Well, the Apple Event is over. New iPods and a revamped iTunes were the thrust of the occasion, as was expected.
There’s much to write about even these relatively small-scale updates, but now is not the time: it’s a little too late for me to get into the minutiae of them all, such as the new, metal-faced iPod Touch, the accelerometer-endowed nano, or the availability of HD TV shows for download from the iTunes store. Perhaps tomorrow, when it’s all sunk in.
For now, though, the important news – far more important than all this hardware nonsense – is all about Browser view in the new iTunes 8, and the unfortunate fact that you can no longer remove the hideous, useless, and horribly distracting ‘Genre’ column from it. As any fool knows, me being no exception, the only columns you ever need in your iTunes Browser pane are those of Artist and Album, and it’s been to my consternation all evening that I’ve not found a way in iTunes 8 to remove the Genre carbuncle and prevent it from spoiling my lovely, entirely sensible, interface with its idiotic pigeonholing and false distinctions.
Until about ten minutes ago, when I discovered the following fix.
Open the terminal app in OS X. Type:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE
and hit enter. Then launch iTunes. Voila: no more Genre column in browser view.
Phew. Until Apple add back in the option to remove this UI blot in the next iTunes update (which they surely will, if both mine and many others’ feedback is anything to go on), I hope this interim fix serves you as well as it has me.
I’ll be back with a full roundup of all the Apple Event news tomorrow evening, unless it’s rendered superfluous by intervening blogs – which is fairly likely. For now, though, enjoy your Genreless iTunes 8 browser. Oh, and don’t forget to try out the new Magnetosphere-derived default visualiser: it’s an absolute stunner.
Woohoo, thanks for this – I was shocked to see that Apple hadnt included that option in version 8. Who locates music in his own library by using those completely random genres? Glad to be free of them, thanks again.
[...] and Store Links from iTunes 8 in Windows & Mac As a little addendum to last night’s piece on how to get rid of the useless and disconcerting ‘genre’ column from iTunes 8’s [...]
Thanks for that. No point in cluttering up the window with useless selection lists. I can’t see the point of removing this option from the preferences!
just wanted to say brilliant. and thanks. no idea how you worked it out but that genre column was really annoying
To be honest, I didn’t exactly ‘work it out’: someone else told me. In my defence of using the word ‘discovered’, it’s a bit like when Luke Skywalker discovered that Darth Vader was his dad – he might not have figured out how to do the DNA test himself, but it still counts as a pretty big discovery.
That’s what I tell myself anyway, and I can still sleep at night.
thank you soooooo much
yeah, I don’t know why that genre window is so dang annoying, but it really, really is.
thanks!
seriously I love you… it’s so simple!
Very good, worked like a charm! I really don’t like that feature, and in the previous version, it was almost buried, and now it disappeared! Thanks for this one! Keep it up!
BTW: you might not “work it out” but you posted, and we ended up here anyway so props to you!
Personally, I think genres are extremely useful for multiple layers of categorization. I don’t use (only) the default ones, so there is much better accuracy and granularity in my personal list. For my music listening patterns, the size of my library, and the diversity of styles, this grouping mechanism is invaluable, but I can appreciate that other people use iTunes differently and thus having an accessible option to suppress that feature would be nice. Apparently it existed before, so I don’t understand the reasoning in taking it away, but I think you should tone down the flame a little–genres are perfectly sensible feature.
Apparently it existed before, so I don’t understand the reasoning in taking it away, but I think you should tone down the flame a little–genres are perfectly sensible feature.
I personally don’t have any problem with the Genre column existing. What made me upset is that they took the option to remove it.
[...] what to do about this superfluous tag? You can remove it from iTunes entirely but maybe there’s another way. I don’t know how useful it’ll be or what it will [...]
Sweet! that worked, and you explained it so well.
that was the first time I ever used terminal mode on my mac.
goodbye genre column!!!!!
Thanks a lot for posting this. You are right. The genre column is totally worthless. Hopefully apple will get the message.
I could kiss you. Thanks so much. I always hesitate to upgrade new software versions immediately…but I was sick of Software Update constantly asking me, so I said yes. Imagine my dismay when I opened iTunes and it was so UGLY! You’ve helped me make it pretty again!!!
This is great, but do you know how to get rid of the “Artwork” column? I hate it and can’t figure out how to get rid of it.
Hmm…not sure what you mean: afaik there isn’t an artwork ‘column’ (at least, I’ve never seen one), just the artwork viewer at the bottom of the left-hand Library/Playlists/etc. pane. That’s easy enough to get rid of, simply by clicking on the show/hide button underneath it (the one that has a downward-pointing triangle in a box).
I’m sure you’ve figured that out, but I don’t really know what else you’d be referring to.
I found this from another site, but was so relieved to have it work. I can’t not express how p*ssed off I was that Apple would be so foolish to disable this function. In fact I just ran the update tonight expecting them to address this issue, but not surprisingly they didn’t fix this. Let’s hope there management doesn’t start behaving like General Motors. None the less, the command worked!!! Cheers.
Impressive. Any tricks for sorting albums by year in the Album column of the Browser window (the browser not the body of iTunes)? Thanks.
Yes, I can help you with that, and it’s quite straightforward; although I must say that I usually prefer to sort albums by year in the main iTunes pane in list view (simply by clicking on the Album column to sort by album, then clicking it twice more to sort by Album by Year).
The reason I prefer that approach is that to do a sort by album by year without subdividing it by Artist, you have to dispense with list view altogether (unless you get rid of the Artist column in list view, which would be silly). Here’s what you have to do:
1. Change View to Grid (the middle of the three View options, the first being List and the last being Cover Flow). In Grid View you’ll see four basic sorting options at the top – Albums, Artists, Genres (ho ho!), and Composers.
2. Click on the ‘Albums’ button. This will perform a simple sort of all your albums; I believe the default option is Albums by Title.
3. To get more options, ctrl-click (Mac) or, I guess, right-click (Windows) on the ‘Albums’ button. You’ll then see options including Sort Albums by Year. Job done.
For further clarity you can also turn on the ‘Group Albums’ option, which in the case of the sort by year choice will group all titles released in a particular year under the heading of that year.
That might not be everything you hoped for (since it involves using Grid View, which some aren’t too keen on), but it works well enough.