How do you setup multiple users with multiple devices on itunes?

I'd really like to know the answer myself. I would think that there are many out there with the same question.

I'm not 100% sure that I understand your question, but I'll share how our house's media situation works. My girlfriend and I share an iMac on which we each have our own user accounts. In those accounts, we have separate iTunes libraries. Using my Apple ID, I have signed into Home Sharing in both of our libraries. That way, when using fast user switching, the other person's library is visible under the home sharing section of iTunes and we can grab a song from the other library when we want. Syncing devices is no problem because there are two seperate libraries. It sounds like this situation is more complicated than you are looking for, but I think that it is the ideal situation. As far as I can tell, iTunes isn't really meant to support multiple users, which is kind of ridiculous.

I don't know sleepyarmistice if you have answered the question to our full satisfaction. What you are saying is that we use apple's home sharing and use separate user logins on our MAC to synch our devices. Will this allow the same apple id to be used acorss several devices? Why I am paranoid in using separate apple ids in separate devices is because am told we need to purchase the same app twice. How do we get across sharing one purchased app?

Mr. Richmaster - I am also fed up of this problem and want to sort it out once and for all. Have come to the forum earlier and could not understand clearly most of the posts. Once we implement it successfully this time I want is to certify it works and publish for other (perhaps thousands) users with clear guidelines.

Here are my usual thoughts on the topic...

The Apple support document How to use multiple iPods with one computer suggests a number of ways for managing the media content. I use method two (Sync with selected playlists) with a slight twist. Rather than regular playlists I set the grouping field to indicate which users should receive which tracks and create smart playlists based on the content of this field.

e.g.

"Alice's Tracks" is "Grouping contains Alice" + "Kind contains audio"

"Bob's Videos" is "Grouping contains Bob" + "Kind does not contain audio"

Tracks that both Alice & Bob want on their iPods have the grouping set to "Alice/Bob"

etc.

I currently manage our family's five iDevices using this system, each getting a different selection to suit their tastes and the capacity of their device. An advantage of using the grouping field is that it is stored in file tags (for non-wav audio files anyway) so that it is relatively easy to recreate the playlists should the iTunes library get trashed and need rebuilding. Also useful if you move files about manually as playlist membership is preserved when you delete & re-import the tracks.

It works for me, but it may not for you. Purchasing everything through the one account means I only have one to manage, at least until the kids properly fly the nest. Eldest child has gone off to university with a clone of the library from which I excised all the content she doesn't want. My son has a similarly cut down library on his machine, but connected to the shared media folder which has all our files. He can, in princple, sync his iPod from his own machine or get me to do it. No surprises which happens most often.

tt2

Hello Richmaster,

My name is Takoda and I am glad to assist you today.

My understanding of your question is that you want to have the music from everyone's account on your computer, but not on all of your devices, excluding your iPad.

The easiest soulution would be for everyone to have separate Apple ids, and to have Home Sharing enabled on the devices you want everyone's music on. That way, your music is all that appears in your iTunes library but you still have access to everyone else's music. The same applies with everyone else's computer.

Apple Support's Understanding Home Sharing should help you set up Home Sharing on all of the devices you need.

Sincerely,

Takoda

Richmaster wrote:

turingtest, I do have a couple questions.

Number one, does everyone in your family only sych their ipods from only 1 computer? If everyone only uses itunes from 1 computer I can see how that will work. But what if kids want to use itunes for windows? Will "Home Sharing" allow all their music purchased on the MAC, to be also displayed on their itunes for windows laptop? I noticed you have PCs and also an ipad. How do you manage your family's music on these devices?

Also, how did you first get everyone's music library into their own library? Drag & drop? Is the "grouping field" you mentioned under "view", then "view options"? What does this do?

Thanks.

Sorry I missed your post earlier. Normally I follow up on any replies. This one must have fallen off the page on a busy day.

As my kids have left home I have created for them a complete clone of the familiy library, then deleted the tracks from it they don't want. Over time their libraries will divirge, but if needs be they can still update their devices using the library at home. Handy when eldest's kit was stolen. 😟

Grouping is just another property, useful because it isn't generally overwritten by other software but is stored in the tags, so preserved when you copy files from one place to another. You can make the column visible and edit for multiple tracks in Get Info. Some software calls the same field "mood" or "sub-genre". iTunes has a specialist purpose for it generally used with classical music, but it doesn't seem to work very well for that and I don't use it that way.

tt2

Just gonna throw this in there.

Personally, I think each person should have their own computer login and their own AppleID.

With their own computer login, they get all their own data (calendars, contacts, documents, etc.) and no need to worry about someone messing with someone elses stuff.

With their own AppleID, they get their their own purchases (which can still be shared amongst the family) but when they leave, no need to worry about authorizing that computer with Dad's AppleID.

All/most content will have been purchased under their own AppleID.

You may well be right, assuming budgets run to such. 🙂

My strategy was also put in place back when music came with DRM and my kids weren't ready to take ownership of the problem of sorting out their stuff. Of course they still don't want to. 😢

tt2

One stumbling point here is that my daughter is 7 years old. I can't setup a separate APple ID for her, she needs to use mine. I think the easiest way around this is to just change the default location of the library to sync to when you open iTunes.

My daughter has her own Windows account and iTtunes library as do I. Therefore we can sync our own libraries to the same device using playlists or to our iPod or iPad.

Cheers
Dave

I'm also looking for a way to do this...

I have one computer with only one login account. It is a Windows PC. ie: it goes straight to the desktop without prompting for a user - and this is how I am going to keep it.

Therefore we have one copy of iTunes installed on said computer.

Myself and my wife each have a seperate iTunes account.

We each purchase our own apps/music with our own iTunes account.

We each have linked our own (and seperate) contacts using our different iTunes accounts.

HOWEVER,

When we log in to either account, iTunes shows all apps, music etc and confuses the contacts.

When we sync our devices we get a random cross bleed of apps and contacts on the different devices.

Is iTunes able to properly filter the music/apps/contacts from different users to stop this cross syncing? Is there something more that I should be doing or is this an iTunes limitation/screw up...

This is what I want:

Windows PC---iTunes--+--My Account--My Music/Apps/Contacts

|--My Wifes Account--Her Music/Apps/Contacts

Not sure how to spell this out any clearer. Thanks in advance! 🙂

This is what I want:

Windows PC---iTunes--+--My Account--My Music/Apps/Contacts

|--My Wifes Account--Her Music/Apps/Contacts

Not gonna happen with one computer login.

You are saying you want separate info in one computer login.

You can have different iTunes libraries and sync different iTunes content but contacts and calendars (and all other content on the comnputer) are not going to be separate

Yes everything on the computer is shared. Only iTunes related stuff needs to be seperated.

The contacts and calendars are synced from 2 different gmail accounts so that shouldn't be an issue.

The apps have only been purchased on their respective devices so shouldn't be available on a device on a different account. However whenever we plug my wife's phone in it insists on placing some of my apps onto her device :/

All I want is if my wife's phone is plugged in, only her apps, contacts etc are available, and if my device is plugged in then I only see my contacts. The music and video doesn't matter so much. If itunes can't do this without the computer itself having seperate logins then there is a serious deficiency in the software! :)

Can it be done?

I suspect all you need do is uncheck the *Automatically sync new apps* box on the Apps tab after connecting a device and before syncing. Once this box has been unchecked each device should remember the setting and only sync the apps that have already been selected for it, plus any you then decide to manually add to the list or purchase on each respective device.

tt2