Autocomplete track name fields in itunes?

June 28, 2007 9:26 AM

Is there a way to set itunes to autocomplete the track name field?

When editing the "artist" field, itunes uses some sort of autocomplete feature to fill in artist names. I would like to enable this for the "name" field as well. I have searched Doug's Applescripts and come up empty, and Google has yielded nothing usable either. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might make this work?

posted by horsemuth to computers & internet (7 comments total)

The artist field is auto-completed based on artists already in your catalogue, not based on some all-knowing database. If you had auto-complete on track name, it would only help if you have large numbers of tracks with identical names.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:04 AM on June 28, 2007

You can use something like musicbrainz to try and auto identify your music, but it's not perfect. Otherwise, what jacquilynne said...
posted by pupdog at 10:14 AM on June 28, 2007

I know that there is not some "all-knowing" database, and I don't appreciate the patronizing tone of your response.

My apologies if I did not make myself clear, but I am well aware that the auto complete works based upon info that I already have submitted for other tracks. I DO have large numbers of tracks with similar names, and would like to enable this for exactly this reason. My motivations aside, my question was " how do I make this work?" not "can you tell me why this is a stupid idea?"
posted by horsemuth at 10:32 AM on June 28, 2007

I don't know of any easy way to do this, but if you have a lot of stuff with similar names, could you copy and paste the track name into the box? Not an end-all solution, but it would save some time.
posted by DMan at 10:40 AM on June 28, 2007

No, there is no way to "set" iTunes to do this.

You could also multi select similary named tracks and tag them with a common name then go back and edit them inline.

And no, I'm not saying this with a patronizing tone.
posted by mphuie at 10:47 AM on June 28, 2007

I know that there is not some "all-knowing" database, and I don't appreciate the patronizing tone of your response.


I didn't mean to be patronizing. Given that iTunes includes features for looking up track names in an all-knowing database, I thought it was likely that people might not realize that the type ahead feature doesn't work off the same database, but off what's already in your library.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:57 AM on June 28, 2007

Given that iTunes includes features for looking up track names in an all-knowing database
Well, yes. Itunes will lookup tracks imported by itunes in a database like cddb, but I either want to be able to redirect that to my own library, or to find a script that will do that.

Just to clarify further, it is live music, converted from flac to aiff or mp3, therefore having nothing present but the track names (such as "d1t05") that must be renamed to actual track names( such as "song x" ) of which I may have several other versions of from other dates.
posted by horsemuth at 12:46 PM on June 28, 2007