Brent Kearney

1. Create a folder on your desktop that will temporarily hold the files from your iPod. To create a folder on your desktop, click your desktop, then select File -> New Folder.

A new folder will appear on your desktop, and you can type in a new name for it. Name the new folder “ipod”.

2. Connect your iPod to your computer and open iTunes. An iPod icon should appear in the column on the left, under Devices. Note the name of your iPod. This will be important for later.

Click on the icon of your iPod. This should show you the summary screen:

Scroll down to the Options section, and make sure that the option to “Enable Disk Use” is enabled:

Click the “Apply” button if the option was previously not enabled.

3. Open iTunes Preferences by holding down the command key (⌘) and pressing the comma key. Click the Advanced tab. Optionally change the “iTunes Music folder location” to your Music folder; this is where your music files will be stored. Check off the “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” option, and the “Copy files to the iTunes Music folder when adding to library” option.

Click the “Apply” button after making changes. Note that, from now on, when you add new music to iTunes, a copy of those files will be made in your Music folder. So remember to delete original files after importing to iTunes.

4. Copy & Paste the following text — not including the semi-colon (;) — into a Terminal window. That is, using your mouse, highlight the following line up to just before the ‘;’ at the end of the line, then press ⌘-c (or select Edit -> Copy) to copy it:


cp -R "/Volumes/My iPod/iPod_Control/Music/*" ~/Desktop/ipod/ ;


Open a Terminal window from your Applications -> Utilities folder, and press ⌘-v (or Edit -> Paste) to paste the text into it. Use the back-arrow key (←) to move the cursor to where it says “My iPod”, and use your delete key to replace “My iPod” with the name of your iPod, which you noted in step 2. So for example, if your iPod is named FooPod, the line in your Terminal window should look like:

When the command line looks like the above, except with your iPod’s name in place of FooPod, press the Enter key.

The temporary “ipod” folder on your desktop will begin to fill up with the files from your iPod. The files will have random names, like “ZTUG.mp3″ — don’t worry, that will be fixed in the next step! The copy process could take a long time, depending how much music you have on your iPod. This will in no way effect the contents of your iPod. It merely copies the files, it doesn’t change them.

5. Drag & Drop the “ipod” folder onto iTunes, after the files are finished copying from the iPod. iTunes will import the music and use the meta-data in the files to rename and organize them into an Artist -> Album -> Song hierarchy, in your music folder.

When iTunes is finished importing the files, you can delete the temporary folder (“ipod”). You’re done!