iTunes 12 Brings More Power to the Column Browser

If you’re familiar with the Column Browser in iTunes, it’s a great way to be able to navigate content in your media library. To display it – in most list views – press Command-B. It displays several columns above your content:

sidebar.png

In iTunes 12, the Column Browser have been given new powers; there are new columns that you can display. To see them, click the View menu, then hover your cursor over Column Browser.

Screen.png

Previously, you could display Genres, Artists, Albums, Composers and Groupings. In iTunes 12, you can also display Kinds (the kind of file: AAC audio file, Apple Lossless audio file, MPEG audio file, PDF document, etc.), Categories (the same as genres for certain types of content such as movies), Shows and Seasons (both for TV shows).

But there are a few problems with its implementation. You can’t display all the above options when you’ve selected your Music library; the new ones are only available when you select a playlist. And, in some media libraries, there are obvious errors: Movies doesn’t let you select Categories, but does let you display a column for Albums. And why it allows you to display Shows and Seasons in a Music library is curious.

If you use the Column Browser, have a look at its new possibilities, but make sure you switch from libraries to playlists, and try the different libraries, to see which types of information you can display.