Over in the forums, rooSwitch Lite user, brokosz asked if there was a way to switch iTunes without rooSwitch trying to switch the contents of ~/Music/iTunes. At first I didn’t quite get the request, but after some clarification and now that I’ve played with this a little I see it’s quite powerful. What’s going on is brokosz has created multiple iTunes Libraries (to do this, hold down option while launching iTunes (works in iPhoto as well)). So instead of rooSwitch managing the libraries, brokosz lets iTunes do that and rooSwitch just shuffles the iTunes settings. The end result is the ability to have multiple, easily switchable, iTunes libraries stored wherever you like (in brokosz’s case, an external HD).

note: In order to get this to work, you should rename your main library from ~/Music/iTunes to anything else. I suggest ~/Music/iTunes5000. Doing this will cause the main library to be hidden from rooSwitch. Now reopen iTunes holding down option and choose the iTunes5000 Library. There’s another way to do this mentioned in the forum posting, but it’s a lot more involved.

Once you’ve hidden the music files from rooSwitch create a new profile, or duplicate the current one and switch to it. Quit iTunes and re-open it holding down the option key. Create a new library wherever you want. Now when you switch between the two profiles you’ll be switching between the two libraries and rooSwitch won’t be moving any data.

Why doesn’t brokosz just hold down option on every iTunes launch and not bother with rooSwitch? Cause remembering to hold down option and then fumbling around to find the library you want is a pain. Using rooSwitch brokosz can have friendly named profiles and have rooSwitch quit and relaunch iTunes.

Right now I’m using this such that I have all the podcasts I listen to in their own iTunes Library. I’m doing this because I’ve found 4GB+ of podcasts before and I’m hoping they’re easier to keep an eye on / contain this way.

This same method should work for iPhoto, but I’ve yet to test it (I will soon).
update 2006.09.30: Just confirmed that the same procedure works great for managing multiple iPhoto libraries as well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Other, rooSwitch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.