I listen to my own foreign language-study MP3s on my phone, by importing them into Notes.app notes. I find that Apple tries to auto-transcribe the audio, as though it contained lyrics. Since the audio is a combination of Japanese and English, the results are a mess. - **Question**: I would like to turn off this auto-transcription function, but I don't see a way to do so. It is a waste of computer resources, and doubles the height of each affect MP3-object in the note. Any ideas?

For a while now I've been importing mp3s, setting them as "Audiobook" and listening to them via iBooks, like normal. However, for some unknown reason a few weeks ago, this stopped happening: Even though they show up in "Audiobooks" on iTunes, they WILL NOT show up in iBooks anymore—they still appear in the Music app, like a regular mp3. Nothing I have tried will force it to show up in iBooks again. Edit, to clarify: The problem is that I add an MP3 audiobook to my iPhone via iTunes in the normal matter, but it shows up in "Music" and NOT "iBooks" EVEN THOUGH I set the file type as "Audiobook." iTunes—on multiple computers!—correctly shows the audiobook, but not on the phone. Furthermore, I deleted an old audiobook on the phone yet iBooks STILL shows it! This is on iOS 10.3.3, iTunes 12.7.1.14, and reconfirmed on iOS 11.2.2, iTunes 12.7.2.58.

After turning off iCloud sync for Music and Photos, how do I remove the songs and photos that are already there? I'm setting up an iPad which has a very small amount of storage. I had hoped that iCloud services would intelligently use the space so I could prioritize apps, and only use storage for photos and songs when it was available. However it quickly loaded 7.4 gigs of songs and 4 gigs of images. When I wanted to install more apps, it refused. So I turned off sync for my music library and my photo library. I thought this would remove the songs and photos. I've restarted the iPad and searched the interfaces. Is there any way to remove these songs and images? Note, if I need to reset the iPad and restore from a backup, that's ok. I'm wondering if the backup I make now will preserve the settings I have now, which would imply that no photos or songs should be loaded.

I'm looking for something, preferably free, to play MP3s in OS X in a way they don't automatically get dumped into iTunes. Any suggestions? Songbird is not lightweight. VLC I use for videos.

I use a Mac and have artwork I would like to add as images to sound .mp3 file. I am aware that I can create a .mov file using QuickTime media player which is already built-in on my Mac, but I’d just like to attach art, not translate the whole file into a new format. What tools or scripts or apps can do this task?

The Music app seems to default to this convoluted path with multiple duplicate entries when I reset it through settings: ~/Music/Music/Media/Music/. However, it's not obvious at all where the actual music is supposed to be stored. No matter where on that path I place my MP3s (~/Music/, ~/Music/Music/Media/, etc), it doesn't seem to recognize them: Which folder does the Music app monitor for local files?

For language study, I frequently download nine MP3 files from several different sources, and import them into Music.app.  All are monaural (i.e., single track).  Music.app shows the wrong duration for most of them.  Most of the wrong ones show a duration **approximately** half what it should be, but further off than rounding error.  eyeD3 and exiftool also show wrong durations but significantly different from what Music.app shows.  Finder shows the correct duration. If I play one of these tracks with Music.app, the progress bar goes to the end as if the displayed duration were correct, and stays there while the track continues to play. If I edit the audio with Amadeus Pro to remove excessive silence at each end, and save it, eyeD3 and exiftool will then show the correct duration.  Music.app will correct it if/when I play the file or Get Info on the corrected file.  (Amadeus shows the correct value before editing.) **How are Music.app, eyeD3, and exiftool getting durations that are not only wrong but different from each other?**  Is there a way to correct the duration without editing the file?  (Playing it before editing does not correct the value in any of the three tools.)

Or does this work only when being online by sideloading the lyrics from the Apple Music subscription service?

How can I add a picture to the mp3s I have downloaded on my mac? I add an image in apple music but it just doesn't carry over into the actual file. How can I fix this?

As I sort through thousands of MP3 files in iTunes, I notice that I have many files that are DRM and "Purchased By" another Apple ID (that I have no access to). How would you locate those MP3 files, searching for the name in the Purchased By field?

I want to delete songs from iPhone but keep in iPod in iTunes. when uncheck songs from library, this erase from both devices. Is there a way to remove all the songs *just from iPhone?*

I tried using these scripts posted before but they didn't work for me.

cd ~/Downloads/Van Halen - Jamie's Cryin'/step
for f in *.ogg; do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%.*}.mp3"; done

or

unzip "Van Halen - Jamies Cryin (OGG) (Remix Stems).rar" -d mc
cd mc/
find . -type f -iname '*.ogg' -execdir sh -c \
    'ffmpeg -v 8 -i "$1" "${1%.*}.mp3" && rm -- "$1" && echo "$1"' sh {} \;

Is there any way one can make it a quick action using VLC and Automator?

I recently purchased a mp3 audio cd thinking I could play it on my Mac. I get this 'unreadable disk' message when I insert the CD into my external DVD drive:" The only thing I've done so far is to install FFMPEG (

install ffmpeg

). This had no effect. I have no idea what the problem is. The DVD drive seems to be fine. It reads DVD disks OK. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks.

I would like to convert a large number of MP3's in my Apple Music library to AAC (to save disk space). Using the Music app, I have tried it with all songs of an album. Now, I've got each track twice, once in MP3, and again in AAC. That's very cumbersome to go through all songs and find the old mp3's. Is there an easier way? (I have googled, but did not find anything really useful.) I converted the tracks as follows: I went to the album, selected all tracks in it, went to File / Convert / Create AAC Version, and let Apple Music do the conversion. That worked, but, as I said, afterwards, each track was duplicate in the album.

I have ~6,000 MP3's on my old iMac in an iTunes folder, using the old iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml file structure. I have a new MBA with Apple Music and ~20 MP3 files using the Music Library.musiclibrary file structure. I have transferred the old iTunes folder onto the MBA. How can I move the ~6,000 MP3s into the Apple Music library and persevere the metadata (the "Date Added" is super important to me)? The end goal is to delete the iTunes folder and have all MP3s in Apple Music in date order of when I bought them, and using all the new Music app file structure and having no trace of iTunes etc. on my MBA.

Quicktime Player allows a very nice workflow for recording audio for Google Slides – right up to the point where you try to insert the M4A audio file that comes out of Quicktime Player. Then Google refuses to play nicely and the workflow becomes ugly… Perhaps it's the smoke out here on the west coast, but my Google foo is failing to find any defaults settings that would change the format of the saved file (without having to go back and convert it). Is there any way to have the default format for audio recordings be MP3 instead of M4A?

I have private MP3, MP4 and WAV files that are not available via the itunes store, as they are private. I use Linux, so how can I download them from a web server, save them on the iPhone, manage them and play them? Is the Files app the means of doing that?

We have imported many songs from our dozens of CDs into Music.app.  To be "nice guys," we have been slowly replacing them with tracks purchased from Apple—374 so far. Unfortunately (for one example), a purchased track that is 7.6 MB is 1.9 MB in MP3, and there is no detectable difference in the sound.  (Maybe I could buy some expensive speakers and give up portability, but that's not going to happen!)  Apply that proportion to 374 and there's a 2.6 GB waste of space.  Not a problem for the 1TB laptop, but one of our iPads and both iPhones are already too full to do updates without removing Music or Photos (and we only sync a small part of the music to them). If both versions are displayed in the library, Music refuses to play the smaller one (double-click on it in the library view—nothing happens. If the purchased file is moved to trash and the trash emptied, Music still won't play the other until the purchased one is also hidden. **Is there any simple way to automate that process for all 374 purchased tracks?**  (To have the much smaller MP3 be the one Music plays instead of the AAC?) Similar but not a duplicate (and not answered) is https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/96954/itunes-bulk-edit-update-paths-to-music-files Since it was asked: Purchase a song, you download an AAC (.4a) If you ask Music to creat an MP3 version, the result is half the size and **IS** in the library, right next to the AAC and is half the size. If I open the AAC or the MP3 in Amadeus, and then "Save As" MP3, unless I change name or directory, it replaces the other MP3 and is about one-quarter the size of the AAC.  Click the play button in Mucis next to the MP3 and it plays the AAC file instead (as shown by the animation next to it). Move the AAC to the trash and empty; same behavior—it streams from the store, but of course not if you are off-line.  Select the AAC and try to select "delete" and the option instead is to hide it. Only then does it play the MP3 instead of the AAC. As for whether or not I own the music, that is unimportant. Some I own, some I don't. The latter is one reason for buying it eventually.  Another reason is that the sound quality suffers when digitizing cassettes or vinyl. Sometimes, even abused CDs have quality issues.  But none of that is relevant to the need to reduce file size.

I have mp3 files for a few albums, all in a folder. When I drag/drop that folder into the Apple Music app, it adds it to the library. I can also use the "Automatically add to music" folder. If I update the contents of the folder (the one with my music), for example I add/remove music, how do I make it reflect across the app (other than manually deleting, and re-importing the files)? If this is not possible, are there other ways to listen to music when you have the files, on Mac and iPhone? (preferably clean UI).

Macbook Pro Catalina - iPhone 7+ I have many old mp3 books on old hard drives. I do not understand the modern iPhone manager. It seems completely subscription oriented. How do I move an old fashioned mp3 file to my iPhone and listen to it, and have it remember where I left off the next day?