Itunes not responding, running extremely slow

It's a nightmare dealing with the update. I imagine also dealing with operators as they are trained to make you do a bunch of useless stuff. They never say, "we have a bug we need to fix." I guess they'll sort it soon. But the last few months haven't been great in general and the new update is the worst.

I agree with all the other stories on here about iTunes... it's practically now unusable... I'm glad I have Spotify to fall back on.... but all my hard copy music still resides in iTunes.... I really thought the 10.11.1 update would solve all the glitchy El Capitan issues... but as far as I can see... with my own local system environment it's worse than the original buggy release.... they need to issue a new update soon.... at the least an update to iTunes.

In all the years I have never seen the beachball spin so much as I have since I upgraded to El Capitan.

One thing I did today was an SMC Reset and that did help improve overall performance... but the iTunes slow performance issue is still very much present.

Regards,

Anthony

Irish MacUser and MacAddict... 🙂

Same here (with 12.3.1) - extremely slow (fast MacBookPro 2014). Bevor that update it worked pretty good... (but the search still needs some work to be done - but that´s another topic).

iTunes Radio and "For you" interrupts every few seconds (i´ve got a 50k line and it works fine with all other apps and all other equipment like iPhone6 and iPad)

The same here, I'm not using Apple Music by the way, however I have a nearly 70GB music library. The beachball appears even when I want to navigate up and down by my playlists, it's really exasperating.

OS X 10.11.1

iTunes 12.3.1.23

MacBook Pro 15'' (early 2011)

2.2 GHz Intel Core i7

8GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Hi Michmax. I found my old copy of iTunes 12.3. How did you downgrade? Cheers.

Hi Jeepers. The problem is to delete the app iTunes 12.3.1, which is an integral part of the system. I didn't try to use Terminal with "sudo". I started from a clone which wasn't updated, put the app in the bin of the clone, deleted it and copied the "old" app iTunes 12.3 in the mac. Cheers.

I reverted to iTunes 12.3.0.44 and that appears to have fixed all the problems from 12.3.1.23. I got directions how to do this in another thread on this topic but can include it if needed. Apple still needs to fix 12.3.1.

My problem seems a bit different than what others are reporting. I'm experiencing pauses and delays in audio playback, but no spinning wheel. I don't feel like trying any major changes (reintstalling iTunes, etc.) to fix it, but am wondering if any minor fiddling, especialy with Apple Music (I'm still using the free 2 month subscription) and/or iCloud settings could help. Any suggestions?

Hi Russell -- would love to get directions on how to revert. What are the risks -- assuming you won't lose playlists, etc? I'm currently using iTunes 12.3.1.23 and running OS X 10.11.1 on a Mac Pro (mid 2010), 2x2.66 6-Core Intel Xeon with 64 GB RAM. I keep all my music (500 gigs) on a separate SSD internal drive.

same problem

iMac 5K (Late 2014)

4 GHz Intel Core i7

OS X 10.11.1 Beta (15B38b)

32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

When I first reverted to 12.3.0.44 this afternoon, everything worked well; no delays for videos starting, moving around iTunes; selecting songs, etc. But coming back to iTunes now after a couple of hours, I'm having problems again w/ videos and some spinning balls. For example, I just tried playing some movies, some music videos, and TV shows. For a music video, there was a long lag — over a minute — between when the music started and when the video was visible. Also, the video opened in a separate space rather than atop the iTunes window. Using Activity Monitor, when iTunes has the spinning ball, the % CPU was 100+. Who the heck knows what's going on? I'm once again getting the "application is not responding" even though the sound and/or video is playing.

But if you want to give it a try, here's what I found in these forums:

I found a fix !!! You just need to downgrade to iTunes 12.3 (and DON'T update after) 🙂

1) Open Terminal and type sudo rm -r /Applications/iTunes.app

2) Download & instal iTunes 12.3 http://mac.filehorse.com/download-itunes/5833/
3) Enjoy (and wait for a proper iTunes update)

Also:

Also, be aware that if you delete iTunes via sudo command, when you type in your password, it won't be visible.

This worked for me for awhile and this version still seems better than 12.3.1.23, but I was having zero problems before the last updates to iTunes and El Capitan, so am annoyed that even reverting I'm still having issues.

I didn't lose any playlists, but my iTunes library is on my hard drive, iMac, i7, mid-2011.

Apple still needs to fix this crap.

Good luck.

Well, I just checked my iTunes app, and it was updated again to 12.3.1! I thought I had changed the prefs to avoid automatic updating, but apparently I missed the App store preferences under System Preferences. So, I'll try to revert again and things will be as they were with my earlier reversion.

This is all so maddening...

Reverted back — again — to 12.3.0.44. Working again.

Ok. I've gone back to 12.3.0.44. Luckily I could go to my back-up drive and find my copy as I, luckily, hadn't done a back-up in the last couple of days.

I used AppDelete (I guess AppZapper would be just as good) to delete 12.3.1. I kept the other files in the iTunes folder but moved the iTunes Library.ltl file to the desktop till I'd finished.

I grabbed my old copy of 12.3.0.44 and moved it to the Applications folder. I launched it, imported the iTunes Music.xml file and waited for over and hour until all my playlists were back. There were a couple of albums I'd purchased in the last couple of days which didn't appear but just redownloaded them and all seems to be as it was prior to 12.3.1. Mind you, that was far from perfect and slow too but useable.

What a f***ing nightmare.

Update. There are a few tracks missing. Maybe I should have taken the iTunes Library.xml file from my back-up as well rather than the one that had been linked to 12.3.1. Maybe someone else with more knowledge would know why but as I look through my library some tracks are missing that I had added in the last couple of days after my last general back-up.