The 20 Best iPod Utilities
- Thread starter Gemini
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There as many applications and methods for copying music from an iPod to your computer as there are iPod models themselves, which makes finding a sure-fire, free solution a matter of tedious trial and error. To save you the work, today we're rounding up the best tools and techniques for getting music off any model iPod onto nearly any computer—for free. Whether you're a Windows user looking to yank tunes from an iPhone, a Mac fan backing up an iPod classic, or a Linux enthusiast trying to get into your new nano, we've got you covered. Follow along for a detailed look at the best ways to transfer songs from your iPod to your computer, no matter what hardware or operating system you're rocking.
iPhone and iPod touch
While it used to be as simple as enabling disk use on old school iPods to get to the music files stored there, it's not that easy with the iPhone and iPod touch models. Luckily, intrepid hackers have found a way on each platform. Here are our picks for the best ways to get at your music from your touchscreen iPod and iPhone.
Mac OS X—Senuti (beta)
Free Mac utility Senuti could always copy music from regular iPods to your Mac, and a new beta version now supports the iPhone and iPod touch. Be sure to download the beta release (as of this writing, the latest beta is 0.50.2b7) and install it on your Mac. Fire up Senuti to get a complete list of songs on the iPhone or iPod touch connected to your Mac. Senuti will put a blue dot next to songs that already exist in that Mac's iTunes library. Select the songs you want and hit the Transfer button to copy them to your computer. (Original post)
Windows—Jailbreak + SSH (Update: and Winamp!)
Unfortunately, there are no free graphical applications for Windows like Senuti for Mac that can reach into your touch-based iPod's guts and move music around. Update: We stand corrected. Several readers point out that Winamp's newest iPod plug-in can indeed copy files from your iPhone in Windows without jailbreaking. Thanks, zod000, Scoops, and apprehensive!
Update 2: iPhoneBrowser is also an option for those with jailbroken phones, providing an FTP-like interface to iPhone/touch files with a USB connection. Thanks to emailer Miguel and commenter halfshafter for the tip! (posted here).
It's not that hard to get your files, if you're willing to jailbreak your device and do a little file-swapping. Here's how to do it.(Settings->General->Autolock) is temporarily set to "Never" to prevent dropped connections. Find its IP address (Settings->Wi-Fi, then select the checked network), and in your FTP program, put that address in as the Host, and set a username of "root" and a password of "alpine," assuming you've upgraded your firmware at least once (it's "dottie" if not). Choose to connect through port 22 for an SSH connection, and you should get in. You may get a warning related to a "host key," but choose "Yes" or "OK," and check "Always trust this host" or a similar catch-all, if offered.
- Jailbreak your iPhone/touch: Your editors have found the 45-second ZiPhone method pretty reliable, but your mileage may vary. However you jailbreak your device, make sure it has "BSD Subsystem" and "OpenSSH" packages installed through the Installer.app utility.
- Get an SFTP application: Unless you want to hack around command-line-style with PuttY or Cygwin, you'll find it easier to get around using an FTP program. Filezilla is a free, easy-to-use option, but any client that supports SSH transfer will do.
4)Transfer the files: I found my iPod touch's music nested deep inside the file structure, at /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music/. You'll probably find your music there too. Copy all the folders named F01, F02, and so on to your computer. The files have nonsensical names, but they're really your tunes, and iTunes (and even Windows itself) knows it:
Once you've got your files, you can give them back sensible names in iTunes by importing them, then heading to Edit->Preferences->Advanced->"Keep iTunes Music folder organized." Now you've got your iPod's whole music library, organized, and ready to use wherever.
Linux—Wireless sync
As with Windows, there's no single app that gets you to your music, but you can jailbreak your iPhone/touch in Linux and open it up for wireless access to apps like Amarok or gtkpod for transfers and organization. Head to our guide to Syncing your iPhone wirelessly in Linux for a detailed tutorial on doing just that
All other iPods
Whether you've got a shuffle, nano, classic, photo, video, or something more old-school, your route to music recovery is decidedly easier than with those fancy-dancy touch models. Here's the best ways to get at your files:
Windows—YamiPod
YamiPod works on all three major platforms, but it really comes in handy in Windows. It recently added support for the new-model nano and iPod classic, and boasts a host of great features, including search, preview-play of files, duplicate remover, and more. Better still, it's a small stand-alone program that can run from a USB stick, so helping friends and co-workers recover their music is a snap. (Original post)
Mac OS X—Senuti (stable release)
For non-touch Apple music players, Senuti is still your best bet. The uber-useful blue dots that indicate a song is already in your collection, a slick interface, full Leopard support—it's great, free software.
Linux
If you simply need to grab the music files off an iPod, gtkpod is the tool of choice. It grabs play counts and playlists, ratings and cover art, and can replicate the iPod's entire database on your hard drive. The creators are working on support for the very latest models, but photo, video, nano, and older makes should all function just fine. It's also worth mentioning that the three most well-known Linux music organizers—Amarok, Rhythmbox, and Banshee—can move unprotected music on and off most iPods with relative ease.
Cross-platform
If you're a dual-booter, virtualizer, or use your iPod at different home and work systems, you might want to check out two apps that run on Windows, Mac, or Linux, for better integration and matching features:
Songbird: This open-source library organizer from Mozilla, creators of the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client, is looking pretty slick these days. Its latest versoin supports every iPod (except the iPhone/touch, of course), can replicate your iTunes database, and copying files from iPod to disk is a drag-and-drop affair. (Original post)
Floola: As Adam detailed in his self-sustaining iPod feature, Floola not only works as a nifty iTunes replacement, but can actually run right off your device's storage drive, making it great for spreading your music to friends, co-workers and the person putting you up on vacation.
YamiPod: As noted above, this slick iPod-copying app works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and easily runs from a USB stick.
subs
iPhone/iPod touch only: In a standard browser, the Wall Street Journal's content costs $103 per year, apart from any work-arounds. The Journal's new iPhone app, however, seems to knock down the pay wall entirely.
Similar to the BlackBerry app released last summer, the WSJ iPhone app's home screen provides scrolling headlines and thumbnail images of that day's Journal content in a few different categories—"What's News," "Markets," and "Editors' Picks." Hit "More," however, and you get pretty much every category covered in the dead tree version. You can also tune into the Journal's videos and streaming radio content from the app, and just one bottom banner ad seems to be the only monetizing content you'll have to read around.
The WSJ app is a free download, requires an iPhone or iPod touch running at least the 2.2 firmware.
WSJ - The Wall Street Journal [iTunes Store (direct link) via Wired]
Sweet jesus. Alley Insider reports Hulu is developing an iPhone app that'll stream over 3G and Wi-Fi, and it's "badass." It'll hit "within a few months." I've been dreaming of this moment since Joost's app.
30 Rock, Dollhouse, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Arrested Development, oh yes. Any hope AT&T has of charging people a monthly fee for mobile TV dies with a Hulu app, especially once ABC jumps onboard and it hits other mobile platforms (which it surely will). If it truly delivers the full Hulu experience—every video with a great UI—the potential awesomeness literally blows my mind. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said one year ago that mobile is "ripe for the Hulu experience" but it "may not be identical" on every platform. I'd hope the iPhone is as close to the real thing as it can get, though that obviously depends on NBC and Fox to allow it, as well. And Apple has to approve it, obviously.
But still, mobile TV was not very exciting to me until this moment. [Alley Insider]
Sweet jesus. Alley Insider reports Hulu is developing an iPhone app that'll stream over 3G and Wi-Fi, and it's "badass." It'll hit "within a few months." I've been dreaming of this moment since Joost's app.
30 Rock, Dollhouse, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Arrested Development, oh yes. Any hope AT&T has of charging people a monthly fee for mobile TV dies with a Hulu app, especially once ABC jumps onboard and it hits other mobile platforms (which it surely will). If it truly delivers the full Hulu experience—every video with a great UI—the potential awesomeness literally blows my mind. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said one year ago that mobile is "ripe for the Hulu experience" but it "may not be identical" on every platform. I'd hope the iPhone is as close to the real thing as it can get, though that obviously depends on NBC and Fox to allow it, as well. And Apple has to approve it, obviously.
But still, mobile TV was not very exciting to me until this moment. [Alley Insider]
That's all I need.... another time waster for work.
iPhone/iPod touch only: The Dictionary.com iPhone app does just what you might expect it to, but also offers spoken word pronunciations, words of the day, and similarly-spelled options when you're connected to the net.
Based on the Random House unabridged dictionary, and boasting more than 275,000 definitions with 80,000 synonyms, the app has just one search bar and four screens. It offers word suggestions as you type, and after picking a word, you can flip between a standard dictionary definition blurb and thesaurus listings. You can check your recent searches and delete unnecessary listings on a helpful Recent pane, and check the Word of the Day on another.
The killer feature here, though—besides the fact that it's free in a field full of sometimes costly competitors—are the audio pronunciations, pulled from the Dictionary.com database and played over your headphones or speaker. Not every word has a spoken version, but the ones that do are pretty clear, and might just save you an embarassing moment before the next time you have to be impressive
The Dictionary.com app is free to download, though take note of its 35.6MB size—you'll definitely want to be on Wi-Fi for this one. Runs on iPhones and iPod touch models running at least the 2.2 software.
Dictionary.com [iTunes Store (direct link) via TechCrunch]
Pageonce has just made this handy utility for iPhone that keeps tabs on on your minutes and data usage - you can even look over your bill and figure out your current balance. The full feature list includes:
- View current minute balance, rollover minutes, data plan, SMS use, billing cycle, and previous payments on a single page
- Receive alerts when you reach 90% of your limit or when bill is due
- Breakdown information by family member
- View and pay phone bill directly from Cell Minute Tracker
Very cool, but it will be really impressive when we can top-up or change other service details right from the device in an interface like this. Sure, some carriers let you do it by SMS right now, but a dedicated, preloaded app on any handset would be really helpful. Of course, then carriers would have a harder time pinging you on overage charges… Starting tomorrow you can pick up Cell Phone Minute Tracker in the App Store right over here. Just remember, it’s U.S.-only.
Google Voice, the very cool invite-only calling wrapper that used to be called Grand Central, can now be controlled directly from the iPhone with the GV Mobile app. It's pretty fantastic.
The app costs $3 and is just designed to interface with Google Voice. You can dial directly out from your GV number (either using the dialpad or through your normal iPhone contacts list), send texts from your GV number, and access your GV number's voicemail.
Text and calls go through properly and voicemail is as close an approximation of your iPhone's visual voicemail as it gets. Fairly accurate transcripts of your voicemails can be sent via text to your phone as well. History is funky, however, since it shows "Unknown" for all my calls. You can control which phone numbers incoming calls dial, and also which phone you want to "call out" from.
If you're a Google Voice user, the $3 is well worth it to be able to text and call from behind another number. It allows you a layer of privacy, so that people don't know your real number and you can block callers from the main Google interface. The only thing left is to wait for Google Voice to open up to the public.
There's also a free version that allows you to just dialing, which is good enough for most people. The pay version is here.
As if you didn't have enough with the Google case map and CDC's Twitter, here you have the Swine Flu Tracker for your iPhone or touch. Unfortunately, it may not reach your hands soon enough.
The reason: It still has to go through the authorization process. If it goes through before everyone dies in California, then you will be able to get it for free. If you are alive yourself. [TechCrunch]
Both apps are essentially the same. They let you make calls and send SMS out from your Google Voice number to any other number in your contact list. You can check your voicemail and see your history, plus control which phones ring when someone calls into your Google Voice number (useful for using your landline to answer calls when you're at home). In general, they're the same.
But where VoiceCentral has GV Mobile beat is execution. The app may not be pretty (a lot of the buttons and icons look mis-matched, colorwise), but it rarely crashes, whereas GV Mobile crashes somewhat often when performing certain tasks. Also, VoiceCentral correctly matched up the history with my contact list.
They're both $3, but if we had to recommend one, we'd recommend VoiceCentral, despite it being somewhat ugly to look at. But GV Mobile also has a free version, if you only want to make calls. [VoiceCentral]
FileMaker has just announced a new Bento application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Touted as an all in one tool, Bento is a Mac-styled, condensed database in your pocket.
The original $50 Bento software—named after Japanese-styled lunchboxes that have designated spaces for different items—is intended for use at home for everyone from soccer moms to gadgetheads, whereas its older brother, FileMaker Pro, is used mainly in offices by larger companies. The Bento application, like both databases, helps you keep tabs on all your stuff—including your address book, calendars, events, projects, logs and lists—all organized in one application.
Supposedly, what makes Bento so simple to use is that it automatically syncs your address book, mail, iCalendar and other data directly from your computer to your phone. For those who own the $50 Bento software, it's supposed to be easier for you to input data into your phone without having to type everything out on the touch-QWERTY-keyboard on your phone. For example, if you would like to store a specific recipe on your phone, you could simply just copy and paste it into Bento on your computer, drag and drop an accompanying photo into the entry, and then sync it to your phone. Moreover, because FileMaker, Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple, the Bento application is apparently intuitive to those who are familiar with Mac layouts and style, with iTunes-esque formatting and similar search bar. Unfortunately for PC users, using the Bento software coupled with the application is only available for Mac users for $4.99. [Bento in App Store]
Apple products are generally more expensive than their competitors. Although the overall user experience of Apple products is better, most people are price sensitive. Which means Creative, Sandisk and the likes still have about 20% of the MP3 player market share.
For those of you who doesn’t have an iPod but use iTunes as their main music player we found two free apps which can be used to sync iTunes with almost any non-Apple MP3 player.
iTunes Agent
iTunes Agent, a project released under the GPL license by Jaran Nilsen and Justin Katz, is available from Sourceforge. The developers say it allows users to sync any MP3 player with iTunes as long as it has the ability to be connected to computer as a USB drive. It can be and MP3 player or even mobile phone.
Configuring iTunes Agent is simple. All the necessary settings are presented in one window and are obvious even to a non-tech savvy person. You can associate the MP3 player with one playlist from iTunes, either normal or smart. Choosing a smart playlist will enable you to refresh songs automatically every time you plug the device in. For instance, associating your MP3 player with some smart “Shuffle” playlist will always put new song collection on your player.
After choosing the device, music folder and associating that with a playlist you’re ready to right click on the notification area icon and select ‘Syncronize devices’. A dialog box will appear with information about the file operations being conducted. iTunes Agent recreates the iTunes folder structure on the MP3 player; Music>Artist>Album. Be careful, because some older MP3 players don’t support going more than 2 levels deep. While testing the current version of iTunes Agent, I never encountered a crash or hang, and the file transfer completed successfully in a short time.
iTunes Sync
iTunes Sync, a program from John Tackabury of Binary Fortress Software, isn’t licensed under the GPL but provides a simpler configuration panel, automatic updates, translations into Spanish and German and a slightly better looking notification area icon.
Both programs tested are free, work with iTunes 8 and require .NET Framework 2.0, which is available for free from Microsoft Update.
AT&T customers can now pay their bill, view all voice and data usage and browse / manage bolt-on features directly from their iPhone with ease thanks to the new myWireless mobile app.
So, if you want to stay on top of your usage (especially if you have a family plan or travel overseas), the myWireless app is now available as a free download in the App Store. [iTunes via iPhonebuzz via Slashgear]
The official script may have minimized it as a maintenance release, but some users are finding out that iPhone Beta 5 contains more than bugfixes. So far: YouTube's improved, and hacked MMS is no more.
The guys at winandmac say they've noticed a change in the YouTube app's stream handling. Now, instead of defaulting to the low-res OTA version of a YouTube video when connected via 3G, the app plays the high-res version previously reserved for Wi-Fi.
Meanwhile, in our comments and over at the iPhone Blog, AT&T-bound Beta 5 users are reporting that the simple MMS stopgap hack is no longer possible.
It's only been few hours since Beta 5 burst forth into this world, naked and screaming, so more changes are bound to bubble up to the surface—there are already rumblings that new anti-tethering measures have been implemented, but this hasn't been confirmed (and may have more to do with new security features in iTunes 8.2 than iPhone OS). [winandmac and the iPhone Blog]
Until the game-changing Hulu app drops, fans of 30 Rock, The Office, and other NBC shows can catch them full-screen on their iPhone or iPod touch, as well as on a few other mobile phones.
It's probably not a new feature, but none of the Lifehacker editors ever thought to surf over to m.nbc.com and see if they offered full episode videos in streaming QuickTime for iPhones until we were tipped off. The episodes look pretty crisp on the iPhone/touch, and while the show and episode offerings aren't as robust as on Hulu, the quality is definitely there. It would seem to work over either Wi-Fi or 3G/EDGE, too.
Testing it out on a G1, the videos were still there, but the video was noticeably chunky yet smooth playing. If you're finding NBC's mobile site decent on any other phones or mobile devices, let us know in the comments. Oh, and as Liz Lemon would say, it's not product placement—we just like it. NBC Mobile
Some nice looking programs in here.
Nearly a month after Sling's iPhone app to stream shows and control your home SlingBox DVR was supposedly banned by AT&T for network-clogging concerns, SlingPlayer Mobile actually shows up—for $30, and it works over Wi-Fi only. It might make for a nice addition to Sling's streaming web site, but it suggests the idea of ever-present video streaming might have to wait until cellular data problems are worked out. [via PC World]
$30
When iPhone 2.0 launched, Twitterific was the Twitter app. Beautiful, clean, simple. Then Twitter apps exploded, and several months later, it suddenly seemed a little too simple. Twitterific 2 plays feature catch-up.
The original Twitterific was designed around reading—so that's what it was (and still is) good at. Twitterific 2 takes that core and layers stuff on top of it. In order to keep things looking clean, it hides everything behind buttons, so it feels like there's a lot of drilling down every time you want to do something, which ironically makes the otherwise exceptionally eye-pleasing app feel cluttered and busy.
But feature parity is finally here: You can now do basically anything you can with Tweetie or other full-featured apps, like actually follow and unfollow people, split the timeline up between your regular one and replies, drill down into threads, search—though it's stuck in an odd place—check trends, see people nearby, etc. Two awesome, unique features: Marking tweets is like favorites, except it's private, it has a compressor that shortens both URLs and text, which squeezing the most you can out of 140 characters.
It's still the best reading experience of any Twitter app, strictly from an eyeball point of view, but I wish it managed to add all of the new features without losing some of the focused, streamlined feel of the original. The free version is a decent alternative to Twitterfon, but if you're debating between spending $3 on Tweetie or $4 on the paid version of Twitterific, Tweetie wins. [Twitterific]
If you're an iTunes user (download for Windows|Mac) whose appetite for music, movies, and podcasts is outstripping the capacity of your computer, it might be a good time to think about offloading that library to an external hard drive or a separate internal drive. If you do it right, the process is relatively simple, although the transfer time could take an hour or more, depending on the size of your media library.
To walk you through it, here's a step-by-step video and slide show tutorial on how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive.
Cnet VIDEO
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10242259-12.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheDownloadBlog
Kindle 1.1 for iPhone Now Available
If you are into the whole book thing, go and download the latest update. It's worth it.
• Read in portrait or landscape mode
• Pinch to zoom images in books
• Select alternate background and text colors to improve
reading comfort in low light conditions.
• Tap on either side of the screen or flick to turn pages
old verIf you are into the whole book thing, go and download the latest update. It's worth it.
• Read in portrait or landscape mode
• Pinch to zoom images in books
• Select alternate background and text colors to improve
reading comfort in low light conditions.
• Tap on either side of the screen or flick to turn pages
[FLASH]http://www.youtube.com/v/RhL2SWgFx7A&hl=en&fs=1[/FLASH]
On the off chance he hasn't entirely worn out his welcome in your heart of hearts, Sega have quietly released a version of the original Sonic the Hedgehog.
As with most iPhone ports these days, the game just kind of...turned up, and as with most iPhone ports these days, control is handled by a touch-sensitive replica of an old controller, stuffed into the corner of a screen (as you can see above).
I'd report on how it controls, but without a demo version available - and with my fingers burned by one too many shitty iPhone ports - I'm going to leave that job to some other poor sod.
[via Pocket Gamer]
TuneUp (Windows/Mac, Basic: Free; Gold: $19.95)
TuneUp is a music cleaning addon for iTunes. TuneUp's simple drag and drop interface combined with an extensive database of more than 90 million acoustic fingerprints makes cleaning up your music a breeze. You can drag hundreds of songs onto the TuneUp sidebar in a single go and let it chug through the pile. When it's done, you'll have a list to approve with any tricky songs or albums flagged for your approval before the tags are altered. The same drag and drop system works for cover art; you'll be presented with a list of available cover art for coverless albums. The free version of TuneUp is limited to 100 songs and 50 album covers per month, the Gold version is unlimited. If you try TuneUp and love it, the Gold version is currently 15% off (with the coupon SONGFLU) through June 2, 2009.
MediaMonkey (Windows, Basic: Free; Gold: $19.95)
MediaMonkey is a popular iTunes alternative among Lifehacker readers and also a rather robust tag management tool to boot. Once you have your music collection imported into MediaMonkey, you can automatically update tags from Freedb and update cover art from Amazon. MediaMonkey has a very strong focus on tag-based organization and support for user scripts to speed up the process. If you dump a bunch of music into MediaMonkey and that music has incomplete, corrupted, or mismatched ID3 tags, MediaMonkey automatically flags them and puts them in an Edit/Unsynchronized node on the program's file navigation tree, making it extremely easy to find the bad apples in your music collection and fix them. Once you get your tags in order, you can use Media Monkey to automatically organize your music into folders using the ID3 tags as a guide, creating directories based on artist and album names. If your primary focus is tag cleanup, the free version has all the same tagging features as the pay version.
ID3-TagIT (Windows, Free)
Although development was discontinued on ID3-TagIT in 2007, it still has a base of happy users. It isn't the most spartan or automated entry in the Hive Five, but it does offer an extremely granular amount of control over even the most minute details of tagging. If you're not interested in digging into the more obscure tags, the app's quick edit box handles basic changes. Like MediaMonkey, the program will query the Freedb to help you out. ID3-TagIT has no help file or online documentation, so be prepared to spend a little while going through each menu bit by bit to get a feel for all the features and their layout.
MusicBrainz Picard (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)
MusicBrainz is an enormous user-maintained metadatabase of album information. Their popular iEatBrainz music tagging tool has been replaced by the cross-platform PicardTagger. On top of using available information, like file names, to suggest changes to your tags, Picard also uses AcousticFingerprints of songs to semi-automatically identify songs in your collection. Once Picard finishes scanning your collection and checking it against the MusicBrainz database, it flags the tracks with a green, red, or orange flag to indicate how close of a match each file is to a fingerprint in the MusicBrainz database. From there you can check the suggested changes against your existing files side by side before approving them. Picard has an extensive drag and drop feature list, and almost every type of dragging and dropping within the interface does something useful. Dragging a file from the browser pane onto an album for example, prompts Picard to check the file against that particular album. Picard is open source and scriptable, leaving it wide open for tinkering to suit your needs.
Mp3Tag (Windows, Free)
Mp3Tag is a an MP3 tagging tool with a rather spartan interface which lends itself to easy use. You can batch edit your MP3 tags, including iTunes specific tags like media type or TV Show settings. If your MP3 files are named with tags in the file name like band-album-track-title.mp3, you can tell Mp3Tag to convert the naming convention of your files into the actual tags. You can also go in the opposite direction, renaming your files to reflect their tags. The latter trick is handy if you'd like to make the file name easily recognizable during searching and also have a backup of sorts should the ID3 tag become corrupted or overwritten with an incorrect tag. Mp3Tag also supports expression-based renaming, allowing you easily reformat the naming convention or formatting style of your files. Mp3Tag supports multiple online databases such as Freedb, Amazon, Discogs, and more for easy tag importing.
Foobar2000 (Windows, Free)
foobar2000 is a music player before all else, but it does have some basic tag editing functionality built in. Many readers were more than satisfied fixing the occasional misplaced tag in foobar2000, not needing the more robust automated scanning and tagging of more advanced tagging software. foobar2000 can query the the Freedb, and the basic tags like artist, album, genre and such can be edited quickly. If you really want to see what makes foobar200 special, take a look at how to roll your own killer audio player with foobar2000—or just head straight to our foobar2000 screenshot tour, in which we feature the impressively varied world of reader-submitted foobar2000 customizations.
By default, iTunes is the only media player that you can use to sync your iPhone and iPod Touch with your computer. However, iTunes is only supported in Mac and Windows, which means Linux users with iPhones will have to find an alternative way to sync their iPhones, or at least get their music into the mobile device. In addition, there may be a large group of Windows users who are using other media players (such as Winamp) to manage their music library and loathe the idea of migrating the whole library to iTunes just because they bought an iPhone.
In this article, I will point out 6 other ways that you can transfer music to your iPhone without iTunes.
1. Media Monkey (Windows)
MediaMonkey is a heavy-duty, fully-featured media player for Windows. It is just like iTunes in Mac, allowing you to manage your music, video, podcast, rip CD, organize album art etc. In their latest version 3 release, they implemented iPhone/iPod Touch support and you can now transfer/sync your music easily.
In order to use Media Monkey to manage your iPhone music, you have to first install iTunes (version 8.1.0.52 and before). That could be ironical since the purpose of it all is to do without iTunes completely. However, iTunes comes with the device driver for iPhone/iPod Touch that is required by many third-party media players to detect and access the database of the iPhone. As soon as you install iTunes, you will be able to use Media Monkey to sync your music.
or those who don’t want to install iTunes, there is a hack:
- Download the iTunes.exe file
- Rename the .exe to .zip
- Open up the zipped file and extract AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi and QuickTime.msi
- Install these two files.
2) Winamp and the ml_ipod plugin (Windows)
For those who have been using Winamp since the first day it was launched, there is no need to migrate all your music library to iTunes just because you bought a iPhone. With the ml_ipod plugin, you will be able to sync your music.
Firstly, you have to install iTunes (ml_ipod was tested with iTunes 7.4.2 and 8.0.2. If you are using a later version of iTunes, might not work), or use the above hack to install the driver without installing iTunes.
Secondly, install Winamp (recommended version 5 and above), follow by ml_ipod (version 3.08 or later). Plug in your iPhone and start Winamp. You should be able to see the device appear on the left side of the panel (see above screenshot).
One good thing about using this combination is, unlike iTunes, this is a bidirectional sync - you can download the songs back to your computer.
3) SharePod (Windows)
If you are looking for a simple and lightweight software to get the synchronization done quickly and easily, then Sharepod would be a good choice.
Sharepod is nothing more than a software for you to sync your iPod and iPhone. While you can play music directly from your iPhone within Sharepod, the music player is only minimal and does not offer much options.
SharePod also offers bidirectional synchronization between your iPhone and computer. Did I also mention that there is no installation required for Sharepod? It just works!
Just like the above two softwares, you’ll need to install iTunes (or perform the hack) for SharePod to recognize your iPhone.
4) CopyTransManager (Windows)
If you are still using firmware 1.x on your iPhone, CopyTrans Manager will work out of the box to sync your iPhone. However, if you are using firmware 2.x, it will prompt you to apply a fix to downgrade the iPhone database so that it can be read by the software. If you are not comfortable with it modifying the internal structure of your iPhone, this software might not be for you.
Editor’s note: Downgrading your iPhone firmware may render your iPhone incapable of using newer applications which require firmwares 2.2 and higher.
Unlike all other software listed above, you don’t need to install iTunes to use CopyTrans Manager. It claims to be the alternative to iTunes. Perhaps in the field of syncing your music library, it can be a good alternative. Other than that, it is clearly lacking in features and does not offer as many features as iTunes.
5) PwnPlayer (any platform)
Pwnplayer is an iPhone music player app that acts as an alternative to the default ipod.app in your iPhone. Its user interface is almost similar to the iPod.app, allowing you to view your songs in Artists, Albums, Songs, Genre list etc. It also supports album art display.
To use Pwnplayer, you have to first jailbreak your iPhone, then install the PwnPlayer application from Cydia. Once you have jailbroken your iPhone, you can then transfer your songs (over SSH) to any folder in your iPhone (for more information about transferring files over to the iPhone, refer to my older article: 6 Ways To Use iPhone As An External Hard Drive). Pwnplayer will scan the whole iPhone hard disk and add the songs to its library. You don’t have to worry about any compatibility with OS platform since it works regardless which OS you are using. As long as you can perform SSH in your computer, you can get Pwnplayer to work.
6) GtkPod (Linux)
Gtkpod seems to be the only solution to sync music to your iPhone in Linux (The older version of Amarok will work too, but Amarok 2.x doesn’t support iPhone syncing yet), but getting it to work is not as easy.
For those who are geeky and advantageous enough, here are the full instructions to hack your iPhone to get it to sync in Linux with gtkpod.
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