7 cool tips and tricks for Apple’s new iTunes 10
MacYourself
At this point, iTunes is so much a part of our daily lives that it’s a major
event every time Apple touches it. While iTunes 10 is very similar to its
predecessors, it still brings some new things to the table.
Most of the attention paid to iTunes 10 centers around its (generic) new icon,
as well as its Ping social network. So let’s take a different approach and
completely ignore those, instead focusing on 7 smaller and, in many cases, more
practical iTunes 10 tips and tricks.
1. Get the horizontal traffic lights back
Although it was an admirable attempt at better utilizing the available space,
Apple’s decision to vertically stack the close, minimize, and zoom buttons is
just too radical a change for many people to accept. The argument is that it’s
completely inconsistent with the user interface guidelines Apple themselves
created. So, if you’d like the horizontal traffic lights to return, simply run
this command in Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and restart iTunes:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1
To go back to the vertical traffic lights, replace the -1 with -0 and run the
command again.
2. Play media from any iPod, iPhone, or iPad
Let’s say a friend came over and you wanted to listen to his iPod’s music on
your computer. When it was connected you used to have to disable automatic
syncing. Even then, an iPhone or iPad wouldn’t play its content when plugged
into iTunes. iTunes 10 opens this feature up to all iDevices and doesn’t
require turning off syncing. It just works – with movies, TV shows, & podcasts
too!
3. Artwork music player
You know how you can click on an album’s cover art in the lower-left corner of
iTunes to enlarge it? In iTunes 10, it’s not just for show – they’ve built
playback controls into it. You can even close the main iTunes window and use
the artwork viewer as a mini player.
4. Get the old Album view back
One of the features highlighted by Steve Jobs when he introduced iTunes 10 was
the new Album view, which only shows cover art when an album has 5 or more
songs. If the album has less songs, it doesn’t waste the space with extra
vertical rows. Don’t worry, though! If you’re longing for the old Album view,
you can still get it back. Go to View > Always show artwork and it’ll be like
nothing ever changed.
5. Sync specific albums and genres
iTunes 10 offers more advanced music syncing choices, allowing users to sync
selected albums and genres in addition to the existing artist and playlist
options.
6. Remove checkboxes
If you’re one of those people who never utilized the checkboxes in your iTunes
library, you now have the option to remove them. It’s a nice way of taking back
horizontal space. Just go to iTunes > Preferences in the menu bar and uncheck
“Show list checkboxes” under the General tab.
7. Remove source icons
Do you hate the monochrome icons in iTunes 10′s sidebar? While some have
resorted to hacking the old colored icons back into the software, there is
another option. Under the General tab in iTunes Preferences, you can uncheck
“Show source icons” and get rid of them entirely.
Related Articles:
Small hard drive? Split your iTunes library across multiple volumes
Push media to iTunes 9 with “Automatically Add to iTunes” folder
Free Giveaway! Clean up your iTunes library with TuneUp
Toggle time totals, precisely scrub playback & volume in iTunes
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