Manage your media

iTunes is not dead! Well, the app is. But iCloud still organizes your entertainment

PRESUMING YOU HAVEN’T been living in a cave without 4G for 10 months (and if you have, we hope this copy of Mac|Life is a welcome reintroduction to civilisation), you’ll know the iTunes app’s been replaced in macOS Catalina with Music and TV. Podcasts also get their own app, while your audiobooks are now in Books. None of this changes how your content syncs, but you’ll need to rediscover your settings.

As we discussed in our macOS Catalina feature (ML #166), the first time you run Music or TV, the existing single iTunes library on your Mac should convert to new Music and TV libraries. This also sorts out your podcasts and audiobooks. Showing your purchases from the iTunes Store is a separate matter. For Books, go to System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud, click Options beside iCloud Drive and check Books. In Podcasts, check Podcasts > Preferences > Advanced > Sync subscriptions across devices. In Books, sign in on the Store menu.

In TV, it’s the Account menu. It’s the same in Music, but also ensure Sync Library is checked in Music > Preferences > General if you have a subscription to Apple Music, the “all you can eat” service, or iTunes Match, which syncs Apple’s copies of tracks you’ve imported from elsewhere (Apple Music also includes this). You will then find all your previous purchases listed in each app’s Library view. Simply move the cursor over a track or video and you will see a cloud icon that you can click to download it to your Mac. It will stay there unless you click More (…) and choose Remove Download. This deletes the file from your Mac, but you can re–download it at any time.