iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition

Deleting Songs and Videos

If you want to delete a video, song, or songs—like when you outgrow your Britney Spears phase and want to reclaim some hard drive space by dumping those tracks from the Oops…I Did It Again album—click the title in the Albums pane, select the songs you want to delete from the song list, and press Delete (Backspace).

Tip

Selecting songs works just like selecting files in the Mac Finder or in Windows. Select a swath of consecutive songs in the list by clicking the first, then Shift-clicking the last. Add or remove single additional songs to the selection by ⌘-clicking (Mac) or Ctrl+clicking (Windows).

When iTunes asks if you’re sure you want to delete the music, click Yes. You’ll usually be asked twice about deleting a song, the first time for deleting it from a list, the second time about deleting the music file from your iTunes music library altogether. If you want your hard drive space back, click Yes to both and then empty your Trash or Recycle Bin.

Dealing with Duplicates

Accidentally pulled more than one copy of the same song into iTunes and find yourself lamenting the wasted megabytes of precious hard drive space? In iTunes 4.7 and later, you can have the program seek out and round up duplicate songs— just click the Library icon or a playlist icon in the iTunes Source list, then choose Edit → Show Duplicate Songs.

After iTunes locates all the dupes, it shows them in its main window with a notice at the bottom that reads, “Displaying Duplicate Songs.” Here, ...