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elmnt Author

Level 1

27 points

iTunes keeps opening by iteself

I've been Googling this for a while. I keep seeing the same offered solutions, and they're not working:

1. I don't have any conflicts in my Login Items

2. I don't have any related widgets causing a problem

3. "Open iTunes when this [device] is connected" is UNCHECKED for ALL my iOS devices

4. "Sync with this [device] over Wi-Fi is UNCHECKED for ALL my iOS devices

Every solution I've seen so far claims one of those, above, will solve it, yet iTunes keeps opening. I have to Force-Quit it 3 or 4 times in a row to get it to close. It opens again about 15 to 20 minutes later EVERY TIME.

This started after I updated my iPad to iOS 5.1.1 (9B206)

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Greg

iTunes-OTHER, iOS 5.1.1, MacBookPro running 10.6.8

Posted on May 30, 2012 11:49 AM

Best reply

elmnt Author

Level 1

27 points

Posted on Jun 1, 2012 4:08 PM

Update: I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with an Apple support person, to no avail. The LAST thing he had me try was to remove the .plist file from the Preferences directory (forcing iTunes to create a NEW .plist file when it was opened again).

iTunes did not "zombie open" after that file was removed. But once I opened it manually, then closed it again (after iTunes had created a new .plist file, having been opened), same old behavior.

The Apple support person concluded that there was "something corrupt" in the .plist file. I don't agree, since the behavior just starts all over again once I open iTunes manually again (after having removed the .plist file). It's just creating a basic .plist file each time. There really couldn't be anything "corrupt" in it, each time.

My personal conclusion is that there is some bug in iOS 5.1 that they haven't figured out yet. Typical of Apple, when there is a pervasive bug, they just claim to not know about it until they fix it. Then they'll say "Oh we found a bug and fixed it in this update," instead of saying "We know of the bug you're all experiencing, and we're working to fix it." They don't do this because it makes them look bad ("We're not sure what it is, and we're trying to fix it, etc.")

This has been my experience with Apple anyway. So this is still pretty FCKD, and remains unfixed...

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53 replies

tbirdvet

Level 6

13,731 points

Mar 15, 2014 5:29 PM in response to eekahil

Mine just started doing this the last week. I have not made any changes or added any music or devices. Cannot figure this out. I'm running ML 10.8.5.

tbirdvet

Level 6

13,731 points

Mar 16, 2014 5:18 PM in response to tbirdvet

I may have solved my issue. I was using my Apple remote and pressing the menu button and then put it aside. That's when iTunes would randomly open. I then went into iTunes, started a song then used the remote to pause. Closed out iTunes and now all seems to be OK. Wierd.

Apr 4, 2014 3:02 AM in response to samofsam

This was bugging me for weeks and your post solved the issue for me 🙂

I have to find a new alarm clock now 😐

Apr 6, 2014 10:02 AM in response to elmnt

I had a similar problem. It got so bad, Itunes was popping up every 15 seconds. My operating system is Windows 7. I wondered if simply uninstalling and reinstalling might solve the problem. I went to Control Panel, opened Uninstall a Program, clicked on Itunes and saw 3 options: Uninstall, Change, and Repair. What the heck, let's try Repair. It worked! Itunes has stopped opening up on its own. Nevertheless, I have my fingers crossed.

Apr 13, 2014 1:29 PM in response to elmnt

Having this issue as well and I don't sync my phone/ipod/whatever. I've unchecked all the things this thread and other similar threads have advised, and it's still doing it.

I've noticed that when my bluetooth speakers automatically connect/disconnects, this might be a trigger for zombie iTunes. Do any of you have bluetooth enabled and noticing the same?

Would love to find a resolution to this (besides uninstalling iTunes... next step).

May 6, 2014 5:24 AM in response to elmnt

I am having the same problem on my MacBook Pro. The music in I-tunes starts playing at the most inappropriate times, like faculty meetings! Please get this fixed!

Tiktoc

Level 1

0 points

Oct 13, 2015 3:40 PM in response to elmnt

I've had this problem off and on for years. Now that I think of it, it seems to be consistent with when I have speakers plugged into the headphone jack (can we get a Bose/Apple partnership here???). Anyway, I went into User/Applications/, secondary clicked on iTunes.app and clicked Show Package Contents. This opened up a new Finder window. Go to Contents/MacOS and find iTunesHelper.app. Instead of deleting it as recommended above, I simply renamed it. The problem went away for a while. When the zombie iTunes returned, I went back in and renamed iTunesASUHelper, which is one of those grey boxes denoting a UNIX executable file. The problem has been gone for about 20 minutes since I did that and I've jiggled the headphone cable quite a bit in that time. What I haven't done is to google what iTunesASUHelper does, so beware of that. I may have messed up something. But if I did, I still have the file and can rename it back to it original. When I renamed, I simply added "-disabled" to the existing filename.

All that said, I really think that whoever came up with the headphone jack getting confused by random electrical noise that triggers the next track, or play option in iTunes is really onto something. I'm fairly hard on my headphone jack. This is a Late 2008 Unibody aluminum 13" Macbook with ML 10.8.5 so it's going on seven years old. I do a lot of audio work, so I hardly ever use only the built-in speakers, and the headphone jack is usually connected to a set of decent speakers. So far, so good. Wish me luck! (Somehow, "Red 5, I'm goin' in" seems appropriate here though.)

Nov 9, 2015 10:28 AM in response to elmnt

now bill Apple for the time for doing their job

iTunes keeps opening by iteself