“Apple has resurrected the sidebar in iTunes 12.4, making it an essential element for navigation your media,” Kirk McElhearn writes for Kirkville. “At first glance, it looks a lot like the sidebar that was in iTunes back in the day, but there are some differences.
“To navigate among the various media kinds, you use what Apple calls the Media Picker,” McElhearn writes. “That’s the menu above the sidebar.”
“You can also choose which types of media display in the Media Picker,” McElhearn writes. “Click the menu and choose Edit Menu. Check the media kinds you want to show in the menu. You can always access other media kinds from the View > Media Kind menu. Click Done to save your changes.”
More info and explanatory screenshots in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good overview of how the “new” sidebar works and how to manage it in iTunes 12.4.
SEE ALSO:
The 12 most important things Apple just changed in iTunes 12.4 – May 17, 2016
Apple releases iTunes 12.4 – May 16, 2016
The sidebar was never gone. It’s always there. Just toggle it at view>hide/show sidebar
Maybe the default view made it to be hidden. But couldn’t hurt to discover all itunes settings by yourself.
I’ve hidden it already, I see no use for it.
I’ve always thought that they tried to simplify iTunes too much and failed because they just ended up poorly hiding most of the features. Fundamentally a library manager for potentially large amounts of media needs to have a degree of complexity too is by way of the fact there are so many things you can do with it. The trick is in how you differentiate the everyday functions and those for the so called power user.
I think Apple would seriously benefits from splitting iTunes into a suite of apps that all operate off of a central database(s). A media player, a manager, a sync service, a store, etc. I rarely play anything within iTunes, the majority of my media is streamed to Apple TV, or synced to my iPhone. As such the player functionality is almost irrelevant to me, the syncing and management functionality has almost been ignored and in some ways purposely made difficult so as to give a first glance sense of simplicity.
iTunes is fundamentally a large list of files, the larger that list is the more robust you need the backend to be.
I agree that there are logical options for improving iTunes. When it started out with just music it worked well, as I recall. Once you go the hang of playlists and syncing, it was fairly intuitive and simple. Then movies and podcasts and apps and TV shows were added along with iCloud connectivity and iTunes has developed into a beast.
Apple is not a stranger to databases. Perhaps Apple ought to rebuild the core media database using FileMaker? User interfaces could then be built (and customized by power users) to access that information. FileMaker is a well-respected database used to host critical data in the enterprise sector. I would trust my media to it, and the evolution of “iTunes” going forward would be simpler.
What say you, fellow forum members?
Never stopped sing the sidebar myself
Well, I think Apple now has the hint that something’s wrong with iTunes. They might change it sooner rather than later.
I miss the differentiating colors in the sidebar. Monotone is plain and uninteresting.
So you can’t burn to disc now? You can’t right click and convert to MP3? Why did they get rid of these options?!!
Remember when you could open multiple windows? I found that very useful. Apple keeps dumbing things down and I don’t like it.
Anyone know the answers?
Not happy with what I see here:
Ever since Mac OS has been around, the settings for what appears in the sidebar of any application have been set in the Application Preferences accessed beside the Apple menu. Apple is remiss, and fostering confusion by allowing settings in multiple places. Is a setting in System Preferences (like an iPhone) or Application Preferences via the Top Menu Bar, or in the Application Tool bar?! Who knows anymore! It’s becoming a clusterfsck of muddled features, apparently without direction or clear structure.
There also seems to be a slow trend toward copying “the Windows way” where these things are “managed” through the EDIT heading. AppleMail is visually more like Outlook’s flat monotone theme than it has ever been. Setting iCal events has been changed to follow the Windows “click done” format. We used to laugh at Windows users for having to click “manage”, select “manage this file”, then “rename this file/move this file” and then click “Done”. By doing this Windows wasn’t working *for* them at all, just making them do all the work manually. We Mac users once just double-clicked the text and changed it. Boom. Done. That’s what a true “Operating System” is supposed to do; make your work easier by working for you, not making it harder. Somewhere along the line this simple ethic is getting buried in favor of reactive knee-jerk feature bloat.
If commands can’t all be contained in the menu bar, instead of available based on where you are in the app, it is time for a serparate app. Did Cook ever use a floppy driven Mac? He needs to set one up and look at how simple and how in common the navigation was in MacWrite/Paint/Draw and learn.