My iTunes 12.9.4 keeps freezing

Same challenge.

I am on a Win 11 desktop. I have spent a lot of time narrowing down what drives the freeze. This is what I have sound so far. As a note, I had both the Microsoft team and Apple Support teams screen share and watch what was happening and what caused iTunes to freeze. As usual, they both blame each other.

My iTunes 12.12.9.4 app freezes when:

• I add a song to my iTunes library from the apple catalog. As a note, the song will play if played on the Apple platform but will freeze when moved into your library. The song may play once you move it into your library but the iTunes app freezes after that requiring the user to force the app closed through Task Master.
• If I replace a song in my library with a new file from the apple platform

I can play all songs on the apple platform with no issues. I can play all my songs in my iTunes library once the app is restarted and I don't add any new songs.

The bottom line: The iTunes app freezes if you add a new song to your library from their platform.

I also have no problems with adding songs through Apple Music from my iPhone or iPad. This appears to be an issue limited to iTunes 12.12.9.4

All other apps and software on my Win 11 machine run as normal even after the iTunes app is frozen.

I have uninstalled, cleared all apple entries and have the same result. When trying to downgrade, the upgrade will not proceed due to the library. itl file requiring the most current version (12.12.9.4) to access and finish installing. We are stuck using other apple devices to add music until they debug and update this more current release with iTunes.

I happened to have the 64bit 12.12.8.2 version installer from a separate computer. So, I uninstalled iTunes version 12.12.9.4 and so far the old version is running fine...but I will keep testing.

NOTE: On my Windows 11 machine...and following directions on how to uninstall and re-install iTunes from youtube, I notice something strange about the files 12.12.9.4 installed (or didn't install) while uninstalling it. You are supposed to uninstall all Apple apps (like Apple Software Updater, Apple Mobile Driver, Bonjour etc) before the re-install can take place. The only Apple file I could find was the iTunes executable. Odd....

Ok, So then I went in and reinstalled an old version, 12.12.8.2.....and when I check what was installed, all the Apple Apps I expected to delete previously...they were all reinstalled. Not sure if that helps anyone, but 12.12.9.4 must be doing something weird behind the scenes. ALSO, if you do reinstall...make sure you turn off Automatically Install Updates in the iTunes preferences> advanced. AND, I opened Apple Software Update and set the preferences in it to NEVER check for updates. Hopefully this will keep me stable for the time being. Good luck.

Creating a new .itl loses your playlists, play counts, ratings, etc. You can try opening iTunes with ctrl+shift held down, which opens it in safe mode, and sometimes helps with odd issues. Otherwise try a clean reinstall of iTunes.

For general advice see Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates.

The steps in the second box are a guide to removing everything related to iTunes and then rebuilding it which is often a good starting point unless the symptoms indicate a more specific approach. When reinstalling right click on the downloaded setup file and use run as administrator. It may also help to temporarily disable any non-Microsoft anti-virus.

Review the other boxes and the list of support documents further down the page in case one of them applies.

The further information area has direct links to the current and recent builds in case you have problems downloading, or want to revert to an older version if the current one won't work properly for you at the moment. Links to the most recent builds are now at the bottom of the page.

Your library and device backups should be unaffected by these steps but there are links to backup and recovery advice should it be needed.

tt2

tollbridge wrote:

So having said that 12.12.10.1 (Windows 11) seemed OK, as soon as I upgraded to the new version 12.13.0.9 it froze almost immediately and has frozen since. So a backward step for me...

You could roll back to the previous build.

• iTunes 12.12.10.1 for Windows (64-bit) - iTunes64Setup.exe (2023-09-11)

tt2

Hi Garth,

I wanted to inform you that I've found a solution to the problem, at least in my case. Like you, I have numerous playlists, but the majority of them are automated. I enjoy using the star rating system in combination with music genres to generate automated playlists.

However, I do have a few manual playlists, one of which was quite extensive, containing more than 2000 songs. I decided to delete this particular list since it was essentially a duplicate of an automated one. I preferred using the manual list so I could adjust song ratings without interrupting the music.

In any case, after deleting this manual playlist, the problem disappeared. My automated playlists remain stable and are quite useful to me.

So, it's possible that the issue may be related to lengthy manual playlists for some reason.

I hope this information is helpful!

My solution is not ideal, but it works for me. When I run iTunes on my Windows 10 computer, it never freezes if I do not go to the browse tab. When I browse to find a new song to add to my library, iTunes will freeze once I go back to my library. This happens every time, and I have not found any way to fix it.

I also have a Windows 11 computer that I run Apple Music on. The two computers are synched. As many users have noted, Apple Music is not ideal for working with playlists. So here is my solution. Whenever I want new

music or just want to listen to one of Apple's playlists, I do that on my Windows 11 computer running Apple Music. If there is a song I want, I will add it to my library. When I want to put songs into playlists, I go back to my

Windows 10 computer and modify my playlists. If I do that, iTunes never freezes.

As I said, this solution is not ideal, but until Apple solves the freezing issue, this is a workaround I can live with.

@mstone972

My guess is it hasn't been raised up with greater urgency or they have a bug refresh/update coming very soon. What I think it a massive miss is when organizations do not acknowledge there is an issue and note it in the bug log for others to know its captured as an issue being investigated. Keeping customers and users in the dark does not help solve issues.

I have continued to test the many variations to try and resolve the bug including a total removal of apple services and products and re-install. Same outcome. I suspect it's an issues with the iTunes Library.itl file. I can remove items from my library and create playlists as normal in my library from existing songs. The second you add a new song from Apple Music into the iTunes library, it locks up the app. Task Manager is required to end Itunes and restart iTunes. At that time, the new file is ok to play as "new" in my library and operates as normal. However, if you go and add another song from Apple Music, the lockup cycles repeats.

Win11 64bit

12.12.9.4

My iTunes upgraded recently and it kept freezing.

I uninstalled iTunes and installed a previous version and it appears to have resolved the issue.

I had to remove the iTunes Library.itl file in the /Music folder and allow the new install create a new version.

Chris_2023 -

Removed all Apple products and renamed the old library as we noted.

Everything is running smoothly with no freezing in 12.10.11 for Windows (Windows 64bit). Adding and deleting songs in the library is running perfectly.

Turned off Auto Updates at install and again in Edit/Preferences/Advanced (Good call on this note :-) )

At this point this version 12.10.11 is my ride or die. Makes my life enjoyable again. Thanks for your post kicking this solution into play.

Recently, as of maybe 3-4 months ago (coinciding with the release of either version 12.12.10.1 on September 13 or 12.13.0.9 on October 24), I started experiencing this consistently after playing only 3-5 songs. VERY frustrating needing to Ctrl-Shift-Del to close it through Task Manager every time. However, I noticed that one of the things I always did was extend the window length to show more songs.

iTunes no longer freezes on my Windows 11 desktop ever since I stopped changing the window size. I did also change my library name to exclude any characters other than lower-case letters, hoping this would fix it, but it did not... but it may have contributed. Hopefully this helps for someone!!

I tried all of the fixes below and nothing worked. Then I noticed on a listing of all the songs in my library, everything was checked. I held down CTRL and clicked the first check box to uncheck everything and that seems to have fixed the problem.

For those who have this problem and have their music downloaded I found an intermediate fix for Windows users with the information provided by tollbridge above. It's the equivalent of slapping some scotch tape on a broken shovel but it'll work temporarily for me and I assume a few others. All I did was create an outbound firewall rule for iTunes.exe to block network access to it.

1. Press the Windows key + R to open the Run dialog box. Type "Control Panel" and press Enter to open the Control Panel.
2. In the Control Panel click on "Windows Defender Firewall." You may have to click "System and Security" first.
3. On the left side of the Windows Defender Firewall window, click on "Advanced settings." This will open the Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security.
4. In the Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security window, click on "Outbound Rules" in the left pane.
5. In the right pane, click on "New Rule..." to create a new outbound rule.
6. In the New Outbound Rule Wizard, select the "Program" option and click "Next."
7. Choose the "This program path" option and click "Browse" to locate the executable file (Typically C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe) of the app/program you want to restrict network access for. Once you've selected the file, click "Next."
8. Select the "Block the connection" option and click "Next."
9. Choose the network types for which you want to apply the rule and click "Next." You can select all three options (Domain, Private, and Public) if you want to block the app/program on all types of networks.
10. Give the rule a name and, if desired, add a description. Then click "Finish" to create the rule.

Hopefully some people can use this temporarily because this issue has been going on for over a month.

go into your c:/users/user/appdata and delete any apple folder inside it. This fixed it for me. appdata folder is hidden by default so you might have to check show hidden folders

JMCT -

I actually renamed the .itl file to .bak, also.

Here is the Apple link to previous iTunes: Apple - Support - Downloads

iTunes 12.10.11 for Windows (Windows 64 bit)

Post Date: Dec 7, 2020

I haven't had any issues -- this is an older version, but works fine.

I've been using the web based pages to build my playlist. If you log into your account from music.apple.com, you can build your playlist there. It seems to only be freezing when you add songs to your playlist from Apple Music via the iTunes app. I know it's not ideal, but it's been working for me without iTunes freezing.