Sync Your iTunes Library On Two Computers
Tags: iTunes, library, mac, sync, windows
Don’t you hate how you can’t sync your iTunes Library across multiple computers. I for one stopped using my iPhone as my music player and started to use a Zen for this simple fact. I have a car deck that has an iPod connector, and I do want to use it. However trying to get songs on my iPhone from work and home seems to be the biggest problem. However there is a solution to this problem, and one that I’ve just found but most likely has been around for a while, well at least from the blog post date of April 2008.
Nicholas Pike has a wonderful step by step tutorial for Windows (It works for Mac as well, you just need a Hex Editor) on how to change the ID of your iTunes Library on your second PC so that it matches your first PC. This will trick iTunes and allow you to sync your music on both PC’s.
The iPhone has this nagging restriction, thats been driving me crazy since I traded in my iPod Touch as my main music playing device.
You can’t plug your iPhone into a second computer (for example, at work) and play back music from the iPhone on your computer!
This just makes no sense, because the iPod Touch (and any other iPod) can manually manage music on multiple computers.
Below is how you can hack your iTunes to circumvent this stupid restriction. A few caveats:
- I have no idea how well this will work if your 2nd installation of iTunes is actually managing any music in its library
- I have no idea if you can actually add/remove songs from your iPhone on the 2nd computer. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it probably will work.
I’ve tried the method hes posted and it seems to work well. Upon my first try I did wipe out my Ringtones as I was syncing all Ringtones instead of just specific ones I had on this PC. So watch out.
Hacking your iTunes to enable management/playback of your iPhone music on multiple computers