Sam Soffes

So I have been trying to solve the problem of having my iTunes on all of my computers for a long time. I tried taking my MacBook Pro with me and mounting it in target disk mode, USB powered hard drives, and rsync (which was frustrating and I ended up giving up on that one).

I’ve been using Dropbox (a really sweet file syncing service) for a while now. It’s really hand for syncing files between my computers seamlessly. The MobileMe iDisk is super slow and doesn’t support PCs (not that I care about them though). I mainly used Dropbox to sync all of desktop wallpapers between my computers or to transfer a file quickly. We also use it at work to share a file quickly.

A few weeks ago I started syncing my iTunes library between my computers with Dropbox instead of using my portable hard drive. I had to up my space to 50GB (only $9.99 a month). It’s been awesome! It’s really easy to setup too.

Before you do any of this, I would strongly recommend backing up your entire library somewhere safe by just coping the entire iTunes folder. For my nothing happened, but just to be safe, I would do it anyway.

1. Move your iTunes folder to your Dropbox folder. This will probably take a really long time. For me it took about 8 hours.
2. Launch iTunes while holding the option key (shift on Windows).
3. Click choose library and choose your iTunes library folder in your Dropbox.

That’s it. You’re done. After a ton of waiting, you’ll be good to go.

Some important things to note, you’ll want to make sure you do not use your library on more than one computer at the same time. It will just make headaches for you. I had to go without my music for almost a whole day because it was uploading for a really long time and then had to download on my other computer for a really long time.

You should also make sure you have enough disk space for your library on all of your computers that you use Dropbox on. If you don’t it will make for some fun issues.

Feel free to email me if you have questions. Enjoy.

Update 09/03/2010: Syncing between Macs and PCs does not work due to the way they store file paths in the library file. If you're syncing between the same system, it works fine.