I have a few different computers that that use the same iTunes media folder on a network drive. The media folder contains the iTunes library file and thus all my computers share the same iTunes library.
When I make an iTunes purchase, the purchase is downloaded into this media folder, but will only show up in iTunes on the computer I made the purchase. On the other computers, I have to add the file to iTunes using the file location on the network drive.
Is there some way, that when a file is added to the iTunes media folder, instead of adding the files manually, for all the computers automatically have the file show up in iTunes?
Best Answer
I'm afraid not. It is one feature that personally I feel is sorely needed.
I keep one machine as my 'master' & every so often I port the iTunes Library.xml file across to the other machines.
In order to not make this take the entire day, there is a trick to 'break' the .itl file, which makes the import process take far less time. It does lose playlist info from the recipient machine & a few album covers always tend to go missing, but it's the best workaround I've discovered, after many years of trying.
Remove the existing .itl file from
~/Music/iTunes/then create a new, 'broken' one from Terminal [copy the old one for safety if you prefer, but I've never found a way to manually insert data from one into another]Open Terminal & enter this
touch ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Library.itlThat will create an empty ITL file, broken enough for our purposes.Next time you launch iTunes, it will see the corrupt .itl & rebuild it [it will claim to be importing]. This is very much faster than having an .itl that doesn't match what the .xml thinks it ought to be, minutes rather than hours.