Making iTunes Alternatives Work with iPod
December 29, 2010 8:46 AM   Subscribe

Do I need to jailbreak the iPod Touch in order to use a non-iTunes media player to transfer songs to it?

I hate iTunes with the fire of a thousand suns. I've heard good things about VLC media player. There are three iPod Touches at our house. Do I need to jailbreak them in order to use VLC to put music on my iPod?

If yes, I need recs for a safe and reliable jailbreak method.

(No, I never buy anything from the iTunes store. Ever. I mostly get music from CDs -my own, friends, the library- and YouTube.)
posted by Leta to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
VLC isn't really a media manager, it's more like a Swiss army knife for playback of files of different formats. There's a big Wikipedia list of iPod Managers that might help you find something else you like, though.
posted by bcwinters at 9:32 AM on December 29, 2010


NO you do not.

Look up Copy trans manager. No jailbreaking required. Its free. You only need itunes installed for the ipod driver unless you know how to extract the driver without installing itunes.

You have to pay for the reverse which is from ipod to computer but from pc to ipod its free.
posted by majortom1981 at 10:48 AM on December 29, 2010


Winamp is able to manage my iPod library with no special messing around (iPod Classic), so I would be surprised if the Touch is that different. I didn't even install iTunes at all (and find it works much better that way) in Windows 7.
posted by haveanicesummer at 12:05 PM on December 29, 2010


There are tons of products which will manage files on a non-jailbroken iPhone/iPod.

I use the combination of DiskAid (moves the files) and FileApp (plays/displays the files) from DigiDNA.

It seems one thing iTunes has done to you is convinced you that one app should do everything, i.e. it should be the transfer mechanism and the playback mechanism in one.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 12:09 PM on December 29, 2010


I just (this very morning) activated my new iTouch.

Last night I scoured the web for iTunes alternatives - there's plenty, and I chose CopyTrans Manager. It's perfectly suitable for getting media on and off the iPod, but what they don't tell you is that you still need to use iTunes to set the iPod up. I tried just downloading the drivers separately but it didn't work. Regrettably, iTunes is required for that first step, but afterwards it isn't necessary.

So basically what I did is borrowed a friend's computer with iTunes, plugged it in, waited for the firmware stuff to download and set up, and from now onward I'm using CopyTrans to sync my music up.
posted by Gordafarin at 1:23 AM on December 30, 2010


« Older Step #1: Buy a Mortar and Pestle   |   Does an internal GPS device for tracking a laptop... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.