Someone recently contacted me with this question and I figured I’d share it with everyone. They found me from a search from organizing checked items for iTunes.
What I am about to show you how to do isn’t very new, but it is a trick that might come in handy in cases that require desperate measures. Use with extreme caution. Practice this in a small playlist that isn’t mixed with checked and unchecked tracks. If you hold [Control/Command] and click on the checkbox next to any track, it will change all files to the opposite check mark. And for real novices that don’t know how to edit more than one track at a time, but don’t want every single file, you can select multiple tracks in sequence using shift or you can highlight other tracks using CTRL/CMD (but not on the check box itself).
9 comments
roger corman says:
Jul 8, 2009
thank you for explaining how to uncheck all items in itunes!!
greg says:
Mar 1, 2010
your suggestion re: checking selections is a thing of beauty. Thank You for the hours of tedious manual checking you’ve saved me!
sione says:
Oct 20, 2010
THANK YOU! saved me so many hours clicking every song of over 16,000 + songs not to mention the cramp in my fingers
Marah says:
Jul 9, 2011
This was very helpful. Saved me a huge amount of time and frustration. THANK YOU!! However, I did it slightly different, or I just did not fully understand. I read on another internet entry about highlighting multiple lines using the SHIFT key, so I did that first, Highlighting the entire library, and then once highlighted, I used the CTRL key and clicked on the check box. After a 2-3 second delay, every box was made the same as the opposite of whatever I just clicked. It did not matter whether they were already checked or unchecked. It changed ALL line entries to whatever change I was making to the individual line I was on. Caution: There is a several second delay in response to your request, so it is easy to think that it is not doing anything. Just wait a moment.
Tom says:
Aug 8, 2011
This worked perfectly
Thanks
Rod says:
Oct 23, 2011
I echo all of the thank you’s in this post combined. Most of the internet postings explaining how to do this were Windows installed iTunes that called for right clicking. Not so for the Mac. Thanks again dude!
Sidny says:
Jan 8, 2012
THANK YOU! You saved me HOURS of unchecking. 🙂 your the best!
JANEKG says:
May 7, 2012
great! SORTED ……
Kip W says:
Feb 9, 2013
I knew somebody out there would come through for me (after iTunes help proved useless). Let me just add one thing: if you want to change a selected set of tracks, use the command to make a new set from selection (command-shift-N on a Mac), and then go to the new playlist, flip all the tracks, and after that you can delete the playlist, or keep it if you feel like it.