Essential tips to get the best from iTunes

We find it hard to believe that iTunes is now more than eight years old. And although it has grown to incorporate many new features since its creation, it still looks remarkably similar to the way it did when it first appeared, running on OS 9.

Back then it was just a jukebox, but over the years came developments like CD burning, the iPod, Smart Playlists, the iTunes Store, video support and, most recently, the iPhone.

Apple has gradually turned iTunes into the hub for managing and playing all the music and movies on your Mac and mobile devices, whilst continually adding support for new devices and services like the Apple TV, movie rentals and much more.

In 2003, Apple made the smart move of developing a Windows version of iTunes, opening up the iPod market and the iTunes Store to a much wider audience, and the results speak for themselves. iTunes remains one of Apple's most important applications, and it is capable of far more than just playing music.

Whether it's converting movies to watch on your iPod while out and about, building party playlists, getting album art online, buying music, renting films or backing up iPhones, there's an awful lot under the surface.

Most importantly, many of the tips and tricks we're going to show you will save you time, and maybe even reveal a few things you didn't know you could do. So read on to become an iTunes and iPod expert.

Use Smart Playlists to manage music

As music libraries grow they can become unwieldy. Go to File > Smart Playlists and you can create playlists that display tracks meeting any criteria you enter. If you specify that the playlist should show all songs with the Artist tag 'Rolling Stones', all tracks in your library by that band will appear in the playlist.

You can add further criteria; say, for example, all Rolling Stones tracks you have rated as five stars. By using the match any rule option plus other options you can have playlists that display different sets of tracks.

For example, a playlist where the genre is blues and also rock, plus bit rate is greater than 128. And, best of all, if you check Live updating, the Smart Playlist will watch the library and automatically add any new files that meet the criteria you have set up.

Clean up the clutter & save space

Some people's iTunes libraries get very full with duplicate tracks. You need to know whether you're accidentally copying tracks as you drag them into iTunes.

Go to Preferences > Advanced and see if Copy files to iTunes music folder… is switched on. If it is, it could be that when you're dragging files into iTunes they are being duplicated and so exist in two places on your hard drive.

Select the Music library in iTunes and then choose File > Show Duplicates. Sort the list by clicking on the Name tab and duplicate files will be shown side by side. Be aware that iTunes uses a song's name in this process, so if a song has been imported on two different compilation CDs, for example, it would then show up as a duplicate track.

Before you delete any tracks from your Music library, play them to check if they are actually the same tune. To find a track's location, use the Cmd+[I] Get Info trick, or right-click on a file and choose Show in Finder. You can also use the File > Library > Consolidate command to copy any music that's referenced outside of the iTunes Music folder into it.

• Clean up your iTunes library in 9 easy steps

Use the Genius tool to find new music

With more music than ever available to buy online through the iTunes Store, it can be hard navigating through it to find new stuff that you might like. The Genius feature in iTunes sends information about your listening habits to the iTunes Store and recommends new music based on similar artists and other people's listening habits.

If you select a track from your library and click the Genius button, iTunes will create a Genius playlist for you of other songs from your library that complement your chosen track. If you're after something new, the Genius Sidebar will display songs that it thinks go well with the track you're playing, and you can preview and buy these songs directly from the sidebar.

Since it knows what music is already in your library, Genius won't recommend anything you already have. It's a much better way to find new music than clicking through the iTunes Store at random.

Share your iTunes library

You can duplicate an entire consolidated iTunes library by simply copying the Music folder. But with libraries frequently running into many gigabytes, it's slow and inefficient. iTunes can share your library over a local network, so it can be accessed by anyone on your Ethernet or wireless network.

Go to Preferences > Sharing and you can turn on sharing of the whole library or specific playlists. You can password-protect access, and also tell your iTunes to look for other shared libraries. Since the music is streamed and not copied, it takes up no disk space on the listening machines. It's great for use in the home or an office environment.