Tech Challenge: Get songs from old iPod onto newer MacBook

August 23, 2023 9:49 AM

Do you have the secret to making this happen?

My husband has a circa 2007 Apple iPod Classic (6th Gen) 80G with a lot of good music on it. I have a 2019 MacBook Pro running Ventura. We'd like to get the music off this device and then send it to recycling.

Neither of us has iTunes any more, and in any case, it wouldn't let us sync in reverse. I have tried several free-download apps that promise a workaround, but none worked, either because the iPod's software is too old or they just didn't seem to be working correctly.

Have you found something that does work, or have instructions for making this happen? Thanks in advance!

posted by Miko to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

I have never tried this, but the way to do this without some kind of app or script is usually by connecting the iPod in "disk mode." Description here.

However, you would need iTunes or some other player that can read the files' metadata to make any sense of them.
posted by AndrewInDC at 10:00 AM on August 23, 2023

Can you get it to show up as a disk drive? That might allow you to pull the individual files off it, though I can't remember if they'll have any metadata associated with them to identify them.

Are you just concerned with getting copies of these songs, or do you need to figure out *which* songs they are? If you just want to be able to play the songs, I'd just download them from somewhere else.
posted by sagc at 10:01 AM on August 23, 2023

The SyncBird software seems to work in my experience for recovering files from iPhones -- and, reportedly, from iPods. I haven't used it on Ventura, but it worked a year or so ago just fine to get everything off my mom's older iPhone. I happily paid for it.

Copying off the plain MP3 files may result in files with names of a dozen letters -- absolute gibberish, though entirely playable.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:42 AM on August 23, 2023

In the past, I have used "CopyTrans" instead of iTunes, but going from computer>iDevice. Note, this feature (iDevice>Computer) may not be part of their free offerings.
posted by rozcakj at 11:58 AM on August 23, 2023

Connect the ipod to your computer and open it as a drive. Get sharepod and put it onto the ipod. Run sharepod from the ipod. All your mp3s should show up there. Use the export function to copy the mp3s to a folder on your mac.

Caveats: This definitely works for me, and for that model of ipod. But all my MP3s are DRM-free files. I don't know how it will work for itunes purchases.

If you don't have any aversion to using itunes, in your shoes I'd go to an apple store and ask them to help. They've got a good reputation for this sort of customer service.

But I'd use sharepod first.
posted by Lorc at 12:11 PM on August 23, 2023

If you can run ruby from the command-line, you could always check out https://github.com/ericpromislow/ipod-extractor.

Since you're on a MacBook, you have everything you need. This worked first time for me, and I ended up with a subtree full of songs.

Looks like you'll need to first create directory ~/lab/ipod-restore/expanded_files
posted by morspin at 1:38 PM on August 23, 2023

Hi, occasionally relapsing iPod collector here -

I think the best option on macOS is still iMazing, although I think they want $60 for 3 devices, which makes it annoying for iPod collectors, but might be reasonable if you just have the one device and want a professional-ish turnkey solution. The trial is good for a few hundred songs, I think? Enough to confirm it works, anyway. Most of the rest of the macOS solutions have sort of died over the past decade, unfortunately. iTunes/Apple Music/Finder is still more than happy to sync to classic iPods, but the whole reverse-sync ecosystem has fallen apart.

If you're cheap and have access to a windows box, iPod Media Extractor is free and mostly works, although I usually had to take a few swings at it because it doesn't like handling poorly labeled media - like, it can't create its standard /Artist/Album/Song.mp3 hierarchy if both artist and album are blank, but if you adjust the settings a bit you can just end up with everything in one big folder and let your current media manager deal with the fallout.
posted by Kyol at 6:57 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Although I should note that iPod Media Extractor doesn't know what to do with Macintosh formatted iPods (because Windows can't read HFS+ filesystems), which may or may not be a showstopper. Extracting from Disk Mode does work, kind of, but getting everything into a useful state was enough of a pain that I never looked to see if there were better tools that could re-label everything from the iPod Control DB once you had the media off the device. Like, it's useful for that one recording you made of a dead relative's performance, but more trouble than it's worth for Now That's What I Call Music volumes 1990-2008.
posted by Kyol at 7:02 AM on August 24, 2023

Response by poster: Sharepod worked! Thank you all. This was so helpful. It definitely should not be so hard!
posted by Miko at 7:27 PM on August 24, 2023