Q: Itunes not responding, running extremely slow

After a few days wondering about what happened and reading all of the posts, and without access to change my iPhone music libraries (I use to do a t least, a monthly backup to my Mac), I tried something new.

First Stage

1) From Finder, move the original files (iTunes Library.xml + iTunes Library.xml) from Music<iTunes folder, for example to the Desktop

3) Open iTunes pressing Option key;

4) Select Criate New Library;

3) Now, iTunes open in a flash...

Second Stage

1) On Preferences < Advanced, make sure that the location of the music files are selected (on my case, an external drive with about 200Gb ou music);

2) Then, on File, select ⌘O (Add to Library) and point to the Music Folder, on my my case, the external drive, and let the iTunes "import" all the references;

3) Repeat this step for applications and podcasts.

Now, I have a perfect and normal iTunes app. Everything works on the fly, I can surf my music library in milliseconds and the applications, podcasts as well...

So, what's missing? The playlists course (in my case, more than 400...).

Third Stage - The Playlists

For this, I had 2 options:

1) Before start the First Stage, on File, select, Export the Playlists, save it to the Desktop for example, and now proceed to the import command;

2) Start from scratch all the playlists all over again... A patient job, no doubt...

I chose the second one, just in case (I only have album playlists and not customized ones, which helped my decision...).

Conclusion

The problem was, no doubt about it at least in my case, the original iTunes libraries, that came all the way from 2002 (originally created on a Windows PC...)...

Somehow, when I upgraded to 12.3.1.23, something went very, very, wrong and I confess, it was the first time ever.

iTunes is a mess, we all know that.

It started as a "play music app" (the best of the market with it's clean and minimalist UI) and ended an AI of some sort, all messed up, and desperately needed of mental therapy.

Apple need to fix it, and probably divide it into 2 or more distinct apps...

Now, it is almost an independent OS inside the OS X, and it´s a mess... Apple Music, didn't help either.

Here is what I did (AFTER A FULL CLONE BACKUP OF MY MAC):

Previous posts say to reinstall iTunes 12.3.0.44 app but I decided to try my luck on a less orthodox method which so far is working. I just synched my iPhone with older version and no hiccups.

1. Extracted iTunes 12.3.0.44 app with pacifist to desktop.

2. Compressed broken iTunes (vers. 12.3.1.23) to a zip file in my apps folder and labelled it.

3. Navigate to the Applications folder and find the iTunes app file (/Applications/iTunes.app). Right-click (or Control-click) on iTunes and select Get Info. Locate and click on the padlock icon on the bottom right side of the window and enter your admin password. This is necessary in order to make changes to the app’s permission settings.

4. Next, expand the Sharing & Permissions section of the window if it’s not already visible and change the privileges for “everyone” to Read & Write. This will give us complete control of the iTunes application so that we can override the operating system’s warning and delete it.

5. Close the Get Info window and try again to drag the iTunes application file to the Trash. This time, there’s no warning, and the file is immediately trashed. (Empty the Trash to complete the process)

6. Move the previously Extracted iTunes 12.3.0.44 to your apps folder.

7. Test it for yourself. iTunes opens fast again and no (ugly newly-designed) spinning beachball of death to stare at while your blood pressure shoots up of the scale.

This seems to have worked!! Thank you SO much!!!!

Download 12.3:

***********

Then:

1. Open the Terminal
2. Run "sudo rm -r /Applications/iTunes.app"
3. Re-install iTunes

<Link Edited by Host>

Tried reinstalling 12.3, but my iTunes still freezes whenever I am logged into my iTunes account. 

If I log out, I can use ITunes and it doesn't freeze, but it's still slower than normal.

Like other posts, I have had my ITunes library since ITunes started and move the library to several.

Just wanted to add that I am having this issue as well. iTunes is completely unusable.  I'll just access it from my iPad or iPhone until apple gets a fix out. For what its worth it was fine until I subscribed to the free trial of Apple Music.

Unfortunately I'm facing the same issues as mentioned above, iTunes is not responding, the beach ball doesn't stop turning. I have a 300 GB library with mostly ripped music plus around 2.000 titles from the iTunes store. Everything ran smoothly until the launch of Apple Music around 4 months ago. After I signed to the 90 day test period I saw the first issues coming: When I played a song, it started immediately but then I got the spinning wheel for 10-15 seconds before I could do anything else. The latest updates of iTunes and El Capitan make it impossible to use iTunes. Even downgrading to iTunes 12.3.044 doesn't help.

It's very frustrating, I'm an Apple iTunes user for more than 10 years and I'm not interested in any workarounds. I can only hope that Apple comes with a proper update as soon as possible that solves all these issues with iTunes, Apple Music and El Capitan. I'm surprised to read how restrained many users in this thread behave. I paid a lot of money to Apple to buy the hardware, software and the music in the iTunes store and currently I can't use any of this, that's not acceptable. I want to have access to the music I paid for.

I just refuse, at the moment, to do all these complicated fixes. Shouldn't an update take care of the problem? If so, where is it? Iy really makes me angry that when some people here called apple they spend all this time trying to get the caller to jump through hoops and then blame the caller's computer. Isn't it up to apple to just fix this in an update? Do they ever take responsibility for causing problems? Or is it always our fault?

As I'be right now I'm struggling with the beachball but I'm still crossing my fingers for an update that'll fix this. Any reason to hope? Or do I need to face facts that I have to do something radical here to get it working again (like downgrading or doing the fixes that leave me without my playlists?)

Greetings all!  I posted this early in this discussion, but thought that I would  share it again in case anyone is interested in trying it for themselves. After experiencing the same issues as all of you, I tried an experiment that seems to have worked for me.  All of my iTunes media is on an external drive (with additional backups on other drives).  I disconnected my external drive and launched iTunes (Option>Click) and created a new iTunes library on my hard drive.  iTunes operated as expected.

I then reconnected my external drive and again using Option>Click to select a different library, I chose my external drive's iTunes Library.  The application opened as expected with no "hangs" or "spinning beach ball".   It seems to be working normally...and actually a little faster that the previous version.

I have no idea why this worked, but I thought I'd share it in case it provides a solution for someone else.  All the best...

Syd Rodocker

I tried a variant of this approach. I was reluctant to do so since the old version of iTunes was/is working fine. But I decided to give it a try. (My iTunes folder is on my main hard drive.)

I had reverted to 12.3.0.44. First, I created a new library on my main hard drive, "iTunes 1." Then I used 12.3.1 installer from apple.com and installed that (rather than the update file from the App Store). The new version used the new, empty library, and, of course, worked great. Quit iTunes and, using the Option>Click method, selected my original library. The result is not perfect but certainly a vast improvement from before when I was originally using 12.3.1. Now, videos play in the iTunes window/space rather than a new space/window. Also, no more audio playing before the video appears. They come on together. I still get the beach ball at first for videos and many (though not all) other actions. Activity monitor also shows iTunes as initially using 100+% of CPU and eventually showing in red that iTunes is not responding. But now rather than minutes (or almost forever), the % CPU drops to normal levels in 30-60 seconds and the video plays normally and other actions continue as they should. When a video stops, though, I get the same 30-60 seconds of beach ball/not responding/high then dropping % CPU/then normal activity level for iTunes.

I'm going to let iTunes run for awhile since I noted in a couple of posts that some users said performance improved after letting it sit for a time; that maybe iTunes was doing some one-time action in regard to some files or whatever. I dunno. I suspect that this non-responsiveness will continue and that I will probably revert again to 12.3.0.44.

But there is no real excuse for this iTunes behavior. Users shouldn't have to jump through hoops for a small update that is supposed to "improve…stability and performance." The latter is certainly a joke for many of us.

I'm very angry. Mac's are expensive. I'm on my third macbook in this lifetime. I have an iphone and an ipad. Each time I paid a lot of money for this technology. What really angers me is that I know employees will never just say, "we need to fix this." I agree that there should be an update by now solving these problems. Let's go apple. I'm also not interested in risky work-arounds.

Same issue here.  I am not using Apple Music or Home Sharing, yet I get the spinning beachball everytime I try to add something to the library or edit any data about an existing song.  I am going to try the downgrade option for now.

I know it's in here a dozen times. But, what's the safest way to downgrade? Can I keep my playlists and everything when downgrading? I'm willing to give apple another week or so.

I'm enraged by this.This is not the first time I've had problems with itunes upgrades. A few months back there was one that worked really badly for a while and then it got improved by an update.

I agree that this is frustrating and going back to 12.3.0 is not a great solution..but..it actually works.

It seems like the one thing everyone who has been complaining about the slowness of iTunes has in common is...a BIG library.  That is definitely the case for me.  My library was around 16,000 songs when I first upgraded to iTunes 12.3.1 and I started having problems syncing my iPhone.   It would ALWAYS get stuck at "Transferring purchases from iPhone....".  I tried everything and nothing seemed to work.  I was not syncing my entire library as it wouldn't all fit on my iPhone.  So, I synced by playlist.  Finally I tried something.  I deleted any song that was not in a playlist (using one of Doug's Apple scripts) and tried syncing my entire library. This seemed to help a bit.  Downsaving to iTunes 12.3.0 completely fixed the problem though.

I went to the Apple Store to get some assistance and was basically told to start using the iTunes iCloud library.  I tried that when Apple Music first came out and it wreaked havoc on my iPhone (like all my artwork was messed up).  Plus, I'm not sure how I feel about renting/streaming music.  I like to own my music so I can listen to it whenever and where ever I want.  I am sure I'll eventually come around to streaming music because that is where the industry is going, but..for now I'm not interested.

I think the bottom line is that Apple is trying to move everyone to iCloud and Apple Music and they just aren't going to optimize their apps for people who hang on to to their big libraries.

This is from other people. Worked for me, anyway.

Download 12.3:

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/download-review/1957301/apple-itunes-for-mac-1110

Then:

1. Open the Terminal
3. Run "sudo rm -r /Applications/iTunes.app"
5. Re-install iTunes

Also, be aware that when it asks for your password, the password won't be visible as you type it. After you type password, hit enter and iTunes should be deleted.

After I reinstalled 12.3.0.44, things worked as before. Note: I had to restart to my iMac before the version number in Finder matched the actual version number found by looking at "About iTunes" in the menu. Also, I then ran repair disk permissions via OnyX. It showed some problems w/ iTunes permissions, but those may or may not have been relevant to any of this problem.

Good luck and hope this helps.

Also, as far as I can tell, none of my playlists were lost.

This may be irrelevant, but when I tried creating a new library (which helped w/ 12.3.1 but ultimately did not fix the issue, especially when playing videos; I reverted yet again), I noticed that my old iTunes folder has a subfolder "iTunes Music" and includes all my videos, music, apps, podcasts, etc. But the newly created iTunes subfolder was titled "iTunes Media." Maybe that difference is responsible for some issues.

When I had 12.3.1 for yet another time, I tried renaming the "iTunes Music" folder in my old library to "iTunes Media" but then I couldn't get iTunes to open, at all. Had to trash 12.3.1 again, rename my subfolder "iTunes Music," and revert to 12.3.0. I'm not computer savvy enough to understand why renaming the old folder won't work w/ 12.3.1 but using 12.3.1 w/ a new library that has "iTunes Media" does work. Weird.

For what it's worth...