You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

📰 Newsroom Update

Billie Eilish is Apple Music’s Artist of the Year for 2024. Learn more >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Deleting iTunes library and re importing

how can I remove all music from iTunes app and re-import my library

Posted on Apr 15, 2022 3:25 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 15, 2022 5:05 PM

With iTunes closed make a copy of the iTunes Library.itl file inside your iTunes folder as a backup just in case. Then delete the original file and delete it from the trash. Delete the Album Artwork folder too. iTunes will create a new empty library when you next launch it. You can add your media to the new library.


Why do you want to do this? There may be a better approach. If you have tracks in .wav format they will be missing album and artist details when imported to the new library.


tt2

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 15, 2022 5:05 PM in response to btharp

With iTunes closed make a copy of the iTunes Library.itl file inside your iTunes folder as a backup just in case. Then delete the original file and delete it from the trash. Delete the Album Artwork folder too. iTunes will create a new empty library when you next launch it. You can add your media to the new library.


Why do you want to do this? There may be a better approach. If you have tracks in .wav format they will be missing album and artist details when imported to the new library.


tt2

Apr 15, 2022 6:27 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for your quick response. I don't have tracks in .wav format, so I'm not worried about missing album or artist details. Outside of this apple thread, I did find the answer that you also just gave me above, and it worked. But I also did a search on duplicates after I re-imported my library and I had 1190 of them! Somewhere along the way things went a muck and I wanted to clean up everything. Trouble is if you reimport a 'bad' library you get some of the same troubles, ha ha. But the dupes are gone now, and I gained back about 50 gb on my drive, woo hoo. Thanks again.

Deleting iTunes library and re importing

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.