But you can use iTunes for windows with parallels
On App Store version and original version either
On App Store version and original version either
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I've been looking into replacing Music since recently moving over to a new iMac with Catalina.
I saw that perhaps using an app called Retroactive you can install a version of your choice of iTunes ( even saw in Big Sur Beta ) on Catalina.
I aim to take a full back up of my SSD before doing this along with a back up of my Media drive which houses the old ( not sure they are used by Music etc ) library itl files etc.
Has anyone else done this ? If so, any issues with corrupt libraries etc, home sharing issues in particular ?
Currently Music, and to a lesser extent TV app, don't quite cut it for me, especially as Song view was my main view of choice and without the album art showing in that view, it can be quite tiresome looking at a plain list.
If successful..... you just leave Music and TV in place and ignore them and continue to use iTunes ?
I don't know in Catalina but I'm doing all what you want to do with Mojave and with an external disk that has all my music, etc. Time to time I make a backup of the ssd and so far no corruption of any kind with libraries.
BTW I also have iTunesMatch that is still working great . I can download my music in the clouds and still match new pieces time to time: iTunes 12.6.5.3 . Good luck
Katbel is correct. I also use Music and iTunes side by side, no issues whatsoever. But always keep a backup of your music library either way, unexpected things can always happen...
Thanks for the feedback.
I have tried living with Music and TV apps but have found:
1. Home sharing often forgets that the library is open and apps working and I have to go and close / reopen the apps on the iMac for the Apple TV to find the libraries again ( I also changed put hard drives to sleep when possible to off )
2. I have found on the Apple TV that it skips tracks in a Music playlist ( and even disappear on the ATV ) which is weird, as when i go back to my iMac, the problem tracks are still there in the playlist and are playable in every instance.
So I'm going to install iTunes 12.9 the latest version in Retroactive and run dual libraries for a bit ( both Music/TV and iTunes libraries ) and test out using iTunes again and see if the problems above disappear.
I have tried living with Music and TV apps but have found:
1. Home sharing often forgets that the library is open and apps working and I have to go and close / reopen the apps on the iMac for the Apple TV to find the libraries again ( I also changed put hard drives to sleep when possible to off )
2. I have found on the Apple TV that it skips tracks in a Music playlist ( and even disappear on the ATV ) which is weird, as when i go back to my iMac, the problem tracks are still there in the playlist and are playable in every instance.
So I'm going to install iTunes 12.9 the latest version in Retroactive and run dual libraries for a bit ( both Music/TV and iTunes libraries ) and test out using iTunes again and see if the problems above disappear.
I assume you can still use Home Sharing when you go back to iTunes 12.9 ?
Any changes needed after you have set up iTunes 12.9 i.e. in System Preferences etc for the Apple TV to pick up the correct library ?
Any changes needed after you have set up iTunes 12.9 i.e. in System Preferences etc for the Apple TV to pick up the correct library ?
OK iTunes 12.9
I have all my movies and TV shows within their own folders within the movies and TV shows directories respectively.
Whenever I play something in iTunes the file pops outside of the folder , as in this example for Clear and Present Danger. Only does it for movies not TV shows ?!?!
How do I stop it doing that, it's going to create one hell of a mess ?
I have all my movies and TV shows within their own folders within the movies and TV shows directories respectively.
Whenever I play something in iTunes the file pops outside of the folder , as in this example for Clear and Present Danger. Only does it for movies not TV shows ?!?!
How do I stop it doing that, it's going to create one hell of a mess ?
Attachments
Last edited:
It was caused by a hidden pref file in the media folder.
Hidden iTunes preference file in the media folder and altered the integer to 1 from 0 and saved it.
Tried again, playing and importing movies and now they are created in a folder of their own and stay there when played.
Hidden iTunes preference file in the media folder and altered the integer to 1 from 0 and saved it.
Tried again, playing and importing movies and now they are created in a folder of their own and stay there when played.
Q. Those using 12.9 iTunes, are you managing your Podcasts and Audiobooks through iTunes or via the separate apps ?
Podcasts still in iTunes (that new app is horrible) and putting up with music in Music app. I like how the remote app on iOS can see both libraries and I can send audio to multiple airplay speakers in both apps.
Yeah. I'm still using iTunes for everything since installing 12.9 on Catalina. Removed Music, TV, Audiobooks and Podcast apps from the dock so I don't accidently click on them
Is it possible to run iTunes 12.9.5 on Catalina 10.15.6?
I have it installed, but it hangs, it succeeded in adding quite a few tracks to the library, but then it hangs. I've tried restarting everything several times, but it's still sluggish and now won't allow me to add anything to the library.
I saw the post that after 10.15.4, the scripts don't work, but then I'm seeing people talking about it running on Big Sur. Can anyone shed some light on this?
I have it installed, but it hangs, it succeeded in adding quite a few tracks to the library, but then it hangs. I've tried restarting everything several times, but it's still sluggish and now won't allow me to add anything to the library.
I saw the post that after 10.15.4, the scripts don't work, but then I'm seeing people talking about it running on Big Sur. Can anyone shed some light on this?
thanks for the comment Airsculpture.
After fiddling for a while and several restarts, I got it up and running again. Not sure why I had issues with adding to library and the sluggish response. But, now that it's up and running, it's working perfectly. Holy crap, what a relief to be able to work with iTunes again!
I also discovered that I can run iTunes and Music at the same time and even drag songs from Music to iTunes and it will successfully copy them over. At the same time, I discovered that all of the modifications that i did in Music from the moment that I switched (well, was forced to switch) to Music, do not show up in iTunes. So, when I opened iTunes, I essentially got a time capsule of what my system looked like before switching to Music, so I just copied over the tracks that had been added to Music (fortunately for me, I made the mistake of not delegating Music to my external drive that holds all my music and everything that I added in the interim went to my internal drive, so it's quite easy to copy these tracks to iTunes (where it automatically goes to the correct folder) and then just delete the tracks from Music (which gets rid of the tracks erroneously copied into my internal drive).
My main concern at this point is to losing the "sync" between Music and iTunes. For example, all of the tracks that I just copied "back" to iTunes are no longer available in Music. Any playlists that I create in iTunes will not be available in Music Is this correct? Is there any way for me to import these modifications that I'm making in iTunes to Music further down the road?
After fiddling for a while and several restarts, I got it up and running again. Not sure why I had issues with adding to library and the sluggish response. But, now that it's up and running, it's working perfectly. Holy crap, what a relief to be able to work with iTunes again!
I also discovered that I can run iTunes and Music at the same time and even drag songs from Music to iTunes and it will successfully copy them over. At the same time, I discovered that all of the modifications that i did in Music from the moment that I switched (well, was forced to switch) to Music, do not show up in iTunes. So, when I opened iTunes, I essentially got a time capsule of what my system looked like before switching to Music, so I just copied over the tracks that had been added to Music (fortunately for me, I made the mistake of not delegating Music to my external drive that holds all my music and everything that I added in the interim went to my internal drive, so it's quite easy to copy these tracks to iTunes (where it automatically goes to the correct folder) and then just delete the tracks from Music (which gets rid of the tracks erroneously copied into my internal drive).
My main concern at this point is to losing the "sync" between Music and iTunes. For example, all of the tracks that I just copied "back" to iTunes are no longer available in Music. Any playlists that I create in iTunes will not be available in Music Is this correct? Is there any way for me to import these modifications that I'm making in iTunes to Music further down the road?
i know this is catalina but i dont see a new megathread for big sur...
is itunes with retroactive still working on big sur or should i stick with catalina? i see retroactive supports it as of september but just want to confirm from users now that the OS is out
is itunes with retroactive still working on big sur or should i stick with catalina? i see retroactive supports it as of september but just want to confirm from users now that the OS is out
Hi all! Like the person above, I'm on Big Sur not Catalina, but this seems to be the main thread for unsupported iTunes regardless of OS, please redirect me if that's incorrect.
Is it possible to give iTunes back control of launching via the keyboard Media keys as part of installing it on unsupported OSes? Pressing play/pause on my keyboard launches the Music app, even after installing iTunes.
Tried that Media Keys Enabler app on Github but doesn't work (at least on Big Sur), it still launches Music instead of iTunes, as it wasn't really designed for this use case.
The media keys work fine to control iTunes when it is open and playing, but do not launch the program instead of Music. Was hoping to have iTunes completely circumvent Music, including for keyboard Play/Pause launching, and iOS device syncing.
Thanks!
Is it possible to give iTunes back control of launching via the keyboard Media keys as part of installing it on unsupported OSes? Pressing play/pause on my keyboard launches the Music app, even after installing iTunes.
Tried that Media Keys Enabler app on Github but doesn't work (at least on Big Sur), it still launches Music instead of iTunes, as it wasn't really designed for this use case.
The media keys work fine to control iTunes when it is open and playing, but do not launch the program instead of Music. Was hoping to have iTunes completely circumvent Music, including for keyboard Play/Pause launching, and iOS device syncing.
Thanks!
I don't use Music at all now so I'm not sure. I would suspect that if there isn't a library there for Music, it would grab the old iTunes library as a starting point, just like when I installed Catalina for the first time but I don't know.
You could always export stuff like playlists and import into Music if that is your want. As you aren't exactly "copying" from one app to another, all you are doing is adding text entries to a respective library file, whether thats iTunes library itl or Music library itl
alright so i installed big sur and now i cant exit full screen mode with the normal buttons, and it wont play anything off my account (only stuff downloaded previously to my disk)
can't minimize in windowed mode either, yellow button doesnt work, but red does
yay....fml
edit: re-installing itunes entirely via retroactive and enabling full disk access seems to have fixed the music not streaming, but the minimize/full screen issue isnt going away and can only be undone by the following
if anyone knows a fix, please halp
can't minimize in windowed mode either, yellow button doesnt work, but red does
yay....fml
edit: re-installing itunes entirely via retroactive and enabling full disk access seems to have fixed the music not streaming, but the minimize/full screen issue isnt going away and can only be undone by the following
if anyone knows a fix, please halp
Last edited:
I use iTunes for both music and podcasts in Big Sur and Catalina. The lack of audio file import in the new Podcast app is the main reason I don't use it. Over the years I have seen many people complain about iTunes being bloated. And now they have their separate apps. However, I never agreed with this premise. To me it total makes sense to at least have all your audio in one app, and then to be able to sync iPods and iPhones within that app. I'm very grateful for the Retroactive app!
I've tried installing iTunes 12.9 on to Big Sur 11.1. It keeps crashing when trying to open it. Music in and of itself works fine enough but I've found that when I sync music to my phone anything that I'd listened to on my phone won't transfer back play counts, or recently played back to Music. Has anyone found this as well? If so is there a fix just for music without also having to install iTunes, which as I said crashes every time I try to open it.