iTunes 12 Sidebar?

There are a lot of topics on this subject already...., so why open a new one?

It is gone. The only thing that you can do is go from Music to Movies, to TV Shows and in each one click on playlist and then do any customizing as to lists, etc. It is clumsy, designed by people who have no idea what customers want, and probably don't care. They wanted something different, not us. I'm going back to iTunes 11.

It's not gone, but separated. Although you switch between the main screens of Music/Movies/TV-shows using the icons on the top bar, there are no extra moves to make in compare to the old version. I don't see the problem really.

But for those of us who just use iTunes for synchronising iPhones or iPads, this is a problem

How so, Rennell01, because IMHO nothing really changed? So what's the problem exactly?

PeterVL57 - it may be our lack of familiarity as we use iTunes simply for synchronising and making sure that we have the latest apps. Frankly, it seems to be change for the sake of change (which is a criticism we all hit Microsoft with). I accept we must move forward, but Apple would appear to me making changes without necessarily thinking about its users. Some of us do not have time to waste trying to figure out how to synchronise and back up our devices through iTunes. Making changes which confuse users will undermine one of the key benefits of using Apple devices: simplicity and sensible integration

I use iTunes for managing my music. The changes made are an improvement to me. Playlists are now presented right beside my main library-screen so managing my playlists and my devices is much easier. I don't have to scroll down, because all other item are moved to the top white bar.Simplicity made progress here.

So it's more a way of perspective whether you like iTunes changes or not.

Click "Playlists". Next time search first.

Rennell01 wrote:

But for those of us who just use iTunes for synchronising iPhones or iPads, this is a problem

I have not seen this documented anywhere, even on the 'tip' sites, but I discovered by accident that in most views if you click & drag on a song, album or whatever, the sidebar will magically slide into view. That makes it easy to add things to playlists or transfer them to other devices shown in the sidebar.

I find the new playlists and menu options to be less useful than the old sidebar. This is a step backward for iTunes! Please add the sidebar back!

The problem is that iTunes is no longer intuitive. I can't see everything at a glance. I hover over "Movies" and all I see is "24"? So I have to LEAVE the screen I'm in, got to Movies to see which movies, then go back and forth between categories. Ugh! I have to know what I want in order to find it. but even then, search is horrible, revealing results in "icon" format so I can only see a few listings at a time. Dumb idea for those of us with thousands of songs and years of content, shared libraries, NAS drives etc. The default Icon view. is clunky and cumbersome for more than a few items. I need a list format to manage, sort and get information. No list view in Apps is worse because there's no option for playlist at all. I can't glance down a list of 500 apps but must scroll through rows of icons.

Maybe my brain computes words better and yours registers images. It shouldn't matter why. Nobody's right and that's what's frustrating. Customization has always been the beauty and appeal of Apple, especially to creative types. The more Apple tries to imitate Android, the closer we all get to becomming drones. "Think Different" seems to have become "Conform we threw in the towel". It shouldn't matter why we prefer different things. People's brains work differently. We should all be able to set whatever preferences work for us.

shutyourpiehole was taken wrote:

I need a list format to manage, sort and get information.

Are you aware that in iTunes 12 there is a list view available for the "My Movies," "My Songs," & their respective "Playlists" views? To access it, use the popup menu to the right of the My <whatever> or Playlists buttons. For the Music category, it is just called "Songs," for the Movies category it is called "Movie List."

Yes, thanks. I did figure that much out. It's better than nothing but far from elegant. Who knows why it was excluded from Apps. It takes so much time between (trying) to manage the duplicates icloud seems to generate and re-organize personal videos iTunes incorrectly categorizes, I've thrown my hands up. I wish there was an alternative piece of software. iTunes seems to have become nothing more than pretty media player. End of that rant (for now) 🙂 Thanks for the suggestion, though.

If you want the old style sidebar back, submit feedback. apple.com/feedback. It could happen. The camera roll was brought back.