Where is option to have side bar in iTunes 12 ?

I have just read all of this thread and man is it an annoying read. Tons of people complaining, a brave few trying to help, but for the most part actual answers are ignored and rather complaints (a few of them actually unsubstantiated) are being repeated over and over again. I thought people on discussions.apple.com were actually looking for answers. Unfortunately quite a few only seem to come here to vent.

Anyways:

If all the same functionality is still there, riddle me this...

In prior versions, after inserting a CD I was able to select tracks on the CD and drag them to a playlist in the sidebar so that those tracks would be imported and added to that playlist. How do I go about accomplishing the same thing in iTunes 12?

Let me guess, you haven't bothered to actually try it? Because if you had, it would have been blatantly obvious! (btw: Sorry, no offense.)

It is actually pretty easy, just select the tracks from the CD you want to import, start moving them and voilà, the sidebar (magically) appears. They actually improved the set-up of this interface, because in this version of the sidebar only the "manual selection" playlists appear, "intelligent playlist" are not shown, because you can't drag files onto them anyways. I guess this is also the reason, why the sidebar is not permanently visible, when looking at a CD, this sidebar is generated "on-the-fly" when you start dragging tracks and only shows playlists you can actually successfully drag to.

My apologies, Linda. The link was in another thread on this forum about iTunes 12 being useless. This is the link. I am on Mavericks 10.9.5

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/audio/3415214/how-downgrade-itunes-11-itunes-10- in-mac-os-x/

Huh... as the one who posted the comment you referenced, I have to admit: No, I guess I didn't try it. I thought I had, but obviously I didn't, since I just tried it after reading your post, and I'll be ******... it worked! That's exactly what I was looking for. So here I am with egg on my face.

I know we can all agree that iTunes 12 isn't perfect; nothing is. But I'll just go ahead and walk away impressed for now.

Thank you for providing an answer, @moviemac!

I'm glad I could help.

Oh, and the first part of my post wasn't directed at you 🙂, you were asking a legitimate question, that had not been asked before and obviously also not answered. That was more meant for the dozen people or so asking were the sidebar is, when it had already been mentioned again and again, that you just need to click on "playlists".

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just drag the song title into the Playlist...just like before. Of course to accomplish this, I had to make the following changes: In the menu bar at the top, you need to select the Songs Icon (musical notes), then Playlists, then on the far right, select Songs. I was pretty frustrated figuring out this combination, but once I did, it seems to work the same as the prior sidebar view I used.

Select the Music Icon at the top of the left column, then you can select songs and drag them to your playlist.

But then again, maybe I'm missing something...

I'm just going to put my two sense in here. If you like the sidebar, like I do, I would downgrade your iTunes version. The Left Side Bar has become ingrained into the iTunes software fashion sense. By them taking the side bar out of what I would call the most definable portion of a UI. Us ers are now coming to forrums like there in order to get some type of condolences of what's going on. It's like using windows 98 and then going to Windows 8. Anyone would cry foul, except for Apple users. The Left Side Bar made it easy to navigate the whole mess of content with out getting lost in deep twisted maze without the Apple Map of Despair. I like the new roll out, bet what needed to be done is create a Beta for these types of things. I'm a PC user, but all my products are Apple. We need to have a quick fix for this. Shouldn't take them long to get a nice little GUI patch to slap the side bar right in. But I do love the new display.

Unfortunately Apple is now making all the decisions for us and not even paying attention to we the loyal clients. I wonder does the design genius who completely screwed up iTunes ever compelled to read our remarks. Probably not. In a few short year Apple could find themselves in exactly the same position as Microsoft does now. Ignore your clients and users and you are destined to become redundant like Microsoft is now

I agree with you totally. Nothing nice is coming out of all those updated lately, only screw ups. What is wrong with Apple? And I am definitely not updating my mac with Yosemite. Is there a way to get back the old iTunes? I hate the new one. I don't like this red iTunes icon and I don't like the lack of side bar. My iTunes got updated without even asking me. I didn't have an option turned on to automatically install the new updates for iTunes. I tried to watch a show last night in the new iTunes and I couldn't skip to the next chapter nor could I go forward. None of the options were working. Really, really annoying.

"It is actually pretty easy, just select the tracks from the CD you want to import, start moving them and voilà, the sidebar (magically) appears."

I hadn't tried to just start dragging a track to see what would happen, no. So thank you very much for this answer @moviemac.

srb

Thanks Steven but the Re was just a reply to another person's comment. I was asking if someone can let me know how to download back the old iTunes. I can't even watch properly shows on the new iTunes - I can't skip to the next chapter and I can't forward - it looks like all those options were disabled when I tried to watch a show last night in iTunes.

Mariana,

Go about 8-9 posts before yours by Roger Sinden. He has a link with instructions. Instructions are lengthly, but I just took my time, step by step.

I found the download the last iTunes at: iTunes 11.4 for OS X 10.6 --- I think there are alternate sites, but probably Apple's web site is best.

This worked for me. Thanks, Roger!

Good luck.

Roger Sinden wrote:

My apologies, Linda. The link was in another thread on this forum about iTunes 12 being useless. This is the link. I am on Mavericks 10.9.5

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/audio/3415214/how-downgrade-itunes-11-itunes-10- in-mac-os-x/

Apologies accepted, Roger!

Thanks! Worked for me, too, and I'm on Mountain Lion.

Thank you Linda, I will try it.

I agree. The sidebar is the only way I can easily manage my content. I have over 17,000 songs, 3 devices, and I don't know how many playlists among them all. Further, I haven't been able to find the videos I've added (the ones that used to show up in Movies, but were in a folder in iTunes called Home Videos) and I have over 400 TV shows and movies. Managing all that with icons and tiles is time consuming and frustrating. The only logical reason I can see for going this way is for touch screens, and that did not work out well for Microsoft. Windows 8 is such a disaster that they had to skip to Windows 10 and reinstate most of the previous look and feel, most notably the Start menu. This is pretty much the same issue, so take a page from Microsoft and fix it ASAP. Apple, please restore our 'Start' menu.

And while you're at it, can you PLEASE change the icon back to blue. I hate this red thing and when you're used to looking for a blue icon for iTunes, you don't really notice the red one right away. I don't care what color it is on my iPhone or iPad because I can't manage that amount of content from those devices. The only time I do anything to manage it, it's on the PC where the blue icon has been since I started with iTunes.

But mostly, please restore full functionality of the sidebar. Even if it is just a Preference setting or something, so that you can still have your precious tiles and big icons and still allow those of us that value the sidebar. I can't even roll this back to 11 now.

Oh yea, and when you attempt to look at your device, you can see the content, but you can't see how much memory is being used, etc.

At least I haven't been able to find it. I click on the device itself like normal and nothing happens.