Helpful hints for all your media needs

Bye iTunes, hi TV, Music, Podcasts and… Books?

CATALINA’S REPLACEMENT OF the iTunes app with a suite of new software divided by media type is a bit of a culture shock, but if all goes well it should be less dramatic than it sounds.

When upgrading a Mac to Catalina, your existing media should migrate automatically to the apps that replace iTunes when you first run them. Some initial problems with this process were fixed in macOS 10.15.1. If you don’t see your content after launching the Music app on a Mac that you’ve just upgraded, close the app and open it again while holding Opt. Then navigate to the iTunes Library.itl file that you were previously using. (By default, it’s in ~/Music/iTunes, where “~” is the named Home folder for your user account; but you may have set a different location in iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > iTunes Media folder location.)

Music will offer to upgrade the library to its new format. Everything should then appear as before. If you can’t get Music to read your existing library, any content stored on your Mac still exists in your iTunes Media folder (again, whether in its default location or wherever you chose) and can be reimported as a last resort, but you’ll need to get your library file working to retrieve your playlists.

TV LIBRARY

This works similarly in the TV app, which gets its own separate library generated from the video content that was in your iTunes library. You can check (or change) where each app keeps its new library in Preferences > Files. Only these apps, Music and TV, trigger the library upgrade; if you open Books or Podcasts first, any audiobooks and podcasts that you had stored in the iTunes app will be missing. Run Music or TV, and the other apps will also see your content the next time they’re launched.

The Music app no longer has iTunes’ option to maintain an XML copy of your playlists in ~/Music/ iTunes Media/Music, activated by checking “Share iTunes Library XML with other applications” in iTunes > Preferences > Advanced. If that means nothing to you, it

probably won’t affect you. But some music software, such as DJ apps, relies on the XML to access your iTunes playlists.

However, if you discover that this has stopped working after your upgrade to Catalina, a useful workaround for the problem is to create the required XML file manually. In Music, go to File > Library > Export Library (or Export Playlist). This doesn’t move or copy any music, it just saves an XML file to which you can point your third-party app. You will need to redo this step after you change anything. Most music software makers have either already adopted the superior system for sharing your library that Apple introduced years ago (and which continues to work in Catalina), or are working on it, so the manual XML export should hopefully only be a stopgap measure.