How To Locate Your Itunes Music Library On Mac
There are many reasons why your iTunes library may be lost. Perhaps you bought a new device and accidentally synced it with iTunes, and now you don’t know how to get your old music back. Perhaps you tried to transfer music that you didn’t buy from the official store and you lost your files. In any case, there are ways to restore your lost library, especially with third-party software.
4 Ways to Restore Lost iTunes Library
There are different ways to address this problem. Here are 4 simple ways to restore your lost libraries:
Limited-time offer; offer may end at any time. Free Apple TV+ access for students ends when you no longer qualify or do not renew your Apple Music Student subscription. Offer good for verified college students only and does not extend to a Family Sharing group. Feb 16, 2013 To access all of your iTunes music and songs from the file system you will need to use the appropriate paths listed below, all music, songs, and media stored in iTunes will be found in these locations of either Mac OS X or Windows. ITunes Media Library Location on Macs. Drag your iTunes folder from your desktop onto the external drive, and safely remove the drive once copying has finished. Connect your external drive to your new computer, and drag the iTunes folder from your external drive to the Music folder (Mac) or My Music Folder (Windows). The transfer might take a while if you have a lot of content. Dec 13, 2019 You need to authorize your Mac before you can play these tracks. Once authorized, go to File Library Update iCloud Music Library in the menu at the top of your Mac’s screen or the upper of the iTunes window. If you synced the files tinged with gray to your iOS device from a Mac, toggle on iCloud Music Library on that Mac. Your library will. Change where your iTunes files are stored on Mac. By default, the music, TV shows, movies, podcasts, and other files that appear in your iTunes library are stored here: Home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media. You can change where your iTunes media files are stored.
- Method 1: Recover Lost iTunes Library from Unlimited iDevices
- Method 2: Recover Lost iTunes Library Using iTunes
- Method 3: Restore iTunes Library Using iTunes Match- Paid Yearly
- Method 4: Restore Lost iTunes Library Using iCloud - Only for Purchases
Recover Lost iTunes Library from Unlimited iDevices
Did you know that you can just use your iPhone or iPad to restore your lost iTunes library? You can transfer the data from there to your iTunes library. The problem is that Apple doesn’t really allow you to do this easily a lot of the time because they impose a limit on how many devices can share the same data.
Thankfully, with the third-party application iMyFone iOS Transfer, you can restore the library from unlimited iOS devices. Here is how you can do that:
Step 2: Launch TunesMate. On the first screen, click “Transfer iDevice Media to iTunes.”
Step 3: A window will come up that says “Copy iPhone to iTunes.” Click “Start.”
Step 4: Check the boxes of what kind of media you want to transfer. Click “Start” again.
Step 5: Once the application lets you know that everything has been transferred, click “OK” and you are done.
There are several advantages to this method, including:
- The fact that you can use more than one iDevice.
- You don’t need to open up iTunes.
- You can transfer files that you didn’t necessarily purchase.
- It is fast and easy.
- You can use any iOS device to do this.
Recover Lost iTunes Library Using iTunes
You can do the same thing with iTunes, but it has its limits. Here is how you do it:
Step 1: Close iTunes.
Step 2: Go to where your library file is. In Windows, this is Users[Username]MusiciTunes. For Mac, you go to Go > Home, and then click to open your Music folder, then the iTunes folder.
Step 3: Take the iTunes Library.itl file and drag it to your desktop.
Step 4: Find the Previous iTunes Libraries folder and go into that directory.
Step 5: There should be a file named “iTunes Library [DATE],” where [DATE] is the date of when you last updated your iTunes library. It should be in a year, month, and day format.
Step 6: Copy the file and paste it into your iTunes folder.
Step 7: Rename the file “iTunes Library.itl” (without the quotation marks).
Step 8: Hold down the “Option” key (Mac) or “Shift” key (Windows) while opening iTunes.
Step 9: A dialog box should pop up asking you to choose a library. Click “Choose Library” and browse for the your new iTunes Library.itl file.
After that, iTunes should now be using your previous library. There are some limitations to this of course. For one, it takes a lot of time compared to using software like iMyFone iOS Transfer. Also, if none of your old libraries on you computer are satisfactory, then you’re out of luck.
Restore iTunes Library Using iTunes Match - Paid Yearly
iTunes Match is a nice service that will automatically back up your library to the cloud. Here is how you can use it to restore your library:
Step 2: You will have to pay a fee every year: click “Subscribe for $24.99.”
Step 3: Sign in and Match will go through your library and scan the files.
Step 4: Match will automatically store official music in your account. The rest of your files will need to be uploaded to the service; this will take a moment, depending on how many files you have.
Step 5: After it’s done, click “OK.”
Now you can use this backup to restore your library in the future, but of course this won’t do you much good after you’ve already lost your library. This is why preventative measures are important.
Move your iTunes library to another computer. If you get a new computer, you can transfer your iTunes library by connecting computers or by using iPod or a portable drive. See the Apple Support article Back up and restore your iTunes library on your PC. There are a few ways to transfer your iTunes library from one computer to another. When you get a new Mac, use Setup Assistant (or Migration Assistant, if you’re switching from Windows) to move files — including your iTunes files — from your old computer to the new one. Mac move itunes library to another drive windows 10. How to Move Your iTunes Library. You can move your iTunes library to a different folder, computer, or drive. Here's how to do it, even in macOS Catalina, which ditches iTunes for the Music app.
The main problem with iTunes Match is that it costs money. It’s fairly inexpensive, but if you don’t want to pay a recurring yearly fee, then try something else.
Restore Lost iTunes Library Using iCloud - Only for Purchases
You can also use iCloud, but this only works for purchases.Step 1: Launch iTunes and go to iTunes Store.
Step 2: Under “Quick Links” at the right-side of the screen, click where it says “Purchased.”
Step 3: Choose the type of media you want to download. You can do this by clicking buttons next to the listen types of media.
Step 4: After your purchases are listed, click on the download icon next to the music / media that you want to download. This should download the files to your iTunes library.
The main limitation of this method is of course that you can only transfer data that you purchased without losing it. All you can really do is just re-download your purchases. If you have a lot of files that you didn’t buy from the official store, then you won’t be able to get those back using iCloud.
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iTunes keeps track of your media content and playlists in a library file. Sometimes you might open iTunes only to find that you have lost all the library content including music, movies, TV shows, apps, songs, and playlists but when you check the path of the files, the music is still in their folders.
Losing the iTunes music library is a prevalent problem to some users who have just updated their iTunes applications. Also enabling iCloud Music Library may cause the error of unable to connect to iTunes library. When this happens all the media content previously on your library disappears. If you are a victim of this annoying and horrible issue, read on, we have a right solution to fix it.
- Method 1: How to Fix “Lost iTunes Music on the Computer”
- Method 2: Fix “Lost iTunes Music on the Computer” with iMyFone TunesMate
Method 1: How to Fix “Lost iTunes Music on the Computer”
As a precaution, iTunes always keeps a copy of the library that was there before the software update. With the right procedure, one can be able to recover or restore the lost iTunes library by rebuilding it from the old one that was there before the version upgrade. To do this follow the following steps:
Step 1: Close the iTunes application on your Mac or PC.
Step 2: Navigate and locate the folder that contains the iTunes library and all your media files.
- On a Mac: go to Home > Music > iTunes
- On a Windows PC: got to Users > Username > My Music > iTunes
Step 3: Once you open the iTunes folder on your Mac or PC, locate the Library.itl file and then drag it to your desktop.
Step 4: Open the folder named ‘Previous iTunes Libraries’ and from there locate the most recent iTunes library according to their dates. Find the file called iTunes Library YYYY-MM-DD which appears to be the most recent. YYYY represents the Year, MM the month and DD the date when the library was created.
Step 5: After locating the most recent, select it and then copy it using the keyboard shortcuts. On a Mac press Cmd + C and windows press Ctrl + C.
Step 6: Move back to the iTunes folder and if using a Mac press Cmd + V. if using windows press Ctrl + V to paste the copied file.
Step 7: After the YYYY-MM-DD file is copied to your iTunes folder, rename it to ‘iTunes Library.itl.’
Step 8: Once all that is done, then open iTunes while holding the option key on Mac or Shift on windows. A message will thereafter pop up asking you to choose iTunes Library.
Step 9: Click choose library and select the iTunes library.itl file you have just renamed.
Step 10: Once everything is restored, delete the iTunes Library.itl file you moved to the desktop entirely from your computer.
These steps will help you recover the lost iTunes music on the computer. However, there is a small set back as any modifications you had made to your library after the date on the iTunes library you used will not be included or re-added.
Method 2: Fix “Lost iTunes Music on the Computer” with iMyFone TunesMate
If the steps above did not fix the issue, don’t panic yet. You can restore your iTunes library from your iPhone, iPad or iPod using iMyFone TunesMate.
iMyFone TunesMate is an application that has been designed to manage your iTunes library including backup and restore professionally. It is maintained and regularly updated by iMyFone. The software can selectively autodetect and preview any media content on your iDevices and not on your iTunes library and then copy the new files without deleting the old data.
Key Features:
- Restore iTunes Libraries - Ability to restore lost iTunes libraries by copying media files from your iPhone/iPad/iPod.
- Support Unlimited iDevice - Can transfer and restore media content to and from an unlimited number of iDevices, freely overcoming the many iTunes limitations.
- Support All Music - It supports transfer of not only purchased Apple music but also non-purchased music from other places freely .
- Trusted by Users - Received lots of positive media reviews and is full compatible with iOS 11.
Steps to get back your lost iTunes music on computer with iMyFone TunesMate
Step 1: Run iMyFone TunesMate on your computer and then connect your iPhone using a USB cable.
Step 2: Click 'Transfer iDevice Media to iTunes' from the Home interface and on the popup window click “Start” to scan your iDevice for all the media content, not on iTunes.
Step 3: Once the scan is done click 'Start' button to begin the transfer process then “Complete' button from the pop-up window after it finishes.
Once done you will have successfully restored your lost iTunes music library from your iPhone, iPad or iPod.