Itunes not responding, running extremely slow

Well, it turns out the problem was my external media hard drive (as far as all testing shows thus far). Despite Disk Utility (both El Capitan and Mavericks versions) telling me the drive is fine, it's not. I mean there's no data lost as far as I can tell, but something must be wrong with it because as soon as I switched to my backup media drive (well one of two backups; I keep a 3rd updated less often at a 3rd party location in case of something like a fire), ALL my problems disappeared. iTunes is stable (12.3.1.23) and so is Kodi on my new FireTV setup (it was pausing, freezing and locking up too). Now everything is fine again. I can even Airplay to Kodi on an ARM powered FireTV device. If the Netflix viewer were better (both interface and the occasional frame stutter), I wouldn't need my old AppleTV at all unless I wanted to rent a movie from Apple or something.

It seems like a heck of a coincidence this happening right when I bought a new FireTV, but stranger things have happened. Now I have to get a new drive to be the new backup for the backup drive that is now the active one. The drive has been in use for like 3 years now. I wonder if all that starting and stopping (WD "sleep" mode) made it act up sooner than it would have. I've had drives last much longer that don't go to sleep.

laurencefromprestonNov 19, 2015 6:07 AM

I had (have) this problem but it slowed my computer down generally and eventually brought it to a halt. I have realised that iTunes was (is) creating incorrect permissions which is resolved by running Repair Disc Permissions in the Disk Utility. Unfortunately the errors will re-occur and so you will need to do this regularly.

If that worked for you, great, but that's not going to be a possible solution for anyone running the latest OS, El Capitan, as Repair Disc Permissions is now gone... and not needed, according to Apple.

http://www.imore.com/say-goodbye-repairing-file-permissions-el-capitan

Now maybe it is, at its core, a problem with permissions that El Cap should have fixed but doesn't, but since El Cap and iTunes 12.3.1 were released really close together (and I installed them on the same day, October 21st - sheesh, it's been nearly an whole month of leaving this embarrassing build unfixed), I, and likely most folks, have never used El Capitan without this awful 12.3.1 release or vice versa.

MagnusVonMagnumNov 19, 2015 9:09 AM

Well, it turns out the problem was my external media hard drive (as far as all testing shows thus far).

Cool (although condolences on your terminally-ill drive 😢), and I hope your problems with a near-unusable iTunes are in the past, although for the record, I and many of the others who've chimed in with this problem aren't running our iTunes library off an external drive.

Help may be coming.

I wrote an email to Tim Cook a few weeks ago, and heard back yesterday from someone who works for iTunes Customer Experience:

"I recently received your email in regards to the problems you’ve encountered with iTunes and your large library. Our team is hard at work attempting to resolve this issue. We should be implementing the fix within the next update very soon. Thank you for your feedback."

In the reply, I saw that my original email describing the issues had been forwarded to Eddy Cue. This could, of course, just be a generic form letter response, but fingers crossed that Apple is aware of the problems we've all been having, and that a solution is in the works.

That's great news...thank you for sharing. Now let's hope that whatever fix they come up with in the next update doesn't cause a new problem of some kind...

Good to hear.

It's only been a month.

This wasn't a massive overhaul of iTunes; this was a 0.0.1 release, adding support for yet another device.

They obviously bumped something and broke it, but given the small and narrow scope of changes from the prior (acceptably) functioning version, it's pretty likely this isn't a technical challenge, but rather an organizational challenge for a large software company that is now solely focused on new hardware launches.

Building a tower of profits to reach heights never before seen in the world of business... but nobody's really tending to the foundation piles.

Ah whatever, just fix it.

I hope a fix is on it's way because I'm getting seriously ticked off with this now. I can't even update the 3 digit security number on my credit card without it hanging. I suppose it's as well you can update apps and buy music over a WiFi connection because it's the only thing that's working for me at the moment. I'd ditch my entire iTunes library and start over but it's just too big a job to import all my cd's again. And given the super slow download speed on iTunes, I'd be here until next year getting all the stuff I've purchased to date. Technology is all very well but there comes a point when you get too dependent on it. I stopped buying CDs altogether three years ago because I just didn't have room for them anywhere but I'm beginning to wish I'd stuck to those shiny silver platters.

Android devices are looking very attractive at this moment in time...

Have you tried a new library or restoring a backup copy from an older one to see if works? Just rename the current library so it doesn't get overwritten and try making a new one or copy and paste an old one and import that (you might have to add .itl to it from a CLI/Shell though or iTunes won't recognize it unless possibly if you give it the default name after renaming the old one). That got things working again here (although I think my media drive was going wonky; it still got it working so there may be something related there as well). It can't hurt to test it. Everything is working fine here at the moment. I did turn off Apple Music and Apple Connect, though.

I tried it and everything has been running fine since. However, after creating the new library I turned the Mac off and disconnected it from the power source for 20 seconds, then plugged it back in and restarted it.

Try relinking your music library. Hold down option when starting iTunes. You will be given an alert panel to create a music library or choose an existing one. Just choose your existing library (ie. Home > Music > iTunes) and let it relink/rebuild.

This may not fix all the problems you're experiencing but it definitely help speed things up for me with little effort.

Hope it helps.

That did nothing for me. It is good to know that a proper fix may be in the works from Apple, but I couldn't stand it anymore and finally followed Russell's instructions to reinstall the previous version of iTunes. It was a snap, and everything is working as before.

i too have been experiencing a very laggy iTunes (12.3.1.23) on PC... extremely slow in every way... plus I'm AirPlaying to my brand new 4th Generation Apple TV and the music keeps pausing for a second or two then continuing. Very strong Wifi signal for the laptop with iTunes and my Apple TV is connected via Ethernet. Hope that Apple resolves this annoying bug soon.

After trying all of the suggested fixes with zero success, and having searched for an hour or so for a free alternative, I found one that worked brilliantly, called iSkysoft Tunesover. The app transfers files from my 2013 Macbook Pro directly to my iPhone 6, and the songs show up in my iphone's Music app, complete with song titles in order and album cover. HOWEVER, it was only free for the first 20 songs... After all the stuff I'd been through and the weeks of a useless iTunes and having to resort to carrying my old HTC One M7 along with my iPhone just to play music, I decided to pay the $40 for the Tunesover app. If you have the money to spend and don't want to wait for Apple to fix this nonsense, I'd definitely recommend the app, based on the 30 mins I've been using it. It uploads music faster than iTunes did when it was working, and is a much easier process (click "To Device", select the folders/songs you want, and watch it upload to the iPhone; why iTunes wasn't that simple to begin with is beyond me...). I'm finally able to use my iPhone for music again, which was one of the main reasons I decided to switch to the iPhone 6 in the first place (it holds much more music than my HTC One M7 did).

It's shameful that I had to resort to this, but I'm done with trying fix after fix to no avail. This is pitiful, Apple, and you guys should truly be ashamed of yourselves!

iTunes is now so slow I can't stand to use it anymore, after upgrading to El Capitan and iTunes 12.3.1. I'm on a fast Mac, an i7 QuadCore with 16GB RAM and 1TB Flash.

I've loved using iTunes since day dot, but with performance now so unbearable I have no choice.

I'm not sure what is going on with Apple and quality control. It's been weeks without a fix, this is unacceptable.

I put up w/ 12.3.1 for a few days. I saved myself tons of aggravation by reverting to 12.3.0. FWTW.

Just chiming in with my own experience. It is virtually impossible to do something as simple as correct the name of a track without a 5 second delay. iTunes has become a completely useless app for managing my music library (25,000 songs, 160 GB).

It occurs to me that maybe this is deliberate on Apple's part to get us to just use Apple Music for all our listening instead. 👿

Of course what it means in reality is that I spend more time on Spotify, and am far less likely to buy anything on the iTunes Store, or rip any more CDs.