Monday, July 18, 2011

Remove All Missing Songs from iTunes

This is how to quickly remove all dead tracks from iTunes:

"1) Make a static playlist called “All Live Files” and copy* your entire library into it. [*per comments below: "you have to drag your songs from your library into the folder; just adding them to the playlist won't work it transfers all the files including broken ones." Thanks commenters! 11/28]

2) Make a smart playlist called “Missing Files” with the rules set as ” ‘Playlist’ ‘is’ ‘Music’ ” and another rule set as ” ‘Playlist’ ‘is not’ ‘All Live Files’ ”

3) ...the broken songs will not transfer and “Missing Files” will contain all those broken songs."

Then delete the songs in the Missing Files folder:

Windows: SHIFT + DEL
Mac: OPTION + DEL

Source and thanks to: http://paulmayne.org/blog/2007/11/how-to-remove-broken-or-dead-tracks-from-itunes/
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. This post has been scraped in violation of that license if you are reading this post on other than http://www.digital-qa.blogspot.com/.

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45 comments:

  1. After all my farting about with js scripts and la-di-da, finally, a simple solution that does what it says on the tin.

    Excellent! 11 out of 10 :-)

    ReplyDelete

  4. Awesome! thank you very much.

    MAZDASPEED 8

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  5. doesn't seem to work with iTunes 10.5.2.11 with iTunes match enabled

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  6. Very helpful, worked perfectly, thank you :D

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  7. it'ts really boring that I have to do all that just to remove missing files. i dont even know why I have itunes, at least winamp has an option to do that....

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  8. Thanks all, and LOL Anonymous @ 4:31AM today... I might need to change the title of the post to "A Pretty Quick but Boring way to Remove All Missing Songs from iTunes". Also surprised there is no option to do that.

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  9. thanks! i did this before and totally forgot how it was done.. thanks again :)

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  12. Halleluljah ! Thanks ever so much for this tip

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  13. Worked perfect. Thanks

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  14. what is a static playlist?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. There are 2 types of playlists you can make in iTunes. A 'Smart' playlist and just a regular playlist. The first part of Step #1 is to simply create a regular playlist (File > New Playlist) and name it “All Live Files”.

      Delete

  15. Didn't work for me. All files went into the "All Live Files" playlist. But when I created "Broken Files" with the above rules nothing happened. The playlist is empty???

    ReplyDelete

  16. I am able to create the list of broken links. But when I use delete, it just deletes from the playlist, not from the library?

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  17. Thanks a lot...!! Good Stuff...!!

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  18. Brilliant! It worked! Thank you so much!

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  19. Worked out perfectly!! Thank you so much!!

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  20. thanks so much for that! been trying for about a year to remove all my dead tracks. Had about 7000, now down to 3000 thanks to your help x

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  21. This is not working as of Sep 22, 2012

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  22. Hi Tej, I just tried it and it seems to be working. Hummmm... Maybe click "Check for Updates" under the Help tab to see if your iTunes is up to date?

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  23. This is awesome. Worked a treat! Thanks so much.

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  24. Does not work for me 10.7.0.21. Tested changing 2nd rule from 'is not' to 'is' and all the missing file results appear with the actual file results. I am assuming the missing files should not have shown in this test.

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  25. Brilliant stuff. Thanks so much!

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  26. thank you! been trying to figure this out. you got it down, hassle free.

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  27. excellent, first time I've created a smart playlist but once i got my head around that it was simple!

    thanks :o)

    ReplyDelete

  28. Note that to add the songs to the "All Live files" playlist, you need to select all and drag. If you simply select all, right click, and choose "Add to Playlist", it doesn't work.

    Perhaps that's what Tej was doing?

    Thanks for this post, beck!

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  29. Thanks so much, worked like a charm.

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  31. awesome! now how do i delete duplicates?

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  32. Anonymous at 10/28 9:36 PM. In iTunes you can select File > Display Duplicates and then select the ones you want/don't want to keep.

    ReplyDelete

  33. ...How exactly am I supposed to delete them from my itunes if it's in a playlist... deleting in a playlist doesn't do anything to your actual library. Explain...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. A fix I just used, give all of your files the same rating (i.e. one star). Then sort by rating and they will all be grouped together for easy removal.

      Delete

  34. Brilliant. It works just like described. Make sure to add all files dragging them manually to created playlist, not by right click. Thank you...

    ReplyDelete

  35. I agree - you have to drag your songs from your library into the first folder; just adding them to the playlist won't work it transfers all the files including broken ones. But try again, and drag and drop, and it works like a charm.

    Thanks very much to all for their input.

    ReplyDelete

  36. This sooo worked on iTunes 11.0

    Thanks a million for the super duper tip!

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  37. Worked perfectly. Saved me so much time :)
    Thank you very much

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  38. Genius; way, way, way better than the various shareware and/or .js solutions. Simply genius.

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  39. thanks! works flawlessly

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  40. This doesn't seem to work at all, all the dead files reappear immediately when I turn Live Updating for my playlists on.

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  41. Ctrl-Shift-Delete will delete something from your library instead of just the playlist.

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  42. Works fine to clean out the files. But when I delete them from my playlist I still can not get them out of the library, which is where I want them out of in the first place.

    ReplyDelete

  43. okay this is embarrassing....this worked great! but i don't understand WHY it worked..lol...can you explain it, so I can use smart playlists more effectively in the future?

    ReplyDelete

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