How to Automatically Update Your iTunes Library?
ADVERTISEMENTSiTunes is a good media player, but it misses those little features that you might really need. One niggle is that it doesn’t update the media library automatically - you won’t see the songs that were added recently to your music folders in the iTunes library. You need to manually update the library by adding the folder again.
This is quite time consuming, but there’s a tool called iTunes Folder Watch that comes to the rescue. iTunes Folder Watch keeps an eye on selected folders and checks them occasionally to see if there are any tracks from your selected folders that are not on the library yet, and alerts you of the same. You can just check the songs that you want to add, and the iTunes library is instantly updated with the new tracks.
- Download iTunes Folder Watch from here and start it up by clicking on the Desktop Icon
- Click the Plus ‘+’ icon to add the folders that you want to be monitored
- Click ‘Check Now’ at the bottom of the window
- Now, go to the ‘New Tracks’ tab and you’ll a list of new songs that have not yet been added to your iTunes library
- Click ‘Add checked tracks to iTunes’
- The songs that you selected have been added to your iTunes Library. The iTunes library has been updated automatically
- You can go to the Configuration tab and check the first option that says ‘Automatically add new tracks (within watch folder)to iTunes without intervention’. This will tell iTunes to automatically add new songs to the iTunes library. You need not necessarily follow Steps 4 and 5 once you’ve checked this. Sad thing: This is disabled in the trial version. You need to get a license to use this feature.
Let us know in the comments if you have any questions.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Sounds neat … and useful. But why do both you and the author avoid any mention of the price of the license? I’m not about to waste time with an application (and then perhaps have to uninstall it) because it is over priced. The fact that the price is so avoided makes me rather suspicious that it’s too expensive.
Or did I miss it somewhere?
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:00 am
@BigJim Sorry but I forgot to mention it. There’s a software called iTunes Album Browser that costs around $17. If you’ve got a copy of that, you can use the same license code for iTunes Folder Watch as well. That’s what their web page says.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:01 am
[...] How to Automatically Update Your iTunes Library? [...]
June 17th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Price of iTunes Folder Watch is 7.50EUROS - it is quite clear on the website. But the free version will still add unlimited songs, albeit only via the manual option which suits most people - it’s just a click or two. Price of iTunes Album Browser is 15EUROS which includes iTunes Folder Watch.
June 29th, 2008 at 6:37 am
This app is old; the support forum doesn’t show any real activity in months. The last post from the author is months ago. It doesn’t allow you to monitor UNCs or navigate your network; it only allows mapped drives. Who the heck uses mapped drives anymore? They were only required years and years ago for Windows 95, ME, and 98.
Thus,
- it appears to be old, superceded possibly, or made redundant by newer versions of iTunes or competiting products
- it’s no good for anyone that lives in the 21st century.
August 29th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I am using the free version, and it works very well for me.
Functions exactly as I had hoped.
October 1st, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I’m the author of Folder Watch. I can reassure you this is not old software, it’s being improved all the time, and the forum is active. You can watch UNC paths now for one thing.