How do I copy music onto my Mac from my husband's iPod?

Alright, Dave. I'm darn frustrated. My husband and I both have Macs and he also has an iPod -- that I bought him! -- but when I plug his iPod into my Mac, I can see the music in iTunes and can even listen to it, but I can't copy it into my own iTunes library. What's wrong, and how do I fix it?

Dave's Answer:

Actually, this is a common problem with iPods, believe it or not, even those where you buy a new computer and want to "pair" your iPod with your new computer: by design, Apple iPods bond with a single Macintosh or PC, and every other computer is then only granted "read only" access, just as you've found.

The fact that it's your music and you probably have all the CDs sitting on the shelf (like we do) is irrelevant as far as Apple is concerned.

Fortunately, there are third-party workarounds for this copy protection design aspect of the otherwise splendid iPod players. If you were on a PC, I'd point you to a slick Windows application called iPodCopy, as I explain in my article How do I get songs off my iPod, but since you're on a Mac, I'm going to recommend a different program, one that's freeware, not shareware.

The program I use when trying to sync music between my iPods and computers (and, yes, my wife's computer too) is Senuti. It's free, which is splendid, but I nonetheless highly encourage you to donate a few bucks to support the developer if you find this app useful, as I'm sure you will.

Download the application, plug in your husband's iPod, then launch. You'll see something like this:

Copying Music off the iPod with Senuti 1

Notice that in this instance, I have a lot of audio books. Your list will doubtless differ. On the top left you'll see that the iPod itself is shown as "Library" while the iTunes library on the computer is shown as "iTunes". I found this a bit confusing and kinda wish that the iPod was listed by name, but it's an easy oddity to get used to.

A much more important step with Senuti is that you must change the preferences in the program to behave as desired. For reasons I'm unclear about, the defaults aren't close to what I would think people copying music from an iPod into iTunes would want. Here are the default settings:

Copying Music off the iPod with Senuti 2

and here are the changes I suggest you make:

Copying Music off the iPod with Senuti 3

Notice that I have also specified that copied music should be saved directly in the iTunes Music Library along with anything else ripped from CDs, so it's all neat and organized.

Now it's about as easy as it could be: pick the music you'd like to copy onto your computer and either just click the "Copy" button on the top right or drag it all onto the "iTunes" icon on the top left list and let Senuti do all the heavy lifting.

Here's what it looked like partway through copying some of my Celtic music onto my wife's computer:

At this point I found it easiest to simply quit iTunes and restart the program, so it saw all the new music in the library:

Music Copied off the iPod with Senuti in iTunes

Very nice, simple and straightforward, once you adjust the preferences as needed.

I think that'll help you and your husband more easily share music between your computers. Good luck!

Subscribe!

Never miss another Q&A article! Click to subscribe:

Comments

Every time I have asked a qestion involving electronics, from my iPod to my PSP, Dave has never failed me in explaining a solution. The pictures really help to.

Posted by: Alicia at April 12, 2006 3:29 PM

The Senuti link moved... its here now:

http://fadingred.org/senuti/

Thanks for the reviews

Posted by: Jonathan Dear at June 4, 2006 2:23 PM

I believe I have followed your directions, but I cannot select music to copy, it is all deselected and I am not able to highlight any songs on the itunes screen I'm trying to import to my mac. Any suggestions?

Bill

Posted by: Bill at October 8, 2006 10:07 PM

does this software still work if i copied my brother in law's PC iTunes library and want to put the songs onto my MAC iTunes?

thanks,
shelly

Posted by: shelly Tulloch at April 4, 2007 4:48 PM

I did use ipodcopy and it trnsferred my music to itunes but when I try to play music off of itunes the speaker shows it is playing but no sound is coming out . Any suggestions Thanks Rich

Posted by: Richard at September 28, 2007 8:36 AM

THANKS DAVE, THIS ADVICE WAS THE BEST!! I just got a new mac and my ipod was windows-formatted. i didnt know what to do until i came across your site.

Posted by: sid at October 17, 2007 2:53 PM

HI- I dowloaded and used senuti and it was great for about 2300 songs, but for some reason it refuses to copy the last 198 songs.

They vary from some I have on CD (no problem just time) to some I paid for in Itunes to some that I recorded with a mic on my ipod. Some of each of these types of items copied no problem. So now I am stuck...

I am especially concerned about the ones I recorded with a mic beccause they are not replaceable. I am a musician and these are either live performances, rehearsals, or new compositions I was working on...

Help

Posted by: Deirdre Bergeron at April 22, 2008 2:10 PM

Thanks a lot Dave!!

I have both a Mac and PC.

With my PC, I use CopyTrans to copy my music off my iPhone 3G.

No glitch at all.

Posted by: Will at November 3, 2008 2:32 AM

WOW awesome, thank you so much. alot easier than i thought it would be, this is very helpful.

Posted by: Andrew at December 2, 2008 1:19 PM

Thnaks so much for this Dave, sorted the problem in a tick.

Posted by: Lukescape at March 22, 2009 8:29 AM

HI Dave. I have a Mac, and, i downloaded songs online and saved them in VLC software, now, i can't transfer them to i tunes. how can i do that?, have been on it for ages now. the windows media player version is 9 ofcourse.
HELP ME DAVE

Posted by: arooj at May 4, 2009 12:48 PM

I have a Bose Lifestyle 48 system. Is it possible to download my Music Library I have on this system to Itunes on my Macbook?

Posted by: John at May 16, 2009 8:26 AM

Hey Dave!
This is awesome info, but I'm curious about one thing:
If I'm buying someone an ipod and use my PC to sync my original songs onto it as a gift, will she be able to copy my songs into her Mac itunes library, and from there transfer her NEW library (including both her songs and my songs) back onto the ipod?

basically, would this method still work if the man in the problem above were to have a PC?

Posted by: Stephanie at July 27, 2009 6:44 AM

Can I burn a disc of my purchased iTunes (on my PC) that will be playable on my CD players? I've tried, but the resulting disc is only playable on my PC.

Posted by: AC at August 24, 2009 9:10 AM

right i had 198 songs on my ipod and i presed restore i now have 3 how do i get my songs back

Posted by: damon at January 2, 2010 5:16 AM

Thank you so much....I did a manual transfer when I bought my mac but used the senuti to transfer my boyfriend's itunes from his ipod to his new mac and it worked perfectly. So easy!! Thanks again.

Posted by: Shelley Girard at June 7, 2010 8:54 AM

THANK YOU DAVE TAYLOR!

Posted by: KRISTEN at August 21, 2010 10:25 PM

Hi Dave,
great piece of advice and thanks... One thing that is useful would be to let people know that as of Sept 2010 this piece of software is not free.... It is free for a limited time but then it needs to be purchased. I see some of the comments date back to four years ago.

I the price of US$18 is more than affordable for those many of us wanting to make this transfer after years of Apple (still) not accommodating this requirement.
I for one am now on my fifth Mac and have always bought Apple laptops, mini's ipods and now iPad...
But this software which I will buy and try out IS something I think is worth the price and people need to understand that soemtimes we need to pay ..
Regards
Mal

Posted by: Mal at September 3, 2010 12:05 AM

I've never been so pleased with the results of trying to follow online techie tutorials. Thank you so much for helping me transfer my 801 bought-and-paid iPod songs onto our new Mac!

Posted by: Amy at October 19, 2010 1:40 PM

dude you rock!!!! thanks so much. even with the new version it was still super easy. thanks again bro!

Posted by: jake cooper at December 28, 2010 9:32 PM

yo thanks a bunch man fixed my issue.

Posted by: jim at January 15, 2011 12:01 AM

HI,
I tried to copy songs from my husbands ipod using Mac/Senuti the only options using Senuti is to "transfer". I don't want to delete the songs off my husbands Ipod I only want to copy a few if them. Where are the preferences located? All it shows at the top of screen is transfer & stop.
Thanks,
Chris

Posted by: Chris at February 28, 2011 1:29 PM

Senuti doesn't delete anything off the iPod, just copies it. "Transfer" is its jargon for that capability...

Posted by: Dave Taylor at February 28, 2011 2:08 PM

Hello!
I recently bought my mac computer off of someone i knew. They had it for a short amount of time before i bought it but had put their itunes library on it and did not take it off, leaving me all their songs. Therefore, it is set up under his account. I just bought myself a new ipod and would like to set it up to my mac but im not sure how to do this with itunes being under him.
Is there still a way i can set it up under me and keep all of the songs?

Posted by: Kelsay at February 28, 2011 9:59 PM

Kelsay, if the previous owner bought all their music from iTunes, then you're out of luck. Just delete all their music and move along with your life. If it's stuff they've ripped themselves, however, then you should be able to switch iTunes accounts and still listen to it all without a problem. Easy way to test: switch to your iTunes account then try to play something. If it says "not authorized", you're out of luck.

Here, this'll be useful too:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_change_itunes_store_password.html

It shows you how to change password and you'll see how to change which account is associated with iTunes too.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at March 9, 2011 4:42 AM

Hi Dave,

Senuti will not recognise my iPod or iPhone when i connect. It flashes up with the songs and then vanishes going back to the screen saying "connect an iPod to get started". Also, iTunes opens and seems to override it or something?

Thanks a bunch.
Meggie.

Posted by: Meggie Fisher at March 20, 2011 11:01 PM

I just did this and it worked beautifully! Thank you for posting easy to apply advice that works! I am thrilled!

Posted by: Dave Cole at March 21, 2011 4:39 PM

I am having the same problem as Meggie. Don't know what to do?

Posted by: scott at March 22, 2011 2:18 PM

Yes! This worked to copy a Windows formatted iPod to copy music to a Mac. It batch copied over 500 songs at once. Thanks for the tips!

Posted by: wayne at April 7, 2011 7:49 PM

what is the best Mac to purchase if I want to use the device primarily for music storage?

Posted by: richard at December 29, 2011 9:23 AM

Richard, i would suggest a used Mac Mini, actually. I have one with two 500GB drives as my file, music and print server in the house and it works great and with Screen Sharing enabled, I use my laptop as the display and keyboard from anywhere in the house. Check something like the Apple refurb list on the online Apple Store or even Craigslist to find a bargain.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at December 31, 2011 8:33 AM

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE SUGGESTION FOR Senuti!!

After killing my Mac, and reinstalling I had lost some of my music that wasn't properly backed up. But luckily it was still on my ipod! I've been searching for months for a way to get it off of my ipod back to my comp with no luck. Senuti pulled it off with no problem.

I had no idea I had this much music missing from my backup files! Me and my 8gigs of re-found music thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Posted by: THANK YOU at January 2, 2012 2:49 AM

I am freaking out - i was using senuti to copy some audio books from my ipod to my itunes folder and also was burning a few cds in the background. Left for a few hours and came back to find my itunes folder is COMPLETELY EMPTY. Searching the actual itunes music files and i find there's a few folders left with songs intact, but none show up in itunes. It didn't affect my apps or videos/movies, just ALL my music - - - itunes 10 and 10.6.8
I have no idea what the hell happened, but I'm really pissed off and makes me think Senuti is some sort of sick virus program in disguise

Posted by: Ty at January 17, 2012 4:02 PM

Cheers Dave, this was a great find :)

Posted by: Aymi at January 21, 2012 3:06 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!