Itunes not responding, running extremely slow

here here.

I think I found something iTunes is doing in the background. It's giving me a music history lesson (and blotting my meta data) that is beach balling me every few moments.

I don't need or want this so I'm looking to shut this off. It's a very unwelcome feature if this is what the problem is:

I disabled "Apple Music Connect" (iTunes -> Preferences -> Parental -> Disable: √Apple Music Connect) so I don't see that, but I still see beachballs.

Screen grab of what happens when I renamed the Album for disk 2.

If iTunes is refusing to play George Harrison, it really *is* broken.

The only solution that seems to be working is to revert to an earlier version (see earlier posts on how to do that). The software still runs laggy but it's not the disaster that we've all been experiencing with the latest update.

My best guess is that something gets broken when the new version of iTunes tries to work with a library that's been built up over many multiple past versions of iTunes (I've been using the software since the first version in 2001, and always worked with the same library that I started from way back when.)

After downgrading from 12.3.1 to 12.3.044 iTunes became functional again (iMac 27", OS 10.11.1). For a while, that is. I could play lossless music imported from my CD collection, I had on line access to Apple Music and could play its playlists.

Still: the past three days iTunes made endless efforts to sync my iCloud music library, without succes. Gathering information about my iTunes library easily took an hour or more, after which the process would simply quitwithout warning. For this reason I couldn't add Apple Music playlists to My Music.

I should add that since I've downgraded to iTunes 12.3.044, I'm using a freshly built library, without newly created playlists.

Today though, iTunes 12.3.044 (be sure that I've checked several times, I'm certain that I've switched off automatic updates) is completely unresponsive, exhibiting all the known symptoms of iTunes 12.3.1—in particular a beach ball that spins upon each and every action I take.

I've been an Apple user for many years, but for me this is the first time ever that an Apple product has effectively become fully unusable.

It's a bit of a shock: listening to music is very important to me and my work, and at present iTunes fully blocks access to my entire music collection. It's a wake up call, I guess, because I now realize that I've become too dependent on one single app that simply stopped functioning as the digital hub that it claims to be.

The problem is, after removing and downgrading your iTunes, your settings on the App store are set to automatically download every update, so if you check the version, you're probably back up to the latest version. I realized this last night, but I haven't had time to research how to turn off automatic updates in the App store.

I've got the exact same problem as everyone else here. I've posted in a couple of other threads in the hope Apple will sort it out and fix it. When iTunes 12.whatever first arrived it was brilliant. Even connecting to my network music server was a breeze and adding songs to my devices was ten times quicker than it had ever been in the past. But the last couple of updates (particularly 12.3.1.23) have rendered it virtually useless. It boots up okay but moving between 'Music', 'Movies' etc is plagued by lag. It just sits there with the colour wheel spinning away. If I leave it and come back after a few minutes, its done what I asked it to do but most of the time, I have to 'force quit' and start again. And trying to purchase music and download app updates is SO SLOW. A 70MB app update would normally take about 40 seconds on my connection but it can be anything up to 7 minutes now. It's like pre-fiber optic days all over again. I thought it was my internet connection but web pages and other downloads are fine so I phoned my service provider to test the line and download/upload speeds are all as they should be. It's actually much much quicker to download purchases and updates over WiFi.

I hope Apple Technical are reading all of this and come up with a fix as soon as possible please.

This happened to me. To turn off the App Store auto updating, I had to go the System Preferences to access the App Store preferences. I left checked "Automatically check for updates" but unchecked "Download newly available updates in the background" and "Install system data files and security updates."

Before I discovered this, I thought 12.3.0.44 was exhibiting the same symptoms as 12.3.1, until I discovered the latter had been installed again. Then I had to do the whole delete/install route again.

Frustrating.

From what I've read, Apple support does not read these threads.

Use this:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

I've sent in feedback twice already on this issue.

OK, thanks for that! I had unchecked the automatic update within iTunes. I've now updated my system preferences as well.

I need to reinstall iTunes anyway, because by now the app won't even start.

It's weird, though, because even now the 'get info' in Finder still lists iTunes' current version as 12.3.044.

Same here too! SLOW SLOW SLOW - PAINFULLY SLOW

Downgrade to 12.3.0 worked fine for me too...

Thanks, Russell! This fix seems to work for me as well. El Capitan, iTunes 12.2.1. Interminable beachalling. Phew, thanks so much for probing and testing and posting, the rest of us in here really benefit. I TOO hope Apple updates soon. I wonder just how widespread this issue is, or whether it falls below their response/revise threshold?

no because I listened to Hey Bulldog off Yellow Submarine yesterday and it was still as psychedelic as I remember.

but it does look like it decided his solo work is now one album with multiple identical track numbers

and why is it leading off with "Beware of Darkness"? it's a great song but it's kinda dark for the rest of this album.

Genius my sweet patootie!

Darn you iTunes!!! Darn you to heck!!!

When I originally went from 12.3.1 back to 12.3.0, the Finder info still showed 12.3.1 until I restarted my computer. (The About iTunes had the correct version number.) I've noted that problem w/ other changes, e.g., the new version of Pages.