Itunes' Little Secrets

When Itunes was upgraded to version 9 a few months ago, it brought with it a handful of new features and design revisions. Some were heavily touted, others slipped in as Easter Eggs. In this post I will discuss a couple lesser known newly added features.

One annoying quirk of previous versions of Itunes was that all the content in your library was grouped under the "Music" folder. All television shows, whether purchased from the Itunes store or added to Itunes, were grouped under a subfolder of the Music folder. As were movies, podcasts, etc. Itunes 9 introduced the capability to restructure your content in a more sensible manner. If you upgraded from a previous version of Itunes, launch the application, hit up File>Library>Organize Library. Select the box to "Upgrade to iTunes Media organization". Sit back and relax and let Itunes do its thing. If you did not upgrade from a previous version of Itunes, there is no need to go through this process, as your library is organized by default.

A second little known but quite handy feature of Itunes 9 is the ability to add content to your library without actually launching the application first. Itunes has become a bloated slug as of late, so it would be nice to add some files without bogging down your resources. Once your library has been reorganized using the method described above, navigate to the location of your Itunes library. You should now see a folder called "Automatically Add to iTunes". Admittingly, it is not in the most convenient of locations. What you can do, however, is create an alias of this folder and move it to the desktop. You can create the alias by cmd-clicking the folder and selecting "Make Alias". What I did was move this Alias to the desktop and rename it "Add To Itunes". As the name states, compatible files added to this folder will be added to Itunes. If Itunes is closed at the time, the files will be added to your library the instant it is opened. The files will also be removed from this folder and organized with the rest of your media. There you have a quick shortcut to adding files to Itunes.