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I just bit the bullet and updated my Mac OS from 10.14.6 to Monterey 12.4.

Importing my old iTunes library from the xml file worked fine...mostly.

The problem is, I had a ton of TV shows, movies, and audiobooks. In the old iTunes, they were all correctly tagged with the proper media type.

In the new "Music" app, when I go to "get info" and find the "media type" dropdown, there is exactly one entry that I can select. It's either "music" or "music video" depending if the selected item is an audio file or a video file.

Needless to say this is a MAJOR regression, and also makes shuffle completely unusable as it will shuffle in all tracks from all audiobooks along with all songs.

How can I fix this? Is my only option to delete all the audiobooks and non-music videos from my "Music" app library? Or is there some hack I can use to correctly identify non-music media files while still having everything in the one app like the old iTunes app?

Incidentally I also haven't yet attempted to sync my iPod Touch (last generation) with my computer; I don't know how that will go. Links or advice welcome on this point. Not the end of the world if I can't sync TV shows, movies and audiobooks to it anymore, but it will probably push me away from Apple devices for the future.

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  • Simply updating should have brought the existing structure over, untouched. Why import from XML?
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 10:28
  • @Tetsujin I don't know if it should have, but it didn't. I got the XML idea from apple.stackexchange.com/a/430999/151730. It's worth mentioning I have a full bootable backup of the computer from before the upgrade, so if I need to grab any files from there to get this import to work correctly, I can. I just want the media types set correctly, but the non-music media types don't seem to be available at all...?
    – Wildcard
    Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 18:11
  • I'm pretty sure you'd have done better importing from the .itl, but it's been so long since i played with these structures, I'm a bit out of touch. The .xml hasn't been the 'master file' for a long time.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 15, 2022 at 12:05
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    Did you try upgrading to Catalina first because that was when Music (app) is first introduced and thus may focus more on a smooth and reliable upgrade (from iTunes)?
    – Joy Jin
    Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 14:31
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    @JoyJin I didn't. Might have if I had known that, though, thanks for the comment.
    – Wildcard
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 3:19

1 Answer 1

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Audiobooks are now supported in the Books app. Music, as you'd guess by the name, just does music.

iTunes used to try and do everything (poorly IMHO), and Apple eventually listened to the various opinions re. bloat, and split the various functions into separate apps, hence Music, Books, Podcasts. This allows a proper UI for each media type.

Separate your Audiobooks from your Music library and import them to Books. They can then be synced to an iOS device by enabling sync in the Finder panels that appear for your device when it's plugged in.

If you have purchases from Audible, they are supported in the macOS Books app by authorising your computer on the Audible website. That authorisation carries over to Books on your iOS device also, but there's also the Audible app on iOS which may offer a better experience. See:

https://help.audible.com/s/article/how-to-listen-to-audible-audiobooks-with-the-apple-books-app?language=en_US

Note. If you use iCloud you'll find that while EPUBs and PDFs added to Books will automatically sync (when enabled) to your iOS device via iCloud, it appears Audiobooks do not, and thus have to be synced via Finder.

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