Retroactive: Mac app that lets you run Aperture, iPhoto, or iTunes on macOS Catalina

[Airsculpture]

I don't believe so. Just create a new iTunes library, set your media folder in preferences, keep organized if you want, and add to the library. You could, if you have playlists set up in Music, export them to the required format ( think it's m3u ) and then import them into iTunes. They may work ( depends if they are location specific I guess ) - haven't needed to do that as I saved my old iTunes external disk.

 

[Airsculpture]

So I just installed iTunes using Retroactive, which is AMAZING.

However because I was on a new machine that only ever had Music.app the iTunes Library is completely empty. I suspect there's nothing I can do to fix this? No way to move things over from Music.app to iTunes?

(Man, I hate Music.app so very much!)

I would suspect not. They use two different libraries, artwork downloaded like you state is stored differently in iTunes and Music and Music stores the artwork in another place in the User/Library directories

Embedding artwork in the track files I find best. Music does a terrible job of populating artwork compared to iTunes.

 

[ehmjay]

I don't believe so. Just create a new iTunes library, set your media folder in preferences, keep organized if you want, and add to the library. You could, if you have playlists set up in Music, export them to the required format ( think it's m3u ) and then import them into iTunes. They may work ( depends if they are location specific I guess ) - haven't needed to do that as I saved my old iTunes external disk.

Okay, good to know. I think part of the problem right now is I can't sign into iCloud Library or whatever which in theory would populate my iTunes with all my albums and playlists and such. I don't know if that's an issue with trying to run iTunes in Big Sur or just because the servers are acting up (I keep getting 2 unknown errors - "9039" and "-9810") .

Since I use iCloud Music Library I dont want to have things get to confusing, so I guess I'll keep using Music.app for the time being. I just hate it it so much; they've removed so much functionality I relied on.

 

[Airsculpture]

Agreed. I hated it too, for that and losing or not displaying artwork when it was clearly embedded in the tracks.

Even displayed some in album view but not in playlists, made no sense.

 

[Airsculpture]

Update. Did a clean install of Big Sur on an external SSD and have iTunes running happily on it

 

[Airsculpture]

Also, a plus about Big Sur is I now have a menu bar "Now Playing widget" built in which, unless I was missing something other than in notifications, I didn't have a menu bar controller for iTunes in Catalina.

I was very surprised that it recognised iTunes playing, never mind display controllers and artwork of whatever is playing, definitely a bonus. I can't seem to get notifications for tracks changing to work though (small thing and actually unecessary with the menu bar controller but would have been nice )

 

[Fishrrman]

Retroactive seems to work as intended on my experimental drive using Catalina.

But...
I can't get it to work with a second experimental drive running the public release version of Big Sur (which I think is 11.0.1).

Retroactive launches without a problem.
But then...
It doesn't seem to DO anything.

Example:
I click the option to install iTunes.
Retroactive now presents a screen with various versions of iTunes available to install.
I accept "the default" (which is iTunes 12.9.5, I think)
Then I click the "continue" button, and...
... nothing.

It goes no further.

Has anyone else seen this?
Were you able to "work past" it...?

One other thing:
Some of the documentation for Retroactive mentions an "authorization" dialog.
I don't get this when I launch it, and it never shows up at any time later...

 

[Airsculpture]

Nope. Didn't experience any of that with either Catalina or Big Sur installations.

Perhaps someone will be along to help.

 

[Airsculpture]

Anybody tried inserting a CD to rip through iTunes ? My CD doesn't show in iTunes, I had to use XLD instead, then add the tracks to iTunes.

 

[btltez]

Just installed Retroactive...works flawlessly but for one huge problem, I can't sync music to my iphone 12. The dialogues all open but cannot drag music to the iphone. I tried the ''terminal" fix people have suggested but it did not work. Anyone else have this issue and/or advice? Thanks

 

[Airsculpture]

Mine works fine syncing with an iPhone 8 Plus

 

[btltez]

Well, after I sent that post I decided to try again. This time my phone was already connect to iMac...I opened up iTunes and it let me sync! So not sure what changed exactly but I'm so glad! Thanks

 

[Airsculpture]

Anybody tried inserting a CD to rip through iTunes ? My CD doesn't show in iTunes, I had to use XLD instead, then add the tracks to iTunes.

XLD seems really slow at ripping to ALAC whereas it is super fast converting tracks I have downloaded in FLAC to ALAC.

Not sure why the CD isn't showing up in iTunes. Even though I have "ignore" as the action, it always showed up as a disc icon in iTunes previously.

 

[Airsculpture]

XLD seems really slow at ripping to ALAC whereas it is super fast converting tracks I have downloaded in FLAC to ALAC.

Not sure why the CD isn't showing up in iTunes. Even though I have "ignore" as the action, it always showed up as a disc icon in iTunes previously.

Anyone else noticed this ?

 

[Ritsuka]

XLD tries to get an exact bit-by-bit rip. You can configure the rip settings in the preferences.

 

[Airsculpture]

Of course yes, thank you. Any ideas why it doesn't show up in iTunes ( apart from the fact Apple isn't expecting iTunes to be there ) ?

 

[hongsolo]

Greetings,

I was hoping someone could help me. I just received my new M1 MacBook Pro and am trying to get iTunes to run on it using Retroactive. I have used Retroactive, successfully, on my old MacBook Pro but haven't been able to get it to run so far.

I get an "iTunes Quit Unexpectedly" message and the program won't open.

Does Retroactive iTunes work for M1 chipped MacBooks? If so, what am I doing wrong? If not, is there another way to get iTunes on my computer?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Airsculpture]

My iPhone started showing up in Finder and not in iTunes. Any ideas what I have to kill in order that it shows back up in iTunes so I can sync from there ?

Update: Sorted it, killed the daemon

 

[Daytona 360]

Installed iTunes 12.9.5 on Catalina using Retroactive 1.9. Seems to be working in macOS.

The problem comes when I try to sync to an iPad - the music library syncs fine, but in iTunes the epubs in Books doesn't show up.

Is there a way to still manually sync the books from Mac directly to iPad without going through iCloud? (I have like 2GB of epubs and there doesn't seem to be an "Download all" option on the iPad.

 

[Airsculpture]

Try Finder

 

[Daytona 360]

Try Finder

The problem is if I sync the books via Finder, it deletes all my music sync'ed from iTunes.

 

[Airsculpture]

I've not encountered the problem.

 

[Airsculpture]

Anyone running Music along side iTunes ? Any conflicts or issues ?

 

[Airsculpture]

Connected an old iPod shuffle and it's launching in Finder and expecting content from Music.

Is there a way of making it launch/connect in iTunes ? My iPhone launches/connects in iTunes

 

[MelloMikeUK]

Greetings,

I was hoping someone could help me. I just received my new M1 MacBook Pro and am trying to get iTunes to run on it using Retroactive. I have used Retroactive, successfully, on my old MacBook Pro but haven't been able to get it to run so far.

I get an "iTunes Quit Unexpectedly" message and the program won't open.

Does Retroactive iTunes work for M1 chipped MacBooks? If so, what am I doing wrong? If not, is there another way to get iTunes on my computer?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Did you ever find a solution to this? I have the same issue.