What are all the iTunes files?

You've probably looked into your iTunes folder (It is in your user folder: Music: iTunes) and May were surprised by all the files and folders in it, wondering what they are doing everything to. Here are some of the files and folders that iTunes uses, both in the iTunes folder and elsewhere.

To begin, houses your iTunes folder, by default, most files using iTunes. The database files are the iTunes library file, which contains information on all your songs, videos and audio, as well as your playlists. This is the most important issue for iTunes: if it does not find a library file, iTunes will ask you to choose a library or create a new one.

You will also notice a file iTunes Library.xml nested in the same folder. This is just another version of the iTunes library files, but in a format that is readable by other programs that May be able to access your iTunes content - including Apple Pages, Keynote, iMovie and using a range of media browser let you import music into your documents. May you also see in the dialog boxes from other programs, a number of programs have a medium in the sidebar to the opening of dialog boxes that offer the same access that the media browser application. While the iTunes library file is needed, the XML file is truly sustainable, if you delete it, iTunes will recreate it for you. If you have problems accessing iTunes from other applications, delete this file, it may be corrupted.

By default, your music is in iTunes Music folder in your iTunes folder. If you changed the location of your iTunes Music folder in iTunes' Advanced preferences, you May not have an iTunes Music folder, your file will be a different folder on your hard drive, or on another disk, and should not have the standard name. Also, if you have unchecked copy music files Oo the iTunes Music folder when adding to the library of the Advanced preferences, some or all of your music to be in May other places. (You can always know if a track is to control-click on a track and choose Show in Finder.)

From iTunes 8, there are two files with the extension. ITDB extension. Extras.itdb iTunes library contains information from Gracenote CDDB. Genius.itdb iTunes library contains information about your music library iTunes Genius feature. If you've never activated Genius, May you not have this file, but if you have a Genius and turn, this file will always be there.

There are also a handful of files in the iTunes folder, other than your iTunes Music folder. IPod Games stores May games you bought for your iPod (other than the touch or the iPhone), as well as information on these games and those who are included on the iPod. (There is also a library of iPod games files to keep track of the purchase of games.) Previous iTunes libraries also contains the previous iTunes libraries. When you upgrade iTunes, the program May need to upgrade the size of your library file. When this happens, it keeps older versions in case. If you have an iPod touch or iPhone, you'll have a mobile Applications folder contains all the applications you have downloaded from the App Store. And you will have the Album Artwork folder, which contains both the album downloaded from the iTunes Store and a cache of the album that iTunes uses in its various displays - for Cover Flow and displays regularly albums from your iTunes library or playlists. (Note that this folder May contain lots of files: my library of 38,000 titles is a record album artwork of more than 800 MB in size.)

There is more than one location for the files in your iTunes folder to the library: iTunes folder. This file contains updates to the iPod software, the contents of which in May took a lot of space. It also contains a folder Plugins iTunes, you'll have something here, if you installed any third party plugins such as EQ or visualization. And if you use AppleScripts with iTunes like Doug Adam's Web site, May you have a Scripts folder here. If you have this file, your AppleScripts show in a Scripts menu in iTunes (it has an icon AppleScript).

To be complete thanks, let me mention a few other files. Your iTunes preferences are stored in your user folder in the Library: Preferences folder named com.apple.iTunes.plist. There are two other iTunes files, again: com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist saves your settings for the equalizer, and if com.apple.iTunesHelper.plist said iTunesHelper a helper application within iTunes package has been added to your login items. Finally, in the same folder is a file called Info.cidb CD, which saves the track information for CDs you've been looking in the iTunes database Gracenote CD. It also saves the state of each CD, such as whether you have joined the tracks during the copy (if you insert a CD you've ripped in the past with tracks joined, you will see that the tracks appear joined again because the CD info in iTunes folder that tells the previous state). Also, you find that CD that you extract the information in the past not to query the CDDB database, if you want to force iTunes to re-examine, you can choose Advanced: Getting the names of the CD tracks.

If you have an iPod touch or iPhone, iTunes, and make backups of data from the device, these backups are stored in your Library / Application Support / folder MobileSync.