moving an iPod to a different user on a Macbook... hope me?
December 1, 2013 3:26 AM   Subscribe

iDeviceFilter: I'm hoping to move my son's iPod syncing from the admin user on a Macbook to his own user on the same computer, so that his syncing is then done separately in his user's iTunes. Can you walk me through this to abate my fear of cancelling-by-misunderstood-sync, please?
posted by progosk to Computers & Internet (3 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Copy the iTunes library from admin user to the same folder (/User/Music) on new non-admin user. Plug in iPod. Should work.

You may have to check permissions on the files to make sure they are owned by him after the copy, and might wish to use rsync via command line to make the copy fast and foolproof.

iTunes syncs based on the content in the library, not the user. Only main issue you may run into is ownership of purchased files, but if his account is authorized by the purchasing Apple ID then he can access the music and apps.

I've successfully used this approach to move my old iTunes library from Windows to Mac, and to make a duplicate library from my own laptop to my wife's MacBook. At no point did any of our iDevices care when they were plugged into a new machine, because they recognized the old library as "theirs".
posted by caution live frogs at 7:16 AM on December 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks, caution live frogs - this makes sense as an under-the-hood approach.

You may have to check permissions on the files to make sure they are owned by him after the copy
Ok, potentially annoying, but doable, I guess.

and might wish to use rsync via command line to make the copy fast and foolproof.
Now that I'd need instructions to...

There's no above-the-board way to do this?
posted by progosk at 7:56 AM on December 1, 2013


You can probably just copy via Finder, but any time I am moving lots of files I like rsync. Just open Terminal and run sudo rsync -avz /(Admin)/Music/ /(New User)/Music.

Then sudo chown -R (new user) /(new user)/Music to fix permissions.

(admin) and (new user) simply being placeholders for the actual account names, of course - parentheses should not really be included in commands.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:55 AM on December 1, 2013


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