1. Sep 29, 2011 Sharing an iPhoto or iTunes library between two users is a common request, but Apple doesn't make this easy. How Do I Share iPhoto and iTunes Libraries Between Two Users? They recommend.
2. Jul 12, 2019  Before you move on, check on the size of your library by right-clicking on your iTunes folder and selecting Get Info. You’ll want to make sure your external hard drive has enough space to hold your library. How to back up iTunes to an external hard drive. Plug your external hard drive into a USB port on your Mac and open it in Finder.

By making one change in your iTunes preferences, you can use music in iTunes that is stored outside of your Music folder. This allows you to collect and organize your music on a shared drive and still have it play within iTunes. You can then have those same music file available to other Macs on your network.

Check out MacMost Now 773: Storing iTunes Music On a Shared Drive at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

Jun 09, 2015 1. Two imacs with separate apple ID’s but the same itunes account 2. Media files stored on external network drive 3. Common library file stored on network drive 4. Default location for ripped and downloaded files etc set at the media directory on the network drive. Sep 24, 2019  Create a New iTunes Library Location. If your new iTunes library will be on an external drive, make sure the drive is plugged into your Mac and turned on. Launch iTunes, if it isn't already open. From the iTunes menu, choose iTunes Preferences. Oct 16, 2012  The best way to do what you want is to put the library on a desktop mac of some kind. You'd want a fast Firewire external drive and then from inside itunes you 'share' the library. This way the. 'Sharing the library' is something of a misnomer when it comes to manually keeping one iTunes Media folder synchronised between two different machines & two different iTunes instances. You can do it, but each copy of iTunes will want to be 'in charge' & they will not auto-synchronise at all. How to move your iTunes Library to another location: Transfer your iTunes library to an external drive Another option if your iTunes library is too big is to copy everything to an external drive.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let me show you how to share your iTunes Media with other users on your network.So this is one of the most common questions that I get asked. People have lots of music stored on their Mac and they want to save it, say on a network drive in their house and have those same files be used by multiple Macs. In other words you have one copy of an MP3 file and you can use that on two or more Macs in your house.So the way to do that of course is to put the music on some sort of network drive. It could be a drive attached to an iMac or some computer that is always on. It could be a drive attached to your airport extreme, it could be some sort of network server that you've got. You have that drive accessible to all the Macs in your house. Now you can put your iTunes music on that drive and have it used in iTunes libraries on all the different Macs as long as you check one little box in iTunes.So in iTunes I am going to go to iTunes preferences and I want to go to the advance tab. There I've got the option, 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.' This is the critical one. When you add something to your iTunes Library it will then appear there in the music folder. So a physical copy will be made and put there. This means that all your music, everything you add to iTunes, is going to be in this one location available to the one user on your one Mac.Turn this off it will stop doing this. Which means that you can add music that will then stay where it was and be available in iTunes. It will just link to the file externally. So you can have one copy on a shared drive and you can have two users on your network linked to that same file and it won't copy to either one of those. You have got to turn that off on every copy of iTunes that you are going to do this.So now if I look in my music in here I can Control/Click on anything that I want and go Show in Finder. It will bring up a Finder window. In this case I can see that this song is in a sub folder inside my music folder inside my iTunes Media folder inside of iTunes inside my Music folder inside my User folder. So this is exactly where I don't want it because it is available just to me. I want to share this.So what I want to do is if I go up here to this level I can see that I've got four different artists here in my music folder. I want to take these and I want to move these, copy them somewhere else. So in this case I have this other drive here. It can be a shared drive or an attached drive. Let's pretend it is a shared drive and I'm going to move all this. I already have an artist there and some music stored there. I'm going to copy all the music to it. So now I've got copies on this shared drive here as well as my original still in place. The originals here are what is linked to iTunes. So now if I go over to iTunes once this is done copying then I can select all of the songs here, Command A, and I'm going to hit the delete key and I'm going to make sure, of course, that it is finished copying them all over, and I'm going to hit Delete songs, and this is going to clear out my iTunes library. I'm going to say Move to Trash because I actually want to clean these out of that music folder. So now when I go back to the Finder here I can see that the iTunes Media folder all that stuff is gone. So I've nothing in there and I have nothing in iTunes but I have the copies that I made here on the shared drive.Now since I have actually turned off the check mark for copy I can now select these and drag them back into iTunes and watch how quickly it adds them because it is not making a copy of them. It actually added them without copying them to the music folder. That is still empty. So each one of these is a link to the location here and this can be a shared drive. So I can do the same thing on another iTunes on another Mac also connected to the same network drive, add all the files, and the actual files will only be in one place even though I can see them in two different iTunes libraries. Now if you buy new music in iTunes it is going to of course put them in your iTunes Media folder. But what you can do is just repeat that process. Just move them to the shared drive, remove them from iTunes, and then add them back from that shared drive. So that way you can keep all your music in one location. You can, of course, actually divide things up. You can keep some things in a shared location and let some things be in your local user folder.Now the big question is what happens to that drive isn't connected. I've disconnected that drive now and I'm going to run iTunes. So it is not going to be able to find any of these songs. Nothing will seem wrong at first but what is going to happen is if I double click to play it is going to say it can't find it. Now I've reconnected that drive and let's see what happens when I hit cancel and then I try to play it. You see it will still work. Now I've always had great success with that. With just reconnecting the drive and everything links back fine. But there are plenty reports of people having trouble once it says it can't find it and even if the drive becomes available they have to relink each individual file. Maybe that's just with older versions of iTunes and that is something that just doesn't happen if you have everything up to date. But it is something to keep in mind.Of course one thing to consider is that by removing everything from iTunes and adding it back from another location you are going to loose all your star ratings, all you number of plays, and even the playlist won't work quite right anymore. So you are going to have to recreate all of those.Now if you are starting from scratch this is great to do and of course if you need to implement this then you are going to have to do it. It is something to keep in mind.Another thing that you've got to deal with here is that if you are using this then iTunes is giving up on helping you to organize your files. So as you create this music folder on a shared drive it is up to organize it. It is up to you to actually have good file names, good folder structure, put it all together and have it make some sense. So I hope you found this useful. Until next time this is Gary at MacMost Now.

After decades of digital music, it's not unlikely if you've amassed quite the collection of music on your computer's hard drive. If your iTunes library is taking up too much space, you can move it off of your local drive and onto an external hard drive without breaking your music collection.

You can also transfer your entire iTunes library from one computer to another if you are migrating to a new Mac.

Before you start: Back up your Mac

Before making major changes to your computer, it's always a good idea to back up your data: The best way to back up your Mac is with a Time Machine routine in place, but you can choose an alternate backup option that's right for you.

What you will need

You will, of course, need the computer your iTunes library is currently on. You will also need the following:

• An external hard drive (and power source, if applicable)
• A USB cable to connect the hard drive to your original Mac
• A power source for your original Mac
• If you're moving to a new computer, your new Mac (and its power cable)

Step 1: Consolidate your library

Over time, it's easy for your music, movies, apps, and other iTunes content to end up stored in various places throughout your computer's hard drive. To ensure that you copy everything from iTunes over to an external hard drive, you should first consolidate your library. Even if you think your library has all your information consolidated already, it can't hurt to do a manual check before moving any data.

1. Launch iTunes on your Mac.

2. Click File in the upper left corner of your Mac's screen.

3. Hover your cursor over Library in the dropdown menu.

4. Select Organize Library from the secondary menu.

5. Tick the box for Consolidate Files in the window that appears.

6. Click OK.

This process makes a copy of all files in the iTunes media folder, and leaves the original files in their current location.

Step 2: Move your iTunes Library to an external hard drive

1. Quit iTunes.
2. Connect your external hard drive to your computer using a USB cable.
3. Click on Finder to open a Finder window.

4. Select your Mac's hard drive.

5. Click on the Music folder.

6. Select iTunes and drag it to the external hard drive.

7. Click Authenticate when prompted to give permission to move the iTunes folder.
8. Enter your administrator password.

9. Click OK.

This process could take upwards of an hour or two, depending on how much data stored in your iTunes library.

Step 3: Redirect iTunes to the new location

Once you've transferred a copy of your iTunes library onto an external hard drive, you will need to set a new path for the iTunes app by redirecting it to search the external hard drive for content, rather than your local drive.

1. Launch iTunes and hold down the Option Keyat the same time.

2. Click on Choose Library when the window appears.

3. Select your external hard drive under Devices in the Finder sidebar.
4. Click on iTunes.

5. Click Open.

Note: Until you delete the iTunes file on your local hard drive, you can switch which libraries iTunes uses by launching the app and holding down the Option key at the same time.

Step 4: Make sure it worked

If you performed the first three steps correctly, when you open iTunes, it should look the same as it did before. You can double-check to make sure the migration worked by checking the info of any content.

1. Launch iTunes.

2. Select a song, podcast, movie, app, or other content.

3. Right-click or Control-click on the song.
4. Select Get info from the drop down menu.

5. Click on the File tab in the info window.

6. Look under Location to ensure that the content is now being stored under /Volumes/external hard drive name/... instead of Users/local hard drive name/...

Step 5: Delete the old iTunes library

Itunes Login

Once you have transferred a copy of your iTunes library onto an external hard drive and redirected iTunes to the new location, you can delete the iTunes folder on your local hard drive, freeing up space on your Mac.

Note: If you are making a copy to transfer to a new computer, you don't need to perform step 5 unless you want to remove your iTunes library from the old computer.

1. Quit iTunes.
2. Click on Finder to open a Finder window.

3. Select your Mac's hard drive.

4. Click on the Music folder.

5. Select iTunes and drag it to the trash.

Make sure your external hard drive is connected to your Mac when you launch iTunes from now on. Otherwise, iTunes won't be able to find the files. If that happens, quit iTunes, connect your external hard drive to your computer, and reopen iTunes.

Step 6 [optional]: Move your iTunes library to a new Mac

Itunes Share Library Between Computers

Once you have your iTunes library on an external hard drive, you can relocate it to a new Mac.

1. Quit iTunes on your new Mac.
2. Connect your external hard drive to your new Mac using a USB cable.
3. Open the external hard drive once it appears on your new Mac's screen.
4. Click on Finder on your new Mac to open a Finder window.

5. Select your new Mac's hard drive.

6. Click on the Music folder.

7. Drag the iTunes folder from your external hard drive into the Music folder on your new Mac.

8. Launch iTunes and hold down the Option Keyat the same time.
9. Click on Choose Library when the window appears.

10. Select your local hard drive under Devices in the Finder sidebar.

11. Click on the Music folder.
12. Click on iTunes.

13. Click Open.

Any questions?

Do you have any questions or issues with moving your iTunes library onto an external hard drive or onto a new Mac? Let us know in the comments and we'll help you out.

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