Getting music off an iPod using Mac OS X!

There are lots of Instructables out there on how to get music off of an iPod using the "view options" trick in Windows explorer.

like this one!
How to get your music back off your Ipod FREE!

Unfortunately for those of us using Macs, Finder isn't so keen on letting you see those pesky hidden files.

We have two roads diverging here...

either we:
1. Search for 20 minutes on the internets for a shady program that sucks everything off your iPod, download it, install it and then wait .... SNORE!!!

or

2. Use our to-be haxor skillz with Terminal to get a peek at those "hidden" files, pronto!

Step 1 Intro to simple Unix commands

Don't be frightened!

It won't bite!

Go to: Applications/Utilities/Terminal

and fire it up!!!

If you are familiar with simple Unix commands then, by all means, skip this step.

Terminal is a program that lets you communicate with the operating system in a different way than clicking on cute little icons on your desktop. In Terminal, we type commands to the computer and "tell" instead of "show" it what to do. Crude, maybe. Useful, hell yess. The command line makes most easy things (like organizing file directories) really difficult to do but some hard things (like copying every file from your iPod into iTunes) really easy and quick.

Lets get started...

In this instructable we will only use three commands.

They are:
cd - "change directory"
ls - "show me what's in this directory"
open - "open this file using its default program"

more can be found here if you are curious about the ooodles of other useful commands
Useful Unix Commands

try typing "ls" into the command line and see what pops up!
try typing "cd directoryname" of one of those folders to move to that directory.
try typing "cd .. " (that's a double period) in order to open the parent directory. This is like hitting the back tab in a web browser.

Consider yourself a true hacker now!

With these two commands you can roam around any computer and look at files... and directories... and... more... files...SNORE!!!!

lets get on to the good stuff

Comments

[Bluewashere]

My harddrive failed during the Christmas break. Tech services at the school was able to pull off my documents folder, but everything else was gone. This tutorial saved a music library I've been building half my life. You, sir, deserve a medal.

[Wessle]

Excellent little tutorial there mate..... very easy to understand. No problems whatsoever following this and unlocking my music. Have recently returned from travelling/living abroad and it's nice to be able to transfer all the music i've collected onto my new Mac.

Am a bit of a novice when it comes to computers so nice to learn something too :)

[landy.nut.greg]

Excellent! Saved my music, well explained instructable.

thank you
greg

[KentsOkay]

Awesome.

[liplol]

When im CDing to my ipod directory....
cd *********** iPod

after this, it jsut does this

>

any ideaS?

[verymanley]

Well done. Thanks.

[Capm_Crunch]

this didn't work at all for me. whenever i type in cd into the terminal, nothing happens

[jwad650]

"cd" is actually a shortcut for "cd ~" so you should just return to your home directory. To change from your home directory to a higher level you need to type "cd .." (That's "cd space period period" if it's hard to see). You can also type "cd /" which will take you all the way to the base of your file directory where the "Volumes" folder lies.

[kasdc]

Thanks so much! You are a life saver!

[ifunlite]

Helpful instructable! I personally have used Tansee iPod Transfer to help me transfer all music and videos from iPod back to my computer and iTunes. Luckily, it works great. Here is step-by-step guide.

[look! its man man!]

cool. our computer just got a harddrive crash(due to my brother looking up innapropriate images) and i wanted to get the music back onto my computer without downloading an extra piece of software. darn though i have a thousand songs and 16gigs of video. well

[GorillazMiko]

Nicely done. I myself don't own a Mac, but if I ever get one or need to use a Mac, I'll use this method. +5/5 stars.

[wage]

I hate to rain on this parade, but this is not a fantastic way to do this. So heres my constructive criticism :) In Finder you can show hidden files. In Terminal type: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE (if you want to hide the files again, just use FALSE instead of TRUE) Then browse your ipod thru finder. Unfortunately due to the way the iPod file stucture is your music is all scrambled and renamed funny. Its much easier and cleaner to use Senuti to do this on OSX.

[jwad650]

Yeah, you could do that but it's much faster and easier to do it this way as the "open" command combined with the wildcards automatically copies everything to your iTunes library. I keep hearing Senuti is good but it's too hard to resist typing in "open F*/*" instead of downloading a program. Does Senuti show you the names of the files?

[wage]

Yeah, keeps your file names straight. Plus with senuti you can get what you want and not get duplicates of what you already have.

[ChancreScolex]

Nice instructable. Its much easier on windows. All you have to do is enable viewing hidden folders and I believe you go into your ipods drive, then ipod control, then music or something along those lines. Anyway, youll see a bunch of folders that are named F00, F01, etc. You can just drag them all into itunes and youre done.

[coolz]

thats what I do, but when I unplug the pod, itunes cant play the songs

[drøn]

because you only opened the songs. you need to copy them to your hd as well. just click 'consolidate library' in itunes after you've followed the steps above. khdrøn

[=SMART=]

Nice instructable with helpful pics, to get the music off my friends ipods without removing it from the actual ipod i use Senuti > you can download it here < , this is a good easy-to-use program and its on all the major mac software sites so it is definitely worth taking a look at it you dont think your an U1timate H4x0r :D
Still a very good instructable, i notice its your first so well done and welcome to the site !!