Filed under: Tips and tricks, iTunes, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: Multitasking in iTunes
Have you ever been playing one of your finely-tuned playlists, blissfully grooving to the music, only to connect your iPod or iPhone and lose your place? In other words, iTunes (if you've set it to automatically sync) will move your view from whatever playlist you're in to the sync window. That's handy, of course, but if you forgot which playlist you were in, it can be a pain. I have several playlists set to random, and when I try to go back, it re-shuffles the order. There are other multi-tasking issues with iTunes that largely stem from its one-window interface. If you want to browse the store and manage a playlist, for example, you're stuck doing a lot of scrolling. But iTunes isn't really one window!
If you double-click the title of a playlist, it allows you to edit the name of the playlist, right? But if you double-click the icon of a playlist (for a standard list it'll be a little blue note to the left of the title), iTunes will open an entirely new window, as seen above. You can open a bunch of these if you like and it works with TV, Movies, pretty much everything on the left side. It's much easier to drag and drop songs this way if you have a bunch of playlists. Plus, the window menu will give you quick access to whatever you opened, or you can switch through them with Exposé.
Note: yes, this has been in iTunes for a long time.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Yoshi1080 said 2:42PM on 7-17-2009
To be honest, the rare times I happen to open a second iTunes window, it is usually by accident. When I don't expect it to happen it is really annoying. What you described above sounds useful, though; I never thought of that. Maybe I will give it another try.
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socioecoboy said 3:29AM on 7-19-2009
Wow, I'm along the same lines. I saw this, but it ever occurred to me how it was working. Thanks for this explanation. I will definitely use this.
Devin said 2:52PM on 7-17-2009
FYI, iTunes doesn't automatically switch to the sync window any more.
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Isai said 3:10PM on 7-17-2009
iTunes has done stuff like that to me several times. Whether it's loading an Audio CD, iPod, iPhone, or, mainly, when I am in Safari and I click on an App I'm reading about. iTunes opens the link, and then it goes into the iTunes Store to show me the App I just clicked on.
Simple solution (also available in iTunes for a while now):
In iTunes, hit Command+L. This sends you to the song/movie/podcast you are currently listening to, in the PLAYLIST you were listening. So, even if you are in your Custom Playlist, and then click Library, it'll send you to the Playlist the current song is playing from. Try it out.
The same command is also under "View>Show Current [Song]".
Hope it helps!
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GoingToAlpha said 3:16PM on 7-17-2009
Additionally, in the info window (the place where it says what you are listening to, shows the tiny equalizer, shows progress, etc) if you click the arrow on the RIGHT it scrolls through currently playing, sunch progress, etc. Once you get to whats currently playing if you click the crooked arrow on the RIGHT of the track info, it jumps to the playlist you are in. Perfect for when iTunes thinks it knows what you want better than you know.
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Aerospeed said 11:37PM on 7-17-2009
Command-L does the same thing.
I use it all the time.
GoingToAlpha said 3:17PM on 7-17-2009
Crap, the arrow to the LEFT cycles through the views (playing, synch staus, download staus, mini equalizer). The arrow to the RIGHT will focus on the current playlist.
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Brian said 3:32PM on 7-17-2009
Dayman, ahhaahaa, fighter of the Nightman!
Brian said 3:22PM on 7-17-2009
There is another easy solution to this issue. Within the little display at the top of iTunes where it shows what song is playing, what iPod is syncing, etc, there is a small button to the right of the song name (looks like a little curved undo or rewind arrow). Click that and it will automatically jump to whatever song is currently playing in the current playlist.
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Brian said 3:23PM on 7-17-2009
Oh, nevermind. Looks like GoingToAlpha beat me to it.
mks said 3:36PM on 7-17-2009
The worst issue for me with iTunes (not related to the above though) - trying to burn an MP3 disc... iTunes can convert songs to MP3, but you have to do it manually - if I want to burn an MP3 disc with some of the drm-free AAC files, iTunes fails and displays an error instead of converting them automatically... however if I manually convert them to MP3 with iTunes and then burn, everything is OK.
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Kevin said 3:46PM on 7-17-2009
Holy cow... that is awesome! I get tired of the view flipping automatically.
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SkwidSpawn said 11:29PM on 7-17-2009
Pressing Command-L will take you to the currently playing track in the currently playing playlist.
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