodes.

You can also click Shows to see all the podcasts you’ve followed,
Episodes to see upcoming episodes in a list, and Downloaded to see
which episodes you have on your Mac.

Podcast Subscriptions
In June 2021, Apple launched podcast subscriptions. If you’re a long-
time podcast listener, you may find this confusing, because you used to
subscribe to podcasts in order to get new episodes automatically. For
this reason, Apple changed the term they use in the Podcasts app from
“Subscribe” to “Follow.” I’ve reflected that change in this book.

There are now three ways to get podcasts from Apple Podcasts:

• Free podcasts are, well, free, the way podcasts have been for nearly
20 years.

• Freemium podcasts are free, but if you pay a subscription fee, you
get extra content.
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• Paid podcasts are, as you would expect, available only with a paid
subscription. Some of these subscriptions may be for channels,
which are groups of podcasts from the same producer or podcast
network.

Podcasts that offer freemium or paid options will have either Subscribe
or Try Free buttons (the latter gives you a free trial).

Shameless Plug
If you’re looking for interesting podcasts on a variety of topics, you
can check out some of my podcasts; they’re all free:
✦ The Next Track, a podcast about how people listen to music
today, with Doug Adams and me (thenexttrack.com)
✦ PhotoActive, a podcast about photography and technology, which
I co-host with fellow Take Control author Jeff Carlson (photoac-
tive.co)
✦ The Zen of Everything, a zen take on life, love, laughter, and
everything else, with Jundo Cohen and me (zen-of-everything.com)
✦ Write Now with Scrivener, a podcast about how authors use
Scrivener, a long-form writing app, to create their works. (https://
podcast.scrivenerapp.com)
You can follow each of above podcasts on their websites, using Apple
Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening!

Watch Video Podcasts

Most podcasts are audio only, but there are a fair number of video
podcasts. Everything I explain above about finding podcasts, and all of
the management and sync features I cover below, work exactly the
same for both audio and video podcasts. The only difference is in the
way you consume them.

When you play a video podcast, the Podcasts app window changes to a
video playback window, and you can use controls such as a Play/Pause
icon and icons to skip ahead or back. If you click the Close icon on
the video window, the video minimizes to a tiny thumbnail next to the
play controls in the Podcasts app header, as in Figure 83. The podcast

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still plays—and, if you look closely, you can see the video—and contin-
ues to do so until you click the Pause icon.

Figure 83: A video podcast minimized. The podcast is still playing,

and you can listen to its audio, buts its video is the small thumbnail
in the app header.

To see the video full size again, click the video thumbnail in the app
header.

Manage Podcasts
If you listen to podcasts on just one Mac, or if you listen on one Mac
but sync to an iPod (classic, shuffle, or nano) that doesn’t use iOS, you
can sync podcast episodes to your mobile device through the Finder.
See Sync Media to Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod.

However, if you listen to podcasts on iOS/iPadOS devices or an Apple

TV, it’s best to have your content match on all your devices. To do this,
go to Podcasts > Settings/Preferences > General, then select Sync
Library.

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Podcasts can automatically download new episodes. You can activate
this in Settings/Preferences > General by choosing a number of
episodes to download, or a time period (last 24 hours, last 7 days, and
so on) for automatic downloads.

Choose Settings for a Podcast

In most cases, you won’t need to change anything about how the
Podcasts app handles your podcasts. But there are some settings
available for each individual podcast, mostly relating to how they are
downloaded and the order in which they are played. To change the
settings for just one podcast, Click Shows in the sidebar, then click a
podcast. Click the Follow button, then click the More icon
and choose Settings to view the Settings dialog (Figure 84). (You’ll
have to scroll down in the dialog to see all the options.)

Figure 84: Some of the settings you can change for a podcast.

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Here’s what these settings let you choose:

• Following: This toggle switch is On when you’ve followed a pod-

cast. To unfollow, but keep all the episodes you’ve downloaded, click
to toggle it Off. (You can also unfollow from a podcast by clicking
the More icon when viewing a podcast and choosing Unfollow.)

• Episode Order: You can choose to sort the episodes with newest
or oldest on top.

• Episode Display: You can choose to have Podcasts hide played

episodes.

• Automatic Downloads: Enable this to have Podcasts download

new episodes automatically. When you enable automatic down-
loads, you choose how many episodes get downloaded from the
menu: none (Off), the most recent, the 2, 3, 5, or 10 most recent, or
those in the last day, week, two weeks, the last month, or all new
episodes.

• Remove Played Episodes: You can choose to have Podcasts

delete podcast episodes that you’ve listened to 24 hours after
they’ve been played. You can turn this setting On or Off.

Once you’ve made your choices, click OK to save them and close the
Podcast Settings dialog. The Podcasts app now downloads, displays,
plays, and removes episodes based on your choices.

Note: If you want to manually check for new podcast episodes,

choose File > Refresh, or press ⌘-R.

Saving Individual Podcast Episodes

If you want to save podcast episodes, view a podcast in Shows, then
Control-click the episode you want to save and choose Save Episode.
Podcast episodes are stored on your startup disk, so if that disk isn’t
very large, you may not have a lot of room to maintain an archive.

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Create Podcast Stations
Podcast stations, listed under Stations in the sidebar, are basically
podcast playlists with a fancy name. By default, there is a Most Recent
podcast station that shows the most recent episode—only one—from
each podcast in your library. But you can tweak this station, and you
can create your own.

One useful way to use stations is to group different types of podcasts.

For example, you might make one for news, another for tech topics,
another for fun, and one more for learning. Or, you could create a
separate station for video podcasts, and, perhaps one for podcasts that
your kids can listen to from an iOS/iPadOS device in a car. (Podcast
stations don’t sync to non-iOS iPods.)

To set up your own station:

1. Choose File > New Station. Enter a name for your station, then click
Save.

2. A dialog displays with the name of your station and a number of

settings. In the Play section, choose whether you want Manual Show
Order, Newest to Oldest, Oldest to Newest, Manual, or Show Title.
(Manual Show Order is in order by show; Manual lets you manually
rearrange episodes.)

3. If you want to play episodes from the same podcast together, toggle
on Group by Show.

4. In Include, choose how many episodes you want your station to

retain: Most Recent, 2, 3, 5, or 10 episodes, or all episodes.

5. In Media Type, choose All, Audio, or Video.

6. By default, Hide Played Episodes is toggled on, but you may want to
re-listen to some of your podcast episodes; if so, toggle this off.

7. In the Podcasts section, choose the podcasts to include in your

station. You can either toggle All Podcasts, or check each podcast
you want to include.

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Click Done, and your new station appears at the top of the stations list.

Sync Podcasts
If you want to sync podcasts to an iPod that doesn’t run iOS, such as a
classic, shuffle, or nano, you must sync them via your Mac—flip ahead
to Sync Media to Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod.

Otherwise, you can sync podcasts with an iOS/iPadOS device via the
cloud. To keep the Podcasts app on your Mac in sync with the Pod-
casts app on your iOS/iPadOS device, go to Podcasts > Settings/
Preferences > General, and select Sync Library. When you do this, all
your podcast follows and play information will be stored in the cloud,
and you’ll be able to access the same podcasts and episodes on any of
your devices. Make sure that, on your iOS/iPadOS device, you go to
Settings > Podcasts, and toggle Sync Library on.

Use a Different Podcast App

While Apple’s Podcasts app is excellent, many people may prefer
using a different app to listen to podcasts. If you listen on your Mac,
then it makes sense to use Apple Podcasts, but if you listen to pod-
casts only on an iPhone or iPad, there are a number of excellent apps
worth checking out.
My preferred podcast app is Overcast, which I originally adopted for
its Smart Speed setting which reduces silences in podcasts. Com-
bined with its excellent algorithm for speeding up podcasts, and its
Voice Boost feature that enhances the frequencies of the human
voice, I find Overcast to be a great way to listen to podcasts.
Castro and PocketCasts are also excellent podcast apps, so there is
no shortage of options if you choose to replace Apple’s native solu-
tion.

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 Sync Media to Your
iPhone, iPad, or iPod
Since iTunes was split into four apps, if you want to sync media files, or
other information, to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, you use the Finder to do
this. It makes more sense to have syncing centralized than to have any
or all of Apple’s media apps control the process.

Syncing offers many options. I want to point out some of the basics,
and explain how you can put your favorite media files on your mobile
device. As with the rest of this book, my focus here is music, because
music syncing is so granular, though I mention other media kinds.
Once you grasp the concepts, it’s simple to sync your media to your
mobile device exactly the way you want to.

What to Sync to Your Mobile Device

Before thinking about what you want to sync, take a minute to consider
what you can’t sync through the Finder:

• If you’ve turned on Sync Library, you no longer copy music from

your Mac.

• It’s the same with iCloud Photos—if you’ve turned it on, you no
longer sync photos through your Mac.

• If you’ve set up Podcasts to sync your podcast follows to the cloud,

then you also don’t sync them to your device.

• If you’ve turned on iCloud sync for calendars or contacts, you can’t

sync that data through the Finder.

Even for items that you can sync, you may wish to transfer them in
some other way. For example, on an iPhone, you may prefer to down-
load iTunes Store purchases from the cloud and podcasts can all come
over the air. However, you’ll be able to add new content to the device
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only when it has an internet connection. In the case of a cellular
connection, if your data plan is limited or the connection is slow, you
may find that you can’t get the items you want when you need them.
And, of course, cellular works only for cellular devices, such as an
iPhone or an iPad with cellular access.

Another consideration about what to sync has to do with your device’s

capacity for holding media:

• Your mobile device has the capacity to hold all your

media: In this case, sync it all; it’ll be much easier for you to not
worry about choosing specific items. This may be the case if you
have a 160 GB iPod classic, for example (may it rest in peace), or if
you have a 256 GB iPhone with enough space for all your music, but
also have some video content.

Unless you really don’t want your videos on the device, then don’t
worry, sync everything and be happy.

• Your mobile device doesn’t have space for all your media:
In this common situation, you need to choose what to sync. Your
choice isn’t permanent; you can change what you sync every week,
or even every day. You can have certain types of items sync dynami-
cally: for example, you can sync only unwatched TV shows or
unplayed podcasts, or only a certain number of them. In this way,
your device’s content will change over time, constantly refreshing.
You can also use smart playlists to change the music that you sync:
for example, you can sync only music you haven’t listened to recent-
ly, or only music you’ve bought or added to your Apple Music
library in the last few months.

Many people fall into the second camp, but generally because of the
videos in their libraries, not audio. In that situation, you may want to
sync all your music, and pay more attention to choosing which, if any,
videos you sync to your device.

This said, if you have the bandwidth, and an appropriate cellular plan
for when you’re on the go, I recommend using the cloud in lieu of
syncing as much as possible. You can get any videos you’ve purchased

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or rented from the iTunes Store in the TV app on your iOS/iPadOS
device. And you can sync your podcast follows to iCloud. So perhaps
you don’t even need to sync your devices anymore…

Naturally, if you still use a non-iOS iPod, then syncing is your only
option.

Why Bother to Sync Your Device?

Back in 2010 when I wrote the first version of this book, it was called
Take Control of iTunes: the FAQ and the cloud was something that
businesses used, but individuals had no idea of the concept of storing
things in the cloud. The cloud is really just someone else's computer;
in this case, we're talking about Apple’s iCloud, which the company
uses to provide seamless experiences across devices. At that time,
the only way to get music and other content onto an iPod or iOS
device was by connecting it to a computer.
Things have changed a lot since then, and most people don’t even
think about syncing any more. Of all the reader questions I get related
to this book, none are about syncing. I have a feeling that the per-
centage of people who sync devices with a cable is in the single digits.
Since most people have decent internet bandwidth, it's easy enough
to download items from the cloud to a device. You may not have that
bandwidth all the time, but you can download content when you're at
home or at work, then, when you're traveling, be able to listen to
your music, podcasts, and other media.
I suspected very few people use old-fashioned iPods anymore either.
Those devices are the only ones that need to be synced with a cable.
So, most people won't need to read this chapter. If you are one of
the few people who syncs a device, nothing has changed since Apple
split iTunes and moved syncing to the Finder.

Connect Your Mobile Device to Your

Mac
To sync your mobile device, you must connect your it to your Mac with
a USB cable. You can continue to connect with USB, or if you’re sync-

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ing an iOS/iPadOS device, you can set up a Wi-Fi connection (see the
sidebar Wi-Fi or USB Cable?, ahead).

Once you’ve made the connection, select your device in the Finder
sidebar. The first time you connect your device to your Mac, you must
trust the device. You’ll see a button labeled Trust in the Finder win-
dow. Click this button, then, on your device, click Trust in the dialog
that displays. Confirm this by entering your passcode.

Unlike in iTunes previously, where you had a number of entries in the

sidebar when you connected an iOS/iPadOS device or iPod, all your
sync settings are accessible from the main section of the Finder win-
dow. You see a number of tabs in the sync window header, such as
General, Music, Movies, and more. Depending on your device, you may
not see all the tabs that are visible in Figure 85 below.

Figure 85: Sync settings for mobile devices are accessible in the
Finder.

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 Wi-Fi or USB Cable?
When you sync through your Mac, you can connect your mobile
device to your computer with either a USB cable or a Wi-Fi connec-
tion. Which is better? If you have a lot to sync, use a USB cable.
Throughput is much faster, and your device charges while it syncs.
But if you’re just updating a few playlists, or copying a few new songs
and apps, then Wi-Fi syncing is fine.
To turn on Wi-Fi syncing, select your device in the Finder sidebar,
then click the General tab. Scroll down to the Options section and
select “Show this device when on Wi-Fi.”
With Wi-Fi syncing on, you need not physically connect the device to
your computer to sync it, though it must be on the same Wi-Fi
network as the computer. The device will sync automatically, once a
day, when it is connected to a power source, such as a charger. To
sync it manually, just select it in the Finder sidebar and click Sync.

Sync Your Content

You can sync content in several ways. Let’s look at these choices
closely, since it is important that you pick the appropriate technique
for your requirements:

• Drag media to your mobile device: With this simple option,

you drag songs, videos, playlists, and so on to your device. For
devices with limited space, such as an iPod shuffle, this works
nicely. See Drag Media to Your Mobile Device, ahead.

Note: A downside to dragging media to your mobile device is that

play counts and last played dates don’t sync back to your computer,
so you won’t be able to use this metadata to generate smart playlists.

• Pick media automatically: This method lets you choose your

media somewhat more generally, so you don’t need to fuss with
manually selecting checkboxes or with finding items in order to
drag them over. In any case, you must use this method if you want

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 to transfer apps, contacts, calendars, or photos. Read Select Media
Automatically, ahead.

Drag Media to Your Mobile Device

To start using this method, select your device in the Finder, click the
General button, scroll down and select “Manually manage music,
movies, and TV shows,” then click Apply at the bottom of the window.
Once you’ve selected this option, music and videos will copy to your
device only if you drag them to the device.

But, this complicates syncing. I said above that you sync through the
Finder, but if you want to manually manage your media, then you have
to revert to the Music and TV apps to copy content.

To add music, movies, or TV shows to your mobile device:

1. Launch the Music or TV app. Select your device in that app’s side-
bar. You’ll see a simple window showing any content already on the
device (Figure 86).

Figure 86: The Music app showing the contents of my iPod touch.

2. Find content in your libraries that you want to copy: you may access
this content via one of the sidebar views, or in a playlist. Select the
songs or videos and drag them on your device in the app’s sidebar.

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 They will start copying. You can copy songs, albums, or playlists
from the Music app, and you can only copy music that is physically
on your Mac, not in the cloud. But you cannot copy Apple Music
tracks to your device. And you can copy movies or TV shows that
you have ripped and stored in the TV app, but you cannot copy
movies or TV shows you have purchased or rented from the iTunes
Store.

3. When you’ve finished adding content, you can disconnect your

device.

To delete items, select your device in the Music or TV app, then select
any content you want to delete and press Delete. This removes the
deleted item(s) from your device, but does not delete them from your
Music or TV library.

Select Media Automatically

It can be time-consuming to manually add media files to your mobile
device, so it’s best to let your Mac do it automatically. To begin, select
your device in the Finder, as discussed in Connect Your Mobile Device
to Your Mac, earlier. Then follow the steps below for each type of
media you want to sync.

Music
Let’s begin by looking at how you sync music.

Note: If you have turned on Sync Library on your iOS/iPadOS device,

you can’t sync music from the Music app.

Click Music in the Finder sync pane, and then select the “Sync Music
onto device” checkbox. Now select a radio button to sync your “Entire
music library” or “Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres”
(Figure 87).

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 Figure 87: If you click Music, you can pick which music syncs
automatically.

You can click the various tabs—Artists, Albums, Genres, and Playlists—
then select the items you want to sync.

I find it useful to have special playlists in my library for each mobile

device. If you have multiple devices, as I do, you can create unique
playlists for each one.

Narrowing Your Choices with a Search

You can narrow down which items display on the Music pane in the
Artists, Albums, Genres, and Playlists lists by typing text in the
Search box below the tab bar.
This searching technique works in a similar manner in other panes
where you select items to sync.

Other Content
The options for each of these content types are quite similar. In each
case you can just sync everything or you can sync only a selection.

For example, on the Podcasts pane, you can sync all unplayed
episodes, or, from the “Automatically copy” pop-up menu, you can
choose to sync the 5 most recent unplayed episodes, 10 least recent

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episodes, and so on. Since I’ve chosen “all unplayed” episodes in
Figure 88, I can’t pick individual episodes to sync. If I deselect the
“Automatically copy” checkbox, I can select individual episodes to sync
by selecting a podcast name in the Podcasts list at the left and then
checking the checkboxes for individual episodes on the right.

Figure 88: Here are the options for syncing audiobooks. The inter-
face is similar for movies, TV shows, podcasts, and books.

Squeeze as Much Music as Possible on

Your Mobile Device
With a mobile device selected in the Finder, and the General tab
selected, (Figure 89), you see a checkbox labeled “Convert higher bit
rate songs to.”

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 Figure 89: When you connect your mobile device, an option to
convert music files to a lower bit rate appears in the Options section
of the General pane.

When you select this box and choose a bit rate, you can save space on
the device by converting copies of music files that are above the target
bit rate to this lower rate while syncing. You can choose 128, 192, or
256 kbps. (Music from the iTunes Store is 256 kbps, so this option lets
you put up to twice as much of that music on your device.) Use 256
kbps if the tracks in Music are in Apple Lossless format, for example,
and you want to still have high-quality files on your device. The other
bit rates give you more music at lower quality.

Let the Finder Fill Your Mobile Device

In the Music pane for a selected device, when you select the “Sync
Music” checkbox and pick the “Selected playlists, artists, albums, and
genres” radio button, another checkbox appears: “Automatically fill
free space with songs.” Enable this checkbox, and, after the Finder has
synced everything you chose, it fills the remaining space on the device
with music. The Finder chooses songs at random, but it seems to prefer
music with high play counts or high ratings.

You can also access more granular autofill settings in the Music app.
Click your device in the sidebar, then, at the bottom of the window, in
the Autofill section, click Settings (Figure 90).

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 Figure 90: Autofill settings available from within the Music app.

You can choose to replace all items, choose items at random, and
choose higher rated items more often. You can also choose how much
free space to retain on the device. (If it’s not an old-fashioned iPod, you
should always leave a couple of gigabytes free, because the operating
system requires some free space to function correctly.) Click OK, then
click Autofill, and Music syncs files to your device according to these
settings.

Sync Multiple Mobile Devices with the

Same Computer
Apple has never really come up with a solution for families sharing a
single computer. Here are some ideas:

• One solution is to create two (or more) libraries, as I explain in

Create More than One Music Library on Your Mac. If each person
wants to add the same tracks to their library, the task will have to be
done once per library; however, each person can launch Music and
choose their library, and then sync their device. If each person
wants to sync manually, this solution will do the job.

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• Another fairly simple solution is to sync music to each device using
the “Sync selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres” feature I
noted in the previous topic. Each person can make their own
playlists and set their device to sync only those playlists. For other
content, such as movies, TV shows, and audiobooks, each person
can choose their own options. This method is easy because you
don’t need to copy any new files to each library.

• Yet another solution is for each person to have their own user
account on the computer, and their own Music library. This can lead
to a number of problems with copying music from one account to
the other—see Share iTunes Store Content with Family Members for
an overview of what might be involved.

• Finally, if two or more people share an iTunes Match or Apple

Music subscription, they can turn on Sync Library on their iOS/
iPadOS devices (the only iPod that supports this is the iPod touch).
Then, they can download exactly what music they want to the
device, but they’ll each see all the music in the library on their
device. You can’t sync any content other than music, however, so
the above suggestions still apply for movies, books, and other
content.

Put Music on an Apple Watch

With GPS + cellular models of the Apple Watch, you can stream music
directly from Apple Music or your cloud library. But the GPS-only
Apple Watch requires the watch to be in close proximity to the iPhone
that it’s paired with. You can copy music to an Apple Watch from your
iPhone and then listen to it using Bluetooth headphones with the
watch, even if the iPhone is out of range. And depending on your data
plan, even if you have a GPS + cellular model, you might still want to
keep some music on your watch.

Note: Copying music to an Apple Watch is slow, since it’s done over
Bluetooth, so don’t transfer a new playlist with a lot of music before
running if you’re in a hurry to get moving.

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You can store as much music as will fit on your Apple Watch, but it’s a
good idea to not try to fill it up; leave some space for apps and other
data. To add music to the Apple Watch, you must select it from your
iPhone, either from music you have synced, or that is available in your
library, if you have enabled Sync Library.

Open the Watch app on the iPhone, then tap Music to see the Music
screen (Figure 91).

Figure 91: In the Music settings in the Watch app on an iPhone, you
can select music to copy to the watch.

In the top section of the Music settings, you can choose to automatical-
ly sync Recent Music to your Apple Watch. However, if you do this, you
may find that you hit the limit for media storage on your watch. On the

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early Apple Watch models, there was a limit of 2 GB for media storage,
and currently the limit is 8 GB on a 32 GB Apple Watch. It seems like
syncing Recent Music fills all available space on the watch. So you
might want to head to the lower sections first, where you can tap Add
Music to select any music on your iPhone: songs, albums, artists,
genres, or playlists. Then, if you want to allow Recent Music to sync,
wait until all of your selected music is on the watch before enabling
that setting.

Be aware that it takes a very long time to sync music to an Apple

Watch, and the watch must be connected to a charger to sync. If you
wish to sync a lot of music, you should do it overnight.

Access Media Content on an Apple TV

An Apple TV is a sort of media hub for the living room. Since the
second-generation Apple TV, this device has no user accessible stor-
age; you can’t sync any content to it. Instead, you have several options
for listening to music or viewing videos on an Apple TV:

• AirPlay: Stream content from an iOS/iPadOS device or Mac using

AirPlay. This is usually as simple starting to play music or video and
then clicking the AirPlay icon (for video content) or the AirPlay
icon (for music). (See Stream Videos with AirPlay.)
• Home Sharing: Point the Apple TV to your Mac’s Music and TV
libraries via Home Sharing in Settings > Accounts > Home Sharing
(see Share Your Music and TV Libraries over a Network, earlier).

• Sync Library: If you’ve turned on Sync Library, you can play your
music through the Apple TV. On the Apple TV, go to Settings >
Apps > Music > Sync Library, and enter your Apple ID and pass-
word. You can also use Apple Music on the Apple TV, if you subscribe
to that service, and stream music directly from Apple’s servers.

Note: The fourth-generation Apple TV and the Apple TV 4K support

both iTunes Match and Apple Music, but the second- and third-gener-
ation Apple TV offer only iTunes Match.

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Note: For more about accessing media on an Apple TV, read Take
Control of Apple TV by Josh Centers.

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 Rip, Burn, and Print
If you want to add music from your CDs to the Music app, you can rip,
or import, CDs and add the music to your library. You can then listen
to it on your computer or sync it to your mobile device. But you can
add more than just ripped music: you can rip audiobooks from CDs or
add videos from DVDs that you own. I also discuss burning CDs—
which is so 2000—and printing from the Music app, which you may
actually want to do at some point.

How to Rip CDs

Many music lovers still buy CDs. These plastic discs offer several
advantages over digital music: they contain uncompressed music; they
have liner notes; and, in some cases, they are cheaper than digital
downloads. You can pick up used CDs for a few bucks each, and you
can get many excellent box sets of classical music for just a couple of
dollars per disc.

Ripping CDs is simple, but you should make some decisions regarding
compression format, bit rate, and tagging before you start. If you have
a large music library, you’ve probably already made these decisions,
but if you’re still building your library, it’s not too late. You can re-rip
CDs you’ve ripped in the past, if you decide that you’d rather use a dif-
ferent bit rate. But also consider how much your music library is going
to grow. If you have lots of CDs that you haven’t yet ripped, or if you
buy a lot of music, plan ahead. Keep reading to find advice on each of
these topics.

Note: The following topics on compression formats, bit rates, and so

on, may seem complex, but the quality of your ripped music depends
on them. You’ll need to read these topics only once; after you’ve
chosen your settings, you’ll probably never want to change them.

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 Is Ripping Legal?
If you’re used to ripping CDs, you’d probably never think that it might
not be legal to rip them. In the United States, and in many other
countries, ripping music is legal as part of the “fair use” doctrine of
copyright law, as long as you rip CDs that you own, and the digital
files are for your personal use only. You can’t rip a CD, then make
mixes and give them to your friends.
Later in this chapter, I’ll talk about ripping DVDs, which, according to
current U.S. law, violates the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright
Act). This is because DVDs are, in most cases, protected by encryp-
tion called CSS (Content Scrambling System). Bypassing any such
copyright protection system is illegal. (In 2010, exemptions were
made to the DMCA for noncommercial copying of short excerpts for
the purpose of criticism or comment.)
However, there is a gray area around copying DVDs that you own in
order to view their content on a mobile device, laptop, or Apple TV;
it’s essentially the same as ripping music to listen to on your iPod. I
am not espousing the violation of any law, merely presenting meth-
ods that are used to create digital versions of videos on DVDs. It’s up
to you to decide how to deal with the legality of the procedure.

Compression Formats for Ripping CDs

Before getting our hands dirty with actual CD rips, I want to discuss
compression formats. When you rip a CD with the Music app, you can
either use the default format or choose a different one that suits you.
To make this choice, you need to understand a bit about compression.
(Skip ahead to How to Rip a Music CD if you don’t care and want to
use the default, or if you already know this stuff.)

Compression reduces the size of digital files. You’ve probably used

compressed .zip archives, which allow you to store data in smaller files
or to transfer data over a network more effectively. Compression
software looks for redundancies in bits of data, especially repeated
characters or series of characters, and replaces them with shorter bits
of data. You can compress text files to about half or one-third of their

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original size, and some graphic files can be compressed to less than
one-tenth of their full size.

When you compress some kinds of files, such as text files or apps, you
need to use lossless compression—this means that after you decom-
press the files you have exactly the same data you started with. While
there are lossless compression formats for music, the most popular
compression schemes are lossy, and they save space by removing
certain data that is deemed inessential. For this reason, compressed
music in lossy formats contains less data and is never as good as the
original music on your CDs.

Or is it? In blind tests, most people can’t tell the difference between
music compressed at a high-enough bit rate and original CDs. In fact,
only those with audiophile equipment are likely to notice any differ-
ences. In most cases, home stereos are good-but-not-great, and people
increasingly listen to music on standalone speakers, such as the Home-
Pod; what’s lost in compression won’t be noticed. If you’re ripping
music to listen to with headphones from a mobile device, you won’t
hear much of a difference because of the ambient noise around you.
You might want to do a test yourself; read my article Can You Really
Tell the Difference Between Music at Different Bit Rates? to see how to
carry out this test.

To set a preferred compression format to use when you rip, choose

Music > Settings/Preferences > Files and then click Import Settings to
see the Import Settings dialog (Figure 92).

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 Figure 92: The Import Settings dialog lets you choose the
compression format for CDs you rip.

From the Import Using pop-up menu, choose a format:

• AAC Encoder: This default choice compresses files in AAC (Ad-

vanced Audio Coding) format. AAC is not, as many people think, a
proprietary format created by Apple. It is part of the MP4 standard
and can be used by any hardware or software. Most devices can play
this format, but some older digital players may not support it.

• AIFF Encoder: Both AIFF and WAV files encapsulate raw sound
data from a music CD in file headers so the data can be used on
computers. This uncompressed format takes up a lot of space,
around 600–700 MB per disc, or about 10 MB per minute of audio.

• Apple Lossless Encoder: Apple Lossless or ALAC (Apple Loss-

less Audio Codec) is a lossless format that Apple created. It retains
all the original musical data while taking up much less space than
AIFF. Audio from a CD ripped in Apple Lossless format takes up
about 250–400 MB, or around 7 MB per minute, depending on the
type of music.

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• MP3 Encoder: Most people are familiar with MP3 files, which
were the catalyst for the digital music revolution. MP3 files can play
on just about any device or program that handles digital music.

• WAV Encoder: Like AIFF, WAV is uncompressed, and takes up

the same amount of space. I don’t recommend that you use WAV,
however, as it doesn’t support tags very well.

Apple suggests that you use the default AAC format. But should you?
In most cases, AAC is a good choice. AAC has several advantages over
MP3: it sounds better at lower bit rates, and it has a number of techni-
cal advantages that make it more efficient. However, if you want to rip
your music to use on non-Apple music players or phones, check if your
device supports AAC; if not, you may want to use MP3. (These days,
most portable devices support AAC, but you may have a car stereo that
can’t play this format.)

If you’re concerned about getting the maximum quality from your CDs,
you’ll probably want to use Apple Lossless. These files take up more
space, but no data is discarded during compression. However, you may
not be able to use this format with all your devices. While support for
this format has become more common in recent years, it is still not
ubiquitous.

There’s no good reason to choose AIFF or WAV. These uncompressed

formats may be useful if you’re planning to edit music, but because
they don’t handle tags very well, it’s best avoiding them. Apple Lossless
files, when decompressed, are bit-equivalent to AIFF or WAV files.

For most people, the choice is between AAC and MP3. If you plan to
stick with Apple software and devices, use AAC; if you have doubts, go
with MP3.

However, if you want to keep archival copies of your music, you can rip
in Apple Lossless format, and you’ll never have to re-rip your CDs if
you change your mind later, because you can covert from Apple Loss-
less to other formats with no loss in quality. And, when you sync these
files to your mobile device, you can sync them as is or have Music

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reduce their bit rate so you can fit more music on your device. I explain
this in Squeeze as Much Music as Possible on Your Mobile Device.

Bit Rates for Ripping CDs

You’ve chosen a compression format, now you may need to choose the
bit rate, or the level of compression. The bit rate is the number of bits
per second of music, measured in kbps, or thousands of bits per
second. Higher is better.

If you’re using AIFF, WAV, or Apple Lossless, there is no such choice:

AIFF and WAV are 1,411 kbps, the bit rate of CDs, and the Apple
Lossless encoder adapts its compression to retain all the musical data,
so the bit rate (and file size) of lossless files varies according to the type
of music you rip. However, if you use AAC or MP3, you can either stick
with Apple’s default suggestion, or change to the bit rate you prefer.

You choose the bit rate from the Setting pop-up menu in the Import
Settings dialog (Figure 92, previous topic). If you’ve chosen AAC
Encoder from the Import Using pop-up menu, the Setting menu offers
the following choices:

• High Quality (128 kbps): iTunes used what Apple called High
Quality as its default bit rate before the introduction of the iTunes
Plus format in the iTunes Store in 2009. 128 kbps (kilobits per
second) is a decent bit rate, and, with AAC, is sufficient for most
uses (though calling it “high quality” is a stretch). If you don’t listen
to music on your stereo, and often listen on a mobile device or
Bluetooth speaker outdoors, or on cheap or built-in computer
speakers, High Quality may be fine. However, if you listen through,
say, an Apple TV connected to a stereo in your living room, it may
not be sufficient.

• iTunes Plus: The iTunes Plus setting is 256 kbps, twice that of
High Quality; remember, higher bit rates are better. These files are
twice as large, and use the bit rate of music sold in the iTunes Store,
and streamed by Apple Music.

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 Note: If you don’t want to worry about all these abbreviations,
numbers, and settings, I recommend that you just use the iTunes
Plus format when you rip CDs.

• Spoken Podcast: This is a good bit rate for spoken recordings,

such as podcasts or audiobooks. It’s 32 kbps mono or 64 kbps
stereo, and it uses voice filtering, so it focuses on the frequencies in
the human voice and ignores very low or high frequencies; this
technique allows for better sound quality of voices and more com-
pact files.

• Custom: You can choose a bit rate from 16 kbps to 320 kbps. How
do you decide? Here’s what I did.

Many years ago, I ripped a number of CDs at different bit rates. I

had decided that I’d use AAC, since I’m a Mac guy and I didn’t plan
to buy other types of MP3 players. I ripped CDs at 96, 128, 160, 192,
and 256 kbps, and lossless. I mixed up the music, and listened to it
at random. I listened over and over, rating tracks according to how I
felt they sounded, without knowing their bit rates.

I’ve repeated these tests over the years, and I have organized such
tests with listeners and even a group of classical music critics. In
fact, most people can’t tell the difference between a 128 kbps AAC
file and a CD. But for me, 160 kbps was the perfect balance between
quality and size, especially with the limited storage of iPods at the
time.

A few years ago, I switched to 256 kbps, because size is much less of
an issue given the capacities of recent iOS/iPadOS devices. This is
the same bit rate that Apple uses for music sold in the iTunes Store.

More recently, since storage is cheap, I’ve been ripping CDs in

Apple Lossless format; this ensures that I have archival copies of my
CDs. If I ever want to convert to another format, I can do so easily.
Although I haven’t re-ripped older CDs, I now rip new discs in that
format.

Bear in mind that the higher the bit rate, the larger the file. Here is
how much space a 4-minute track takes up at different bit rates:
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• 128 kbps: 3.6 MB

• 256 kbps: 7.5 MB

• Apple Lossless: 15-30 MB

• AIFF or WAV: 41.1MB

Note that for Apple Lossless, file size varies according to the complexi-
ty and the volume of the music.

The amount of music that you can put on your device, or store on your
computer, depends on the bit rate. If you choose, for example, 256
kbps, you can fit about 4,000 4-minute tracks on a device with 32 GB
of available storage; that’s around 400 albums. However, at 128 kbps,
you can store twice as much music on the same device. (Obviously,
with an iPhone or iPad, the amount of music you can sync depends on
how many apps and other media files the device contains, and how
much space the operating system takes up.)

But as the capacity of mobile devices has increased, this is less of an

issue, unless you have a very large music library. The current default
for iPhones is 64 GB, and, even with a lot of apps, this leaves you
plenty of room for music.

Future-Proof Your Rips

If you're still on the fence about which format and bit rate to use, and
have lots of storage space, rip everything in Apple Lossless format.
This creates files that, when uncompressed, are bit-perfect equiva-
lents of your CDs. You can convert the Apple Lossless files to any
format later, and carrying out the conversion will be much quicker
than ripping your CDs again.

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 Converting to a Lower Bit Rate While Syncing
You can select an option on the General pane for your mobile device,
when it’s connected to the Finder, to tell the program to “Convert
higher bit rate songs to 128/192/256 kbps AAC.” This option allows
you to use one bit rate for the music you listen to on your computer,
and another on your mobile device. If this sounds interesting to you,
read Squeeze as Much Music as Possible on Your Mobile Device,
earlier.

Other Important Settings for Ripping

CDs
Besides the compression format and bit rate that I just discussed, there
are a number of other import settings, and these are different for each
of the different encoders. I’d like to mention a few of them here; for the
others, it’s safe to leave the defaults.

• Variable Bit Rate Encoding: This compression technique takes

up less space than the default method, constant bit rate encoding,
bu using less data for parts of the music that are less complex, or
that are silent. Apple uses it by default in its iTunes Plus encoding;
you can leave it on or not (by choosing a custom bit rate). In most
cases, it saves only a small amount of space and doesn’t impact the
music quality.

• High Efficiency Encoding: This addition to the AAC format, also

a custom bit-rate choice, provides better encoding for low bit rates
(64 kbps or less). I discuss it in How to Rip an Audiobook CD, later.

• Error correction: Available in the main Import Settings window,

the “Use error correction when reading Audio CDs” option tells the
Music app to analyze data read from CDs to determine whether
what is read matches what is on the CD. (CD players sold for use
with stereos all have error correction.) If not, the data is corrected.
This leads to slower ripping times, but may give better results. With
error correction off, you may hear noise or tiny pops in music you

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 rip; this is due to defects in the actual CD, dust, or neutrinos that hit
your drive’s sensor during the rip. I keep this setting on all the time.

How to Rip a Music CD

When you insert a CD into your optical drive, you’ll hear it spin for a
few seconds, then it will likely open in Music. If not, launch Music.

Music checks the Gracenote CD Database for metadata information,

and then displays the CD. If it finds this information, you’ll see the
names of your album, artist, and tracks in the main portion of the
Music window.

The huge Gracenote CD Database contains information about millions

of CDs, contributed by record labels and by users, who can upload tags
themselves. Nevertheless, your CD may show nothing more than Track
1, Track 2, and so on. If so, you’ll want to tag your music manually in
order to help Music sort and organize it (see Tag Your Music Files).
(And even if Gracenote does offer you tag data, you may want to
change it.)

To rip the CD, make sure it’s selected in the navigation bar so that its
tracks are listed in the main portion of the window beneath the CD
header bar (Figure 93).

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 Figure 93: Music is ready to import a CD. Once you click the CD
icon in the sidebar, a CD header bar appears above a list of the CD’s
tracks. The Import CD button is on the right side of the header bar.
Notice the checkmarks by the track names in the Name column.

To begin ripping:

• To import the CD into your Music library, click the Import CD

button on the right side of the CD header bar. If there are any tracks
you don’t want to import, uncheck them before clicking Import CD.

• If you’d prefer to not only import tracks into your Music library but
also have them placed in a playlist, scroll the sidebar to display the
playlist where you want to copy the files, then drop the files on that
playlist. If you want to create a new playlist, drop them in that
sidebar but not on a playlist; Music creates a new playlist, whose
name is the album’s artist and title.

Simplify Tagging with a Temp Playlist

You can tag your tracks either before you rip CDs or after. One thing
I’ve found very useful is to create a playlist I call Temp to which I
drag files when I rip CDs. Since tagging is so important, I want to be
able to find all the tracks I rip in one playlist right after ripping or
when I’ve finished ripping a multi-disc set. After all, if the tags pro-
vided by Music are slightly off, it can be hard to find the ripped
tracks. I show you how to make playlists in Organize Your Music and
Create Playlists.

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How to Rip an Audiobook CD
Many people enjoy audiobooks and obtain them in different ways. You
can buy audiobooks as downloads from Audible.com, or from the
iTunes Store and other websites; or you can buy them on CD and rip
them to your Music library. Because of the type of audio they contain—
voice—and their length, ripping audiobooks requires different consid-
erations than those for ripping music CDs.

Note: Following the split of iTunes into four apps, audiobooks from
Audible or the iTunes Store are stored in the Books app. However,
you can still rip audiobooks to use in the Music app, or, alternatively,
add them to the Books app after you’ve ripped them in Music. See
below to learn how to store audiobooks in each app.

I’m assuming that you’ve read the details about compression and bit
rate earlier in this chapter. You should review those topics if anything
here doesn’t make sense.

When you rip audiobook CDs, you’ll want to use a lower bit rate than
for music. Voice uses a limited frequency range, so there’s much less
data. Even at very low bit rates—such as 32 kbps—audiobooks sound
fine. (That’s the default bit rate that Audible and Apple use for the
audiobooks they sell.) Also, you may want to use some CD-ripping
voodoo to ensure that you have fewer files than the ones that the
audiobook CD shows you.

Just as with music, I suggest you use the AAC compression format for
audiobooks, unless you have a special reason for using the MP3 for-
mat, such as wanting to play them on a portable player or car stereo
that doesn’t handle AAC. To set the format, go to Music > Prefer-
ences > Files and click the Import Settings button.

Let’s start with the bit rate for an AAC file. Since audiobooks don’t
need the same quality as music, you’ll want to choose a lower bit rate.
Many people are happy with 32 kbps in mono for audiobooks; voice is
compressed easily without artifacts, and, unless you’re listening to a

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performance of a play or a full-cast recording of a book, stereo won’t
make any difference.

If you choose Spoken Podcast from the Setting pop-up menu in the
Import Settings dialog, Music will rip CDs at 32 kbps mono or 64 kbps
stereo, using “voice filtering,” which limits the frequencies that Music
rips. However, since most audiobook CDs are in stereo, your resulting
files will be just that; you don’t get the space-saving advantage of
ripping in mono. So to get the best settings, choose Custom from the
Settings pop-up menu.

Figure 94 shows my ideal custom audiobook settings for ripping in

AAC format.

Figure 94: Here are my recommended settings for ripping

audiobooks in AAC format.

Some of the above needs explaining:

• Stereo Bit Rate: I’ve been talking about using 32 kbps to rip
audiobooks, so why is this set to 64 kbps? Because that’s the stereo
bit rate. The Channels pop-up menu is set to Mono, so the actual bit
rate used is half of what’s chosen in the Stereo Bit Rate pop-up
menu. Confusing? Sure, but that’s the way it works. Note that there

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 are some cases where you might want to rip audiobooks in stereo:
full-cast recordings of plays, and some of the more complex multi-
narrator recordings, benefit from stereo channel separation.

• Use High Efficiency Encoding (HE): This option provides

better encoding at low bit rates. If you have any problems listening
to audiobooks on your portable player, turn this off. (If you have an
older iPod, you may want to rip just one file and make sure it plays
correctly before you rip more.)

• Optimize for voice: Since voices use a limited frequency range,

this eliminates high and low frequencies that aren’t needed, saving
space, and providing more space for frequencies that are present.

If you plan to rip in MP3 format for compatibility with non-Apple

devices, note that MP3 has lower quality at low bit rates, so you might
want to rip at a slightly higher bit rate, say 48 kbps. The ideal custom
settings are 96 kbps for the stereo bit rate (remember, it’s double the
mono number), Mono for the channel, and Optimize for voice.

Audiobooks and the Cloud

If you enable Sync Library, you can’t send files at bit rates lower than
96 kbps to the cloud. If you have an audiobook library that you’d like
to store in the Music app and in the cloud, you should rip at 96 kbps.
While these files take up more space, you may find it useful to have
your audiobooks in the cloud.

Let’s start. I’ve put an audiobook CD into my optical drive, and Music
lists the CD’s content, like any other CD. Music also displays any info
that it can find on the Gracenote CD Database (Figure 95).

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 Figure 95: The first CD of Samuel Beckett’s Molloy, ready to be
ripped.

In the figure above, my audiobook CD has track information. If your

audiobook doesn’t show any such information, you need to fill it in
manually. What’s most important is that you enter an artist, album (or
book title), and disc number, so the tracks will stay together and in
order. To do this, press ⌘-A to select all the tracks, then press ⌘-I to
edit them. Enter the name of the author in the Artist field, the name of
the book in the Album field, the disc number in the appropriate field,
and Audiobook or Spoken Word for the genre (you can use other
genres, such as Thriller, Romance, or Science Fiction, if you wish).
Click OK to save this data. (I cover this process, called tagging, in Tag
Your Music Files.)

There are several ways to rip audiobooks. I’m going to present two
methods, and you can choose which works best for the way you want to
organize and listen to your audiobooks.

Join Tracks
The first method involves “joining” tracks to make one file from each
disc. Using my example, Samuel Becket’s Molloy has seven discs, so I’ll
end up with seven files, each a bit over an hour long. I’ll lose the
separations between sections–the different tracks–that you can see in
Figure 95 (slightly earlier), but for books this is rarely a problem.

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To join tracks on a CD, select the tracks, click the Options icon near
the right of the CD header bar, and choose Join CD Tracks. (If this
doesn’t work, make sure the CD’s tracks are sorted by the leftmost
column, the one with the track number, as in Figure 95, slightly
earlier.) With Join CD Tracks chosen, Music shows a sort of bracket
from the first to the last track, with a single checkmark beside the first
one. Click the Import CD button, and Music rips the entire CD into one
file. Music names the file according to the first track in the CD’s track
list; you can change the name later.

Repeat this process for each of the CDs. You end up with the same
number of tracks as the number of CDs that make up your audiobook.

Previously, you would make a change to these tracks so they show up

in the iTunes Audiobooks library, but since the new Music app doesn’t
manage audiobooks, you have two choices:

• Keep your audiobooks in your Music library: The CDs you’ve

just ripped can stay in your Music library, and you can listen to
them in Music, sync them to a mobile, and even sync them to the
cloud, if the bit rate is 96 kbps or above. This allows you to store the
audiobook files on an external drive, if you don’t have enough space
on your Mac’s startup drive. (See How the Media Apps Organize
Files for more on where files are stored.)

• Move your audiobooks to the Books app: The Books app now
handles audiobooks, and offers a number of features for playback
that are more appropriate for listening to spoken word. For exam-
ple, you can click icons to skip ahead or back by 15 seconds, set a
sleep timer, and more. However, these files are stored on your
startup disk, and you may simply not have enough space on this
disk, so if you want all your audiobooks in the Books app, I recom-
mend only adding those to the app when you want to listen to them.
At other times, store them on an external disk.

If you want to move your ripped audiobook to the Books app, find the
book in your Music library, Control-click it and choose Show in Finder.
Drag that file to the Books app’s window, and Books will add it to your
audiobook library.

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It’s worth noting that you can also move audiobooks ripped as individ-
ual tracks to the Books app, and, if you do, there is one advantage: you
see the name of each file as an individual chapter, allowing you to
navigate in your audiobooks more easily. See just below to learn how to
rip an audiobook as individual tracks.

Keep Individual Tracks

The second method involves keeping each track separate, which may
mean that you have hundreds of tracks for a book. As explained above,
if Music doesn’t show metadata for your audiobook CDs, or if you want
to adjust those tags, you should do so before you rip the CDs. That way,
you can find the tracks later. Rip each CD and don’t worry where the
files go.

The best way to listen to the many tracks of an audiobook is to make a

smart playlist. (If you don’t know how, refer to About Smart Playlists
for background information and then read the directions ahead.) This
smart playlist should be set up as follows (see Figure 96):

Match [all] of the following rules

[Artist] [is] author name
[Album] [is] book name
[Plays] [is] 0

The “Live updating” checkbox should be checked.

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 Figure 96: With a smart playlist like this, Music finds only those files
that belong to this book, and that you haven’t finished listening to
yet. Thus, Music ensures that first file in the list will always be at the
right spot to pick up where you left off listening.

In order for this smart playlist to work correctly, you must make the
following changes to the tracks:

1. Select them all, and press ⌘-I.

2. On the Options pane, select “Remember playback position” and

“Skip when shuffling.”

3. Click OK.

4. Go to the playlist, choose View > as Songs, and then click the Album
column header so it is selected, and so the arrow on the right of the
header points up.

Your tracks are now in order, and the two options you chose in step 2
ensure that Music remembers where you left off. Each time you listen
to a track, its play count increments, and it is removed from the play-
list, so the next track to listen to is always at the beginning of the
playlist. You can listen to the book in Music or sync it to your mobile
device and listen there. In either case, the tracks drop off the playlist as
you listen.

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 Splicing Audiobooks with Join Together
If you already have audiobooks in lots of files, or want to rip the CDs
in Music and then join them, you can use Doug Adams’s $5 Join
Together to splice them into long files.

Convert Audio Files to a Different

Format
I told you above how to choose a file format for ripping your audio
CDs. But what if you change your mind? After you rip your CDs, you
may want to convert your files to another format. There are several
reasons to do this:

• If you ripped your CDs as WAV, AIFF, or Apple Lossless files, which
take up a lot of space, you may want to change to AAC or MP3 files.

• If you’ve ripped audio in AAC format, you may want to convert it to

MP3 for a music player or software that doesn't support AAC files.

• If you have MP3 files that you ripped with other software, you may
want to convert them to AAC files.

• You may want to change the bit rates of your files; one reason to do
this would be to reduce the size of audiobook files that were im-
ported at a bit rate that is normal for music but excessive for spoken
word recordings.

Note: You won’t get better sound if you convert existing files to
higher bit rates. Also, converting them to other formats may lead to a
loss in quality, though if you convert, say, MP3 files to AAC files at the
same bit rate, you probably won’t notice any difference.

240
To convert a track or tracks to a different format using Music, follow
these steps:

1. (Optional) Make a playlist of the tracks you plan to convert. That

way you’ll be able to find and select them easily. (Read Create a
Standard Playlist if you don’t know how.)

2. Set the new format and/or bit rate you want to use in Music > Set-
tings/Preferences > Files > Import Settings.

3. Select the tracks you want to convert.

4. Choose File > Convert > Create Format Version, where Format is
the one that you’ve selected in the preferences. Whatever settings
you chose in the Import Settings dialog are used here.

When Music has finished converting the selected file(s), you can find
the new files in your Library, but not in any playlists. If you want to
delete the old files, go ahead.

Note: If you’re using Sync Library, you can have Music match your
files and you can then re-download them in 256 kbps AAC format.
You can use this to “upgrade” tracks you have at lower bit rates (at
96 kbps or higher). Read “Upgrade” Your Music with the Cloud for
more information.

Rip Just the Music from a Concert DVD

If you have a DVD of your favorite artist in concert, you may also want
to listen to the music without watching the video. This is possible, but
it can be a complicated procedure. I wrote a Macworld article about
this, Rip audio tracks from your DVDs. The article is quite old, but the
process is still the same.

You can also rip audio from Blu-ray discs, if you have an external Blu-
ray drive connected to your Mac. This is a slightly convoluted process,
but it works. See How to rip audio from your Blu-ray discs.

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You can use Rogue Amoeba’s $64 Audio Hijack to record the audio
from any kind of optical disc, be it a CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, or DVD-A.
Audio Hijack records the digital audio stream after it’s read from the
disc, and the quality is exactly the same as on the original disc. This
may be the easiest method if you want to rip a lot of concert DVDs or
Blu-Rays. However, Audio Hijack records in real time, so it will take
the full duration of each disc to rip its audio.

Burn Music CDs

You may still want to burn music CDs, especially if you have a CD
player in your car. This is easy:

1. Make a playlist (flip back to Create a Standard Playlist if you need

help). If you want to fit the playlist on a single CD, check the status
bar at the bottom of the Music window. (To display the status bar,
choose View > Show Status Bar.)

‣ For a normal audio CD: For an 80-minute CD, keep your

time to a bit less than 80 minutes; if you have a 74-minute CD,
stay a bit under that duration.

‣ For an MP3 CD: If you have a car stereo, for instance, that can
play an MP3 CD, you might use this type of CD and thus be able
to include more tunes. Look at the amount of data, not the time.

2. Choose File > Burn Playlist to Disc.

3. In the Burn Settings dialog that displays, you can set a few options:

‣ In general, the preferred speed should be Maximum Possible,

unless you know that your CDs don’t burn well above a certain
speed.

‣ The disc format in most cases should be audio CD, but obviously
you can select MP3 if desired.

‣ The gap between songs setting is 2 seconds by default; change

this only if you’re burning a “gapless album,” such as a live album
with segues.
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 ‣ You can normalize the volume of the music on the CD by en-
abling Use Sound Check. This means that the volume of the
songs is adjusted if they are very loud or very quiet, and your
music flows together a bit better.

4. Click the Burn button.

5. Slip a CD into your burner and wait.

What Music Won’t Burn

Music purchased from the iTunes Store back when there was DRM can
be burned from a single playlist only seven times. If you want to burn it
more times, you need to delete the playlist and recreate it.

Also, Music doesn’t burn MP3 CDs of music with DRM, including
music you’ve added to your library from Apple Music.

If you have iTunes Plus music—without DRM—or music that you’ve

ripped from CDs or purchased from other vendors, these limitations
don’t apply.

Print from the Music App

Printing is probably not the first thing you’d want to do with the Music
app. But this feature can be useful: if you burn CDs, you can print
inserts with album covers and song lists. You can also print lists of
music in your Music library, by album or as a list of albums. Why
would you want to do this?

Well, if you burn CDs, you might want jewel case inserts to make them
look nice, especially if they’re intended to be gifts. The song listings
and album listings may be useful if you’re a collector and want a hard-
copy to take with you when you go CD hunting.

Or you may want a hard copy of the contents of your Music library, just
because.

243
What You Can Print with Music
Music can print a number of documents from information in your
Music library. To access the printing feature, select a view or playlist in
the sidebar, or an artist, album, composer, or genre in any view and
choose File > Print to open the Print dialog (Figure 97).

Figure 97: The Music Print dialog can display a preview of a list of
albums, including album art and a complete list of their contents.

You can print the following:

• CD jewel case inserts: You can print these with a theme in black
and white or in color, and you can choose from text only, a mosaic
of album covers (for playlists featuring music from multiple al-
bums), or a single cover.

• Song listings: These lists are dumps of your Music library data,
and contain such information as song name, time, artist, and al-
bum. You can add more information to your list by choosing a
theme for your list—user ratings, dates played, or custom. Custom
prints whatever columns are currently visible in your Music library
or playlist.

• Album listings: These are either lists of songs by album, including

album art, or lists of all your albums.

244
 Extend the Music and TV
Apps with AppleScripts
You can take advantage of AppleScripts to extend the functionality of
the Music and TV apps. While looking at AppleScripts in depth would
take another book of this length, in this bonus chapter I want to give
you a taste of what AppleScripts can do for you, and tell you about
some of my favorite AppleScripts.

Introducing AppleScripts
AppleScripts are short, simple programs that are much easier to write
than full-fledged applications and that let you act on files and metadata
in many Apple apps (the Finder, Music, TV, Photos, Safari, Mail, and
so on), as well as a number of third-party applications (Microsoft
Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and others) that provide some Apple-
Script support.

AppleScript support can be limited—supporting a mere handful of

commands—to highly complex. Music and TV offer in-depth scriptabil-
ity, notably by providing access via AppleScript to the tags in your
media files.

When you add AppleScripts to your user folders at ~/Library/Music/

Scripts and ~/Library/Apple TV/Scripts, they display in Scripts
menus respectively in the Music and TV apps, and you can run them by
choosing them from those menus. You must create these folders if you
want to use AppleScripts. Also note that you may want to use the same
scripts with both apps; you must add copies of the script to both
folders, in this case.

Tip: The ~/Library folder mentioned in the previous paragraph is

normally invisible. To see it, hold down the Option key and choose
Go > Library in the Finder.

245
Where to Find AppleScripts
There are two ways to get AppleScripts. The first is to roll your own,
but, to be fair, this requires a good knowledge of programming. While
Apple claimed—and still claims—that AppleScript is close to natural
language, this isn’t exactly the case.

There’s an easier way to get AppleScripts for the Music and TV apps:
go to the Doug’s AppleScripts website. Run by Doug Adams, Apple-
Script guru extraordinaire, this site is a compendium of scripts that he
has written. There are scripts for managing tracks and track info,
working with artwork, dealing with playlists, controlling the Music and
TV apps, importing and exporting information about your Music and
TV libraries and playlists, managing files, working with libraries, and
much more. The site houses hundreds of scripts and a handful of
applications that Doug has written.

What You Can Do with AppleScripts

When you see exactly what AppleScripts can do with the Music and TV
apps, you may be surprised. I use them most often for tagging files;
copying, correcting, truncating or appending track names; searching
for and replacing text; and finding “missing” tracks in my library.

The best way to understand what AppleScripts can do is to look at

some concrete examples. Here are my top ten AppleScripts, with links
to them on the Doug’s AppleScripts website:

1. Remove n Characters from Front or Back: This script lets you

remove extraneous characters from the beginning or end of a tag.
You can do this for tags including Name, Album, Artist, and Com-
poser. I use it often for classical music; many Name tags include the
name of the composer before the name of the track, in this form:
Schubert: Gute Nacht. For an album tagged like that, I remove the
first 10 characters, and keep just the name of the track.

246
2. Copy Tag Info Tracks to Tracks: With this script, I copy, say, all the
track names from a classical album and paste them on the tracks of
another recording of the same work. It’s a real time saver. You can
copy the name, artist, album, composer, genre, artwork, and even
dynamic tags such as last played date and rating.

3. Super Remove Dead Tracks: Have you ever moved files around and
then found that some of your tracks show up with a missing track
icon in the Music app? These “dead tracks” mean that you
removed the original files, but not their entries in your Music
library. Find them and remove them easily.

4. Tracks Without Embedded Artwork: I’m a stickler for adding album

art to my tracks, so I have visual reminders of my music. I used this
script a lot when I was going through the process of adding artwork.
It creates a playlist for all the tracks in your library that have no
artwork so you can search for graphics and add them to your music.

5. Albumize Selection: This script takes selected tracks and changes

their track numbers so they make up an album. As an added bonus,
you can also add a new album name with it. I use it with multi-disc
albums, or with long classical works that span more than one
album, to keep the numbering coherent.

6. This Tag That Tag: This very useful script lets you swap tags from
one tag to another. For example, you may want to move or copy
your Composer tag to the Artist tag; or you may want to append or
prepend the Composer or Artist tag to the Album tag. This script
lets you do these operations with a few clicks.

7. Multi-Item Edit: If you find the Info dialog in the Music and TV
apps confusing and want a more user-friendly experience, try Multi-
Item Edit. This AppleScript applet lets you edit tags for multiple
items in a user-friendly interface.

8. Search-Replace Tag Text: Use this to do a search-and-replace in the

name, artist, album, composer, comments, genre, or grouping tags.
You can fix, for example, spelling errors in names, or put terms in
one language into another.

247
9. Proper English Title Capitalization: Are you tired of track or album
names with words like “the,” “of,” “and,” “or,” and “a” in caps? Use
this script to put them in lowercase as they should be.

10. Media Folder Files Not Added: This script searches your Music
Media folders for items that are not in your Library. This can be
useful in conjunction with Super Remove Dead Tracks (item 3
above), to find items that aren’t referenced correctly in the Music
and add them to your library.

248
 Learn More
Here’s a list of some of the most useful websites for learning more
about Apple’s media management apps and mobile devices:
• Kirkville: This is my personal website. I regularly publish articles
about using Apple’s media apps, Macs, and mobile devices, as well
as articles about my favorite music and more.

• The Next Track: I co-host this podcast about how people listen to
music today with Doug Adams. We have been called “the Renais-
sance men of music,” and on The Next Track we discuss many kinds
of music, audio equipment, and the apps we use to listen to music.
(You can find links to my other podcasts in this Shameless Plug.)

• Apple’s Music app and iPod support hubs: These portals to

information about the Music app and the various iPod models
provide access to technical notes, user’s manuals, and more.

• Audiophile Style: Although audiophiles can be a bit obsessive,

the Audiophile Style website offers useful information about setting
up centralized media servers, playing high-resolution audio files,
and using high-end audio equipment connected to a computer.
There’s also a very active forum where you can discuss using a
computer as part of your audio system, and a lot of information on
“immersive music,” or listening to Dolby Atmos recordings.

249
 About This Book
Thank you for purchasing this Take Control book. We hope you find it
both useful and enjoyable to read. We welcome your comments.

Ebook Extras
You can access extras related to this ebook on the web. Once you’re on
the ebook’s Take Control Extras page, you can:

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More Take Control Books

This is but one of many Take Control titles! We have books that cover
a wide range of technology topics, with extra emphasis on Macs and
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You can buy Take Control books from the Take Control online catalog
as well as from venues such as Amazon and the Apple Books Store.
But it’s a better user experience and our authors earn more when you
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Our ebooks are available in two formats, PDF and EPUB, which are
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250
About the Author
Kirk McElhearn writes about Apple hardware and software, books,
music, and more. He contributes to TidBITS and other publications,
and co-hosts several podcasts. Kirk has written and co-written more
than two dozen books about using the Mac, including Take Control of
Audio Hijack, Take Control of Scrivener 3, and Take Control of
LaunchBar.

Kirk’s website, Kirkville, features articles on Macs, iOS/iPadOS de-

vices, books, music, and more. A lapsed New Yorker, Kirk has lived in
Europe for more than 35 years; he currently lives in a farmhouse near
Stratford-upon-Avon, in the United Kingdom. You can email Kirk at
[email protected] or follow him on Twitter and Mastodon.

Acknowledgments
We’re now four years on from the biggest change in Apple’s media
apps and their capabilities, and running the fourth version of macOS
with this fragmentation; this change required a rethink of how to
efficiently work with these new apps, but it’s now become familiar.
Doug Adams was a big help in understanding these changes, and his
AppleScripts make the Music and TV apps much easier to use.

Over the years, through the various editions of this book, I’ve worked
with a number of fine editors, and it was again Joe Kissell’s turn to
shepherd it to publication. With the many changes to the apps that this
book covers, a new strategy was needed, and I thank Joe for helping
shape this new edition.

A number of people have been of great help over the years, and
through the various versions of this book. My son Perceval shared
some of his iTunes (now Music) techniques, and continues to provide
me with many music recommendations so I keep up with the times.
Andy Doe helped me understand some of the minute technical details
of digital audio and the financial aspects of music streaming. Chris
Connaker enlightened me about the nuances of high-resolution audio,
audiophile hardware, and Dolby Atmos. Nick Flower of Hyperion

251
Records gave me insight into issues around delivering digital music to
customers from a record label’s point of view. Jeff Robbin provided
answers to some of my more obscure questions. Stéphane Sudre
helped me figure out how to get graphics out of the Music and TV apps
to use as inline buttons in this book. And Gregorio Zanon has provided
useful information about the way iOS/iPadOS devices function under
the hood.

Finally, I’d like to thank the readers of the previous versions of this
book, and of my website, Kirkville. Through email messages and ques-
tions, they have helped me understand what they need to know, and
have pointed out the occasional typo that slipped past our ace
poofleading team.

The latest edition of this book was written in Nisus Writer Pro on a 24-
inch iMac, with the help of a 13-inch MacBook Air, a couple of iPads,
an iPhone, a couple of iPods, several HomePods, and a variety of Sonos
gear, as well as an Apple Watch, an Apple TV 4K, and several AirPods.
It was produced under the influence of a wonderful selection of Chi-
nese green teas and wulongs, Japanese sencha and matcha, and first
flush Darjeelings. Titus the Cat and Rosalind the Cat provided compa-
ny as I worked, in exchange for treats.

The stereo in my home office, where I do much of my music listening,

and where I played the music that accompanied me while writing this
book, consists of a Sonos Amp, Q Acoustics 3020i speakers on my
desk, a pair of HomePods (2nd generation) in the comfy listening area
of my office, and a Wharfedale Diamond SW150 subwoofer. The cables
and interconnects cost a few quid each.

The soundtrack for this book included music by Bob Dylan, Brian Eno,
Franz Schubert, Chiku Za, Pink Floyd, Emma Swift, the Grateful Dead,
Miles Davis, The Clash, Brad Mehldau, The Durutti Column, Okuda
Atsuya, John Cage, Philip Glass, Nils Frahm, Fontaines D.C., Harold
Budd, King Crimson, Robert Fripp, and many others. It’s a delight to
be able to write about software that manages music while listening to
so much great music.

252
About the Publisher
alt concepts, publisher of Take Control Books, is operated by Joe
Kissell and Morgen Jahnke, who acquired the ebook series from
TidBITS Publishing Inc.’s owners, Adam and Tonya Engst, in 2017. Joe
brings his decades of experience as author of more than 60 books on
tech topics (including many popular Take Control titles) to his role as
Publisher. Morgen’s professional background is in development work
for nonprofit organizations, and she employs those skills as Director of
Marketing and Publicity. Joe and Morgen live in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, Canada, with their two children.

Credits
• Editor and Publisher: Joe Kissell
• Cover design: Sam Schick of Neversink
• Logo design: Geoff Allen of FUN is OK

253
 Copyright and Fine Print
Take Control of macOS Media Apps
ISBN: 978-1-990783-20-3
Copyright © 2024, Eyes of the World Limited. All rights reserved.

alt concepts, 419 8B-3110 8th St. East, Saskatoon, SK S7H 0W2 Canada

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254
Rogue Amoeba Coupon

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