Copy Tunes From Your iPod to Your Mac

Copy Music From Your iPod to Your Mac
How to Find Your iPods Hidden Folders with Terminal
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images

It’s genuine; you may replica your music out of your iPod to your Mac, essentially turning your iPod into an emergency backup of any of the media files you have got saved in your iPod. There are few matters that Mac users dread extra than the unexpected loss of information, whether it is from a failed hard drive or the accidental deletion of documents. No rely upon losing your files; you may be happy you’ve been performing everyday backups.

What? You haven’t any backups, and also, you just by accident deleted some of your favorite tunes and videos out of your Mac? Well, all might not be lost, at least now not in case you’ve been retaining your iPod synced together with your computer iTunes library. If so, your iPod can function as your backup. By following these instructions, you need to be capable of reproducing your track, films, and movies from your iPod on your Mac and then add them again to your iTunes library.

A quick be aware earlier than we start: If you’re using iTunes 7 or later, refer to Restore Your iTunes Music Library by using Copying the Music From Your iPod. If you’re using an older version of iTunes, examine on for the guide technique of moving content material from your iPod returned to your Mac.

What You Need
An iPod together with your content material intact.
A Mac in completely operational condition.
An iPod syncing cable.

Content Summary show

Prevent iTunes From Syncing iPod related to an iMac

Hold down the Command and Option key whilst you plug your iPod into your Mac. Justin Sullivan / Staff / Getty Images. Before you connect your iPod to your Mac, you must save your iTunes from syncing with your iPod. If it does, it will delete all the statistics on your iPod. Why? Because at this point, your iTunes library is lacking a few or all the songs or different files on your iPod. If you sync your iPod with iTunes, you’ll grow to be with an iPod it’s missing the identical files that your iTunes library is missing.

Warning: the following instructions for disabling iTunes syncing are for variations of iTunes earlier than iTunes 7. Do no longer use the method define beneath, except you’re using an older model of iTunes. You can find out more approximately the various versions of iTunes, and the way syncing is disabled at:

Recover Your iTunes Music Library From Your iPod

Disable Syncing

Press and keep the Command + Option keys while you plug for your iPod. Don’t release the Command + Option keys till you see your iPod show in iTunes. Confirm that your iPod is hooked up in iTunes and on your Mac’s computing device.

IPod Not Showing Up?

Getting your iPod to reveal up to your computing device can seem to be hit or omit once in a while. Before you pull your hair out, strive for those two tricks: Click on a clean location of your desktop, and pick Preferences from the Finder menu. Select the General tab. Make sure there is a check mark inside the field labeled CDs, DVDs, and iPods.
Select the Sidebar tab. Locate the Devices section of the list, and make sure a checkmark in the field categorized CDs, DVDs, and iPods. IPod Still Not at the Desktop? Launch Terminal, positioned at /Applications/Utilities. At the Terminal activate, enter the following: diskutil list after which press go back or enter. Look for the name of your iPod underneath the NAME column.

Once you discover your iPod name, test to the proper and discover the disk wide variety positioned under the IDENTIFIER column. Make a word of the disk name; it has to be something like a disk with a range of after it, including disk3. In the Terminal window, input the subsequent on the Terminal activate: diskutil mount disk# wherein disk# is the disk name determined inside the Identifier column, as mentioned above. An instance might be:

diskutil mount disk3
Press enter or go back.
Your iPod ought to now be set up on your Mac’s computer.
View Your iPods Hidden Folders
Terminal command to view hidden folders

Use Terminal to find your Mac’s hidden secrets. Screenshot courtesy of Coyote Moon, Inc. Once you mount your iPod on your Mac’s desktop, you’ll moderately expect a good way to use the Finder to browse via its files. But in case you double-click the iPod icon on your computing device, you will see simply three folders indexed: Calendars, Contacts, and Notes. Where are the music files? Apple chose to hide the folders that comprise an iPod’s media files, but you may, without problems, make these hidden folders seen by way of the usage of Terminal, the command-line interface included with OS X.

Terminal Is Your Friend
Launch Terminal, positioned at /Applications/Utilities/.
Type or reproduce/paste the following commands. Press the go-back key once you input every line.
Defaults write com.Apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

The traces you enter into Terminal will allow the Finder to show all the hidden files in your Mac. The first line tells the Finder to display all documents, no matter how the hidden flag is about. The second line stops and restarts the Finder so that the adjustments can take effect. You may additionally see your computer disappear and reappear while you execute these instructions; that is normal.

Locate the Media Files on Your iPod
Finder showing song files on an iPod

The hidden music documents no longer recognize names without difficulty—screenshot courtesy of Coyote Moon, Inc. Now which you’ve told the Finder to display all hidden files, you can use it to find your media files and duplicate them to your Mac.

Where’s the Music?

Double-click the iPod icon for your computer or click on the iPod’s name in a Finder window’s sidebar.
Open the iPod Control folder. Open the Music folder. The Music folder contains your track and any movie or video files you copied on your iPod. You may be amazed to find out that the folders and documents inside the Music folder aren’t named in any difficult discernable manner. The folders constitute your numerous playlists; the files in every folder are the media files, songs, audiobooks, podcasts, or films associated with that particular playlist. Fortunately, even though the file names do not include any recognizable data, the internal ID3 tags are intact. As a result, any utility that could study ID3 tags can type the files out for you. (Not to fear; iTunes can read ID3 tags so that you need to look no in addition to your very own pc.)

Copy the iPod’s Data to Your Mac

Now that you realize where your iPod shop’s media files, you can reproduction their lower back for your Mac. The simplest manner to do this is to apply the Finder to pull and drop the files to the correct region. I advocate copying them to a new folder on your desktop.

Use the Finder to Copy Files

Right-click on a clean region of your computing device and pick ‘New Folder’ from the pop-up menu. Name the brand new folder iPod Recovered or every other name that moves your fancy. Drag the Music folder from your iPod to the newly created folder to your Mac. The Finder will begin the document copying process. This can also take a while, relying on the number of facts on the iPod. Have a coffee (or lunch, when you have lots of documents). When you come back, proceed to the next step.

Add the Recovered Music Back to iTunes

iTunes alternatives

Let iTunes manipulate your library. Screenshot courtesy of Coyote Moon, Inc. At this point, you have correctly recovered your iPod’s media documents and copied them to a folder in your Mac. The subsequent step is to use the Add to Library command in iTunes to add iTunes documents.

Configure iTunes Preferences
Open iTunes Preferences with the aid of choosing ‘Preferences’ from the iTunes menu.
Select the ‘Advanced tab.
Place a take a look at mark after ‘Keep iTunes Music folder prepared.’
Place a test mark next to ‘Copy documents to iTunes Music folder while including to library.’
Click the ‘OK’ button.
Add to Library
Select ‘Add to Library’ from the iTunes File menu.
Browse to the folder that includes your recovered iPod music.
Click the ‘Open’ button.

iTunes will replica the files to its library; it’ll also read the ID3 tags to set every track’s name, artist, album genre, and so forth. You can also run into one unusual little quirk, depending on which iPod you’ve got and which version of iTunes you are the use of. Occasionally whilst the Add to Library command is used on recovered iPod documents, iTunes might not be capable of seeing the media documents in the song folder that you copied from your iPod, even though you may see them simply great in the Finder. To paintings around this hassle, create a new folder to your computer, then reproduce the person track documents from the iPod Recovered folder to the brand new folder. For instance, inside your iPod Recovered folder (or something you chose to call it) may be a chain of folders called F00, F01, F02, etc. Inside the F series of folders are your media documents, with names like BBOV.Aif, BXMX.M4a, and so on. Copy the BBOV.Aif, BXMX.M4a, and different media documents to the brand new folder in your computing device. Then, use the Add to Library command in iTunes to feature them for your iTunes library.

Send Those Formerly Hidden Files Back Into Hiding

During the recovery system, you made all the hidden files and folders on your Mac visible. Now each time you use the Finder, you spot all varieties of odd-looking entries. You recovered the formerly hidden files. You needed to send them all again into hiding.