Stupid iTunes Tricks: Changing Your View

If you're like me, you tend to get used to using your software a certain way. In iTunes, that means the default text view of the library, but there are several ways to view your library content including a very cool way to cycle through your album art. If you haven't discovered this yet, read on.

Downloading Album Art
Your first step is to download the artwork for your library content.

To get artwork:

1. Click Advanced > Get Album Artwork and iTunes displays a message indicating it needs to communicate with a database about your content in order to do this. Apple indicates it does not keep any information about your library.
2. Click Get Album Artwork to continue. (Click Cancel if you don't want to transmit this information to Apple, but you can't use any of the the different views if you do this). iTunes then retrieves your artwork. The time this takes varies depending on the size of your library and the speed of your connection.

Changing the View
By default, as you are no doubt aware, you see a text list of your content in your library, but now that you have downloaded the artwork, you have several other options.

• Album View
• Cover Flow View
• Full Screen Cover Flow View

To change the view, click one of the Change View buttons as shown in the screen shots below. Click to see a larger shot of each screen.

The Album flow view is particularly impressive enabling you to cycle through your albums in a jukebox style by dragging a slider. Click the View icon in the bottom right corner of the Album Flow window to make it full screen. Click the icon again to return to the combined Album Flow and text list.

By the way, for the record, I'm not suggesting that I've discovered anything new here, but if you haven't played around with these different views, then you are missing out on some alternative ways to view the content in your library.

 

Comments

[Myrtle Beach Real Estate]

I agree. That cover flow view is pretty awesome. I want to get a flat screen on the wall and use it like a juke box when entertaining.