Macos – access mac iTunes library from an iPad

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Can I access my iMac based iTunes library from my iPad over my home wifi? I know I can sync them up but the library is too big.

Edit; just to clear(er), the movies, podcasts etc which are stored on the iMac, I want to watch them on my iPad without syncing. I know I can create playlist to sync a subset of my library, but that is not what I want.

What I'm thinking about is using my iPad as a kind of portable apple TV.

Best Answer

I just tried it on my iPhone, but it should be similar for iPad.

Download the Remote application from the iTunes/App Store.

Open it and enable Home Sharing, enter your Apple ID credentials. Open iTunes on your Mac, select Advanced » Turn On Home Sharing. Enter your Apple ID credentials there.

Now your iOS device can access your Mac's library and you can remotely control iTunes from your iOS device by using Remote. You can play the audio via the computer's speakers, or via any connected AirTunes speaker. Which the iPad is sadly not.

Get Airfoil by Rogue Amoeba and the free companion app Airfoil Speakers Touch from the App Store.

Open Airfoil Speakers Touch to make your iOS device into a remote speaker for Airfoil. Start Airfoil on your Mac and select System Audio as the content to stream, and the destination NameOfYouriPad.

Switch back to Remote on your iOS device to control iTunes. As long as Airfoil Speakers Touch is running in the background, all audio from your computer is streamed to your iOS device.

If you want to stream video, get Air Video.

Related Solutions

Networking – Share single iTunes library across multiple computers

I have this set up at home. (Windows XP/Vista/7)

All music resides on my file server on a drive called M:\. This drive is shared as \\fileserver\m\. The Itunes library file is located at M:\Music\Itunes\ituneslibrary.xml.

Every computer maps the network drive \\fileserver\m\ as M:\, thereby making the paths to the files the same on all systems.

Load iTunes on each machine. During startup press Shift (windows) or Option (mac) to select the library file. On each machine you'll select M:\Music\Itunes\ituneslibrary.xml

You can add media from any system by simply dropping it into the M:\Music folder (or wherever your tunes reside). It will not get added to itunes on its own (Thanks alot Apple!), so you need to use iTunes Library Updater (ILU). This will add all your songs to iTunes and remove songs that you've deleted behind iTunes' back.

Some limitations: When you modify a playlist or something on one computer, you need to close iTunes to save the library information. Say you open up iTunes on two machines at the same time, make changes on one and close, it will save that library. If you then close the other one it will save it's version of the itunes library (without your changes you made on the other one). So be careful with that one.

How does an iPhone know which mp3s are podcasts

I think that the way that iTunes separates out podcasts in the Library has to do with how podcasts are synced. Podcast are handled differently than Mp3s.

I just dug into the iTunes Music Library.xml and saw that on podcasts, the following elements appear under podcasts

<key>Podcast</key><true/>

So it has to to with the fact that iTunes flags podcasts as such, and know to handle them differently.

UPDATE: Also, its more than just that key-value pair on the podcast entry, because if you add that key-value pair to any song, it gets removed by iTunes when you close it

UPDATE 2: I also found the entry specifying the Podcast "playlist"

    <dict>
        <key>Name</key><string>Podcasts</string>
        <key>Playlist ID</key><integer>11896</integer>
        <key>Playlist Persistent ID</key><string>6D71FCACB79A978D</string>
        <key>Distinguished Kind</key><integer>10</integer>
        <key>Podcasts</key><true/>
        <key>All Items</key><true/>
        <key>Playlist Items</key>
        <array>
            <dict>
                <key>Track ID</key><integer>7194</integer>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>Track ID</key><integer>7192</integer>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>Track ID</key><integer>7190</integer>
            </dict>
        </array>
    </dict>

Long story short, iTunes is doing a lot of work in the background!!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Networking – Share single iTunes library across multiple computers

How does an iPhone know which mp3s are podcasts

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