This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
How to: Change The Location Of Your iTunes Library
By default iTunes places your library folder and associated content in your Home directory in the Music folder.
There are a number of reasons why this may not be the best option. The number one reason would be that as you build your library it may well exceed the available hard drive space on your internal drive. Whilst you can import/move content to and from external drives it may be easier to simply move your library completely.
In order to do this you will need move the iTunes folder from the default music folder in your home directory to another hard drive connected to your Mac.
Then launch iTunes and proceed to the iTunes preferences by navigating to iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar or pressing Command + , (comma) on your keyboard.
Proceed to the Advanced tab in the iTunes preferences and you will be presented with the following information:
Click on the change button as highlighted above. You will then need to select the specific drive you wish to move your iTunes folder to and once found click OK.
Future purchases from iTunes will be immediately saved to the new location as will all other media such as the digital music files you have imported from CDs you own.
If you ever want to go back to using the default option for iTunes simply click on the Reset button.
Please make sure you have a backup of your Mac and iTunes Library prior to undertaking this process.
