Terminal Tips: How to Get Tunes Off of Your iPod
I mentioned this in the comments to a post yesterday and thought it warranted a post. If you want to get some
songs off of your iPod, iPod mini, or iPod shuffle, they are within easy reach. The files are rendered invisible
if you open up your iPod in the Finder; however, you can see all the invisible files rather easily by using the
Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities/).
All of the music on your iPod / iPod mini / iPod shuffle can be found inside the Music folder which is located
inside the iPod_Control folder on your iPod. Both of these folders are invisible. At the Terminal, simply
type cd /Volumes/YOURIPODSNAME/iPod_Control/Music/ and then hit return. If your iPod has a space in
the name then you will need to type a \ before the space. For example, an iPod named iPod Joe
would need to be typed iPod\ Joe. Now type ls and then hit return. This will
list all the invisible folders inside your iPod’s Music folder. They will all be numbered F00,
F01, F02, etc. Now simply type open F00 to open the first folder.
This will open the F00 folder in a Finder Window. All of the files contained inside will be visible and you can
drag them wherever you like.
Now for every folder you want to open, simply type open and then the name of the folder. If you want to open all the
folders within your Music folder at once (be warned that this can take a while if you have a large collection on the
iPod), simply type open F** and hit return. Have fun!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Henning said 10:44PM on 7-17-2005
Great tip. thx. but, when i do as described i do see all files but names read like: PABP.mp3, PTBZ.m4a, etc. i use itunes 4.9 and the latest iPod update on a iPod 3rd generation. any comments? anything i do wrong?
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Small Paul said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Ah, come now. If we're in the Terminal anyway, shouldn't we be dispensing with all this dragging nonsense?
The following comman copies all files from your iPod's music folders to a folder called 'iPodMusicFiles' on your desktop.
cp /Volumes/YOURIPODSNAME/iPod_Control/Music/F*/* ~/Desktop/iPodMusicFiles/
I strongly suggest y'all have a read of 'Learning Unix For Mac OS X' from O'Reilly: Unix is, frankly, fantastic.
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Andrew Ho said 8:39PM on 9-01-2005
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Two quick things to note. Firstly, you also need to escape
characters such as an apostrophe ('). The other thing to note is
that you don't need to do
$ open F**
As the asterisk wildcards for any character repeated from zero to an
infinite number of times. Thus, only
$ open F*
is necessary.
Oh, and one other thing - if you want to copy them all into one big
directory, try this:
$ cp ./F*/*.mp3 ~/Desktop/temp
To copy them to a directory called temp on your Desktop. You might
have to be careful because if two files are named the same, then the
second will overwrite the first. Thus,
$ cp -i ./F*/*.mp3 ~/Desktop/temp
might be more appropriate as it will prompt for overwriting.
- -- Andy
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C.K. Sample, III said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Hey Andy,
Thanks for the added info. One question though: Does cp simply move the files or does it copy them and then erase the originals from the iPod? I ask this as I tried it a while back with some other copy commands and one of them had that unwanted result.
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brian said 4:18PM on 6-24-2005
'cp' will copy them. 'mv' is 'move' and will delete the originals. But 'cp' copies them so the originals are unharmed.
Easiest possible way:
cd to the directory with all the numbered F folders. Then:
cp -rv ./* ~/Desktop/temp/
The 'r' stands for 'recursive,' i.e. 'get all folders, subfolders, and contained files.' The 'v' means 'be verbose,' i.e. 'show me the names of all the files you're copying as you're copying them.' That way you get some feedback.
UNIX's default quietness can be unsettling to new users. If you're copying a few gigs of music, these commands can take quite a while, and by default, cp will just sit there, silently doing its thing, and drop you back to a prompt when done, which could be quite a while. Seeing the names fly by lets you know something's actually happening and it won't slow the process down any. (OK, maybe 0.0001%, but not enough that you'd notice.)
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Doug Adams said 12:42PM on 9-08-2005
Here's an AppleScript that will "reveal" the files of selected iPod tracks:
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=showipodsongfiles
And another that will import the files of selected iPod tracks to your Music folder:
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=importipodaudiofiles
Both use "do shell script" UNIX commands.
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Andrew Ho said 8:39PM on 9-01-2005
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Brian:
It should be noted that if you add the -R (or -r) option, then the
entire directory tree will be copied (you probably already know this,
but just in case some people don't). Thus you will end up with the
F00 etc folders still there.
- -- Andy
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Graydon said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
One of the things that bothers me about the Shuffle is that it can have only one "home" computer. Could you use the Terminal to manually move files onto the Shuffle from a different computer and then be able to play them? Or is there an internal index that needs to be updated as well? It would be nice to be able to populate the shuffle from work and home.
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C.K. Sample, III said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Graydon....internal index. However, you could simply redefine the "Home computer" each time you plug the shuffle in, since it asks "This iPod is associated with another computer. Would you like to associate it with this one instead? Doing so will erase all songs on the shuffle." or something very close to that...
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Jose L. Hales-Garcia said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Small Paul said:
"The following comman copies all files from your iPod's music folders to a folder called 'iPodMusicFiles' on your desktop.
cp /Volumes/YOURIPODSNAME/iPod_Control/Music/F*/* ~/Desktop/iPodMusicFiles/"
In a traditional UNIX system I'd agree, but this is Mac OS X (which IMHO is better). So I recommend using 'ditto -rsrcFork' instead of cp. It preserves resource and HFS meta-data. Use it just as you would the cp command. Check out the ditto man page for more info.
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Jose L. Hales-Garcia said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Thank you for this tip. I got iPodRip to do the copy without thinking too much about it. Of course the data would be in the Volumes folder, duh.
By the way, just to be complete (OS 9 and Windows users may like to know) you can open these invisible folders from the Finder by going to the "Go to Folder..." menu item under the Go menu, typing: /Volumes/YOURIPODSNAME/iPod_Control/Music/ and clicking on the "Go" button.
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