See the Size of iTunes Playlists when Changing Sync Settings

One problem with syncing playlists to an iOS device with iTunes is that you never know how much space any playlist takes up. So you may be on the sync screen in iTunes, wanting to either clear out some space on your iOS device or add more music, and you have to trust the now-unreliable capacity bar to know if the music will fit. Often, with iTunes 12, the capacity bar looks fine, but when you click the Sync button, you find that there’s not enough space on your device. I wrote about how useful it would be to know how large playlists are.

Doug Adams has created a nifty applet called Playlists Info. When you launch the app, it displays all the playlists on your device (when it’s connected to your computer and displayed in iTunes), or in your iTunes Music library, so you can know how much space each one takes up. You can then choose to sync or un-sync a playlist. You can sort by any column: playlist name, size, time or number of tracks. You can use this to choose what you can add or what to delete from your device before syncing.

Playlists info

Note that songs can be in multiple playlists; it’s possible that the numbers you see after adding or removing playlists don’t equal the size of those playlists. But with that in mind, this applet will help you if you’re trying to decide what to sync.

4 thoughts on “See the Size of iTunes Playlists when Changing Sync Settings

  1. Thanks Kirk, once again Doug Adams has done us all a favor by supplying what Apple has yet to offer us.

    But the thing that wastes more of my in iTunes than any other is finding out what Playlist any given track is associated with. Apple’s implementation of this is a pain in the backside! As far as I know the only way to figure this out is to Right Click on a track and scroll TWENTY ITEMS down the dropdown menu to the Show In Playlist menu item. That’s just flat out ridiculous! Try doing that for an album with a dozen tracks – that’s 240 menu items you have to scroll through for just one album!

    I’d pay good money if Doug Adams, or anyone else could come up with a script that would show me, in a dialog box, what Playlists are associated with the presently selected track. I’d pay even more if I could manage what Playlist I wanted that track associated with – from within that dialog box.

    Forgive my all caps,, and exclamation marked ranting, but this process has wasted way too much of my time. And I doubt if I’m the only one this inefficiency has affected …

  2. Thanks Kirk, once again Doug Adams has done us all a favor by supplying what Apple has yet to offer us.

    But the thing that wastes more of my in iTunes than any other is finding out what Playlist any given track is associated with. Apple’s implementation of this is a pain in the backside! As far as I know the only way to figure this out is to Right Click on a track and scroll TWENTY ITEMS down the dropdown menu to the Show In Playlist menu item. That’s just flat out ridiculous! Try doing that for an album with a dozen tracks – that’s 240 menu items you have to scroll through for just one album!

    I’d pay good money if Doug Adams, or anyone else could come up with a script that would show me, in a dialog box, what Playlists are associated with the presently selected track. I’d pay even more if I could manage what Playlist I wanted that track associated with – from within that dialog box.

    Forgive my all caps,, and exclamation marked ranting, but this process has wasted way too much of my time. And I doubt if I’m the only one this inefficiency has affected …

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