Transfer iPod Music to a Mac With iTunes 7 or Later
While Apple has discontinued making all iPods except the iPod touch, there are still plenty of older iPods in use or available secondhand, such as the iPod Classic, Nano, and Shuffle. If you want to enjoy your iPod tunes on a new Mac, transfer your legally purchased iTunes content. Before you connect your iPod to your Mac, it’s important to stop iTunes from erasing your music while syncing (see instructions later in this article). After you prevent the syncing process, here’s how the transfer works in Macs with iTunes 7 or later.
How to Prevent iTunes From Syncing With Your iPod
Before you connect your iPod to your Mac, stop iTunes from erasing your music while syncing. If you connect the device without doing this, iTunes overwrites your iPod music library with the contents of your iTunes library. Turn off this feature. For Macs running iTunes, before syncing your iPod, open iTunes and go to iTunes > Preferences. Select the Devices tab and check the box that says Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically. Select OK and close iTunes. For Macs running macOS Catalina and newer, open the device in Finder and uncheck Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected.
For Older Versions of iTunes
If you’re using a pre-7 version of iTunes, the process is a little more complicated and involves three stages: Disable syncing, find and copy your music, and add the recovered music back to iTunes.
Disable Syncing in Old iTunes Versions
To disable syncing, hold down the Command+Option keys while you’re connecting your iPod to your computer. Don’t release these keys until you see your iPod display in iTunes. This stops iTunes from automatically syncing when it detects the iPod.
Find and Copy Your Music
The Music folder on your iPod contains your music, movie, and video files. The folders represent your various playlists, and the files in each folder are the media files, music, audiobooks, podcasts, or videos associated with that particular playlist. The filenames aren’t intuitive, but the internal ID3 tags are all intact, so iTunes can read them.
Add the Recovered Music Back to iTunes
After your files have copied to the new folder, add them back into iTunes on the Mac.
