Abstract

A friend of mine wanted to copy some files from an iTunes™ playlist to an external drive, but iTunes™ wouldn't allow her to simply let these files being dragged to the intended destination folder in Finder™. She asked me what she could do about it.

I thought about it for a minute, knowing that it wouldn't work with iTunes™ alone - but I realized that it's probably simple to code a solution. Even better than having a separate standalone application for it, I figured I could write a new FUSE file system - making use of the excellent MacFUSE project!

Enter iTunesFS, a FUSEObjC based file system for your Mac, which makes all your iTunes™ playlists available as folders in Finder™! And - not only that - as you can see in the screenshot below, version 1.1 adds support for iPod™s in the very same manner!

Now you can easily copy content of your iTunes™ library and your iPod™s in Finder™ or the Terminal - ideal for, err, backing up specific content. Whatever.

As noted by Peter da Silva, the above statement isn't really true for current (7.x) iTunes versions. In fact, these versions allow you to drag files from playlists to mounted filesystems, effectively making them copyable via drag and drop. However, this still isn't true for mounted iPods within iTunes. Also, the playlist ordering won't be preserved by doing so, thus using iTunesFS still has quite a lot of advantages.

News

• Version 1.1.6, released 2007-12-31, fixes the "not visible in Finder's sidebar" problem on Leopard. Also, there's a new NoITunes default which, if set, prevents the iTunes library from being displayed.
• Version 1.1.5, released 2007-10-30, sports support for Jailbreaked iPods and iPhones (tested with an iPod Touch, thanks to Terrance Lam). For users who mount their iPhones and iPods via MacFusion, set the new iPodMountPoints user default to the appropriate mount point.

  Also new in this release is the existence of a new Compilations group, thanks to code contributed by Mark Wallis.

• Version 1.1.4 saw the light of day at 2007-07-03. This version sports formatters which enable you to customize the formatting of track names displayed in Albums and Playlists in a very generic way. If you don't like the playlist index as a prefix you can easily redefine the formatter to not include it, and so on.
• Version 1.1.3 was released 2007-06-14. This version introduces "categories", which means that from now on you can browse by Artists and Albums in addition to the playlists. The file system hierarchy will be expanded, accordingly and has been localized for this purpose in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. If you don't need this feature, which is enabled by default, you can turn it off using a default.

  One more thing! ;-) This version has also been ported to GNUstep - this means that from now on you can write FUSE based file systems in Objective-C on any platform which is supported by GNUstep!

• Version 1.1.2 was released 2007-05-31. It fixes a bug that prevented tracks from being accessible which had a question mark ("?") somewhere in their path name. Also, file metadata is now computed from the libraries' contents. Libraries having just one playlist (i.e. Shuffle devices) do omit this playlist and instead display all tracks at once. Last but not least, added the ability of returning symbolic links instead of "faking" the presence of files. People using iTunesFS in association with shell scripts might prefer that option.
• Version 1.1.1 was released 2007-05-29. It fixes a bug that prevented iPods from unmounting. Also, iTunesFS can be told not to scan for iPods at all. In case no iPod is found, the file system hierarchy will be missing the libraries entry, which is much more convenient in these cases I guess.
• Version 1.1.0 was released 2007-05-24. It adds the not-so-long anticipated support for iPod™s!
• Version 1.0.4 was released 2007-05-23. It currently supports a single iTunes™ library only, but there will be support for iPods in the near future I guess! ;-)

Download

IMPORTANT! Before you can start using iTunesFS, you need to install the appropriate MacFUSE Core package!

Date	Version	MacOS X	File	Required MacFUSE Core version
2007-12-31	1.1.6	10.4 + 10.5 (PowerPC and Intel)	iTunesFS-1.1.6.dmg	MacFUSE-Core-10.4-1.1.0.dmg (MacOS X 10.4) OR MacFUSE-Core-10.5-1.1.1.dmg (MacOS X 10.5)

Also, the whole sourcecode is available from Mulle kybernetiK's Subversion Repository.

svn co http://svn.mulle-kybernetik.com/iTunesFS/trunk iTunesFS

See license for details. Modifications and suggestions welcome!

Having Trouble?

First of all - please note that it's normal for iTunesFS not to bounce in your dock! This is intended behaviour, as iTunesFS is not really an ordinary Desktop application with a menu, but rather a file system (you can tell that by looking at the screenshot in case you still have doubts).

If you don't see the iTunesFS Volume appear in Finder shortly after you started the application, something unexpected has happened…

Popular reasons that cause iTunesFS to fail are:

• iTunesFS expects the iTunes Music Library.xml file to be in the standard default place, that is ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml (where ~ designates your home directory). If you happen to have changed that location, all is not lost - fancy iTunesFS sports a nifty user default just for that case! ;-) Open Terminal.app and type the following:

  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS Library COMPLETE_QUALIFIED_PATH_TO_YOUR_ITUNES_XML_FILE

  Make sure to apply proper quoting/escaping in a shell!

• You need MacFUSE Core from the link above! Using a Fink package won't work (out of the box).

Cheap tricks

• (since version 1.1.1): If you don't want iTunesFS to look for iPods at all, type the following in a Terminal:

  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS NoIPods YES

• (since version 1.1.2): create symbolic links rather than fake files:

  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS SymbolicLinks YES

• (since version 1.1.3): browse using categories ("Albums", "Artists", "Playlists"):

  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS UseCategories YES

• (since version 1.1.4): format the displayed track names in a generic way:

  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS AlbumsTrackFormat "'%(trackNumber#00) %(name).%(ext)'"
  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS PlaylistsTrackFormat "'%(playlistNumber#000) %(name).%(ext)'"

  Several things to note here:

  • Make sure to apply proper quoting in the shell!
  • The defaults are AlbumsTrackFormat and PlaylistsTrackFormat
  • For experienced users:
    The formatters are being applied via -valueForKeyPath: which means that anything in %() can be a complete KVC keyPath.
  • As you can see above, numbers can be formatted via a number format… the separator character is #.
  • Interesting properties are:
    • name
    • album
    • artist
    • extension (you can also use ext as a convenience)
    • trackNumber
    • playlistNumber
  Example:
  

  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS PlaylistsTrackFormat "'#%(trackNumber#00) %(name) (%(artist) - %(album)).%(ext)'"

  This will produce output similar to this:
  #05 Per Aspera Ad Astra (Moshcircus - Karma).m4a

• (since version 1.1.5): watch for iPods at the following mount points:

  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS iPodMountPoints -array /Volumes/iPodTouch

  Replace /Volumes/iPodTouch with the real path to your iPod's mount point. Note that you can provide multiple values (in case you have an iPod Touch AND an iPhone ;-).

• (since version 1.1.6): If you don't want iTunesFS to show your iTunes library, type the following in a Terminal:

  defaults write com.mulle-kybernetik.znek.iTunesFS NoITunes YES

Popular feature requests that I won't implement, ever.

• Q: Write support?
  A: Forget it. Writing isn't trivial. At least iTunes™ will want to write to the same database files concurrently, thus we'd need a way to tell iTunes™ to stop - and even to re-synchronize afterwards we have written our changes. Even if we could do that, how would we reorder entries in a playlist? By renaming the prefixing index manually? This is totally unusable in my opinion. iTunes™ is really great at managing the contents of your library and your iPod™s. The only thing that it doesn't allow you to do (probably by intention) is to easily copy content off your library or your iPods to a location YOU desire. iTunesFS fixes that "problem", nothing more and nothing less.

• Q: Make iTunesFS work with the Fink package?
  A: Create a damn symlink instead. iTunesFS links against /usr/local/lib/libfuse.0.dylib, so make sure it finds the version installed by Fink there - if you really must use the Fink version.

License