TUAW Tip: Multitasking in iTunes

Pressing Command-L will take you to the currently playing track in the currently playing playlist.

Holy cow... that is awesome! I get tired of the view flipping automatically.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

FYI, iTunes doesn't automatically switch to the sync window any more.

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.