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Quickly find a song in the iTunes library Apps
Searching is one of the great features of iTunes. Despite this, most of us neglect the search box in the top right corner. But you can keep neglecting it and still be able to use iTunes' search feature.

When you search from the search box, iTunes narrows the matches in a Spotlight-like fashion, until, after no more matches are found, the particular song you typed in is the only one visible. This means you have to click on the previous playlist or your library to activate it again if you play the searched song.

Instead of using the search box when searching for a particular song, you can do so right inside the iTunes window. Make sure the song list window is active, then just type the song name. After a short delay, iTunes will automatically select the song, provided that it is in the selected playlist/library. And it doesn't eliminate the rest of the songs. Therefore, you can press Enter to play the song, and remain in your current playlist.

[robg adds: This "search in iTunes" is based on iTunes' ability to behave much like the Finder -- if you type an "F," iTunes will jump down to the first song that starts with "F." So if you know and can type the exact name of the song, the above method will indeed select it in an easier-to-use manner than does the search box. But if you're not exactly certain of the spelling, or if you don't recall whether you used "The" in front of the song name or not, you'll be better off with a real search via the search box.]
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Quickly find a song in the iTunes library | 6 comments | Create New Account
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Quickly find a song in the iTunes library
Authored by: DougAdams on Aug 15, '05 10:13:57AM

FWIW: This ability has been available in iTunes since at least version 2.0.3.

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Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/



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...but I should add...
Authored by: DougAdams on Aug 15, '05 10:15:30AM

...only via the search box ;)

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Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/



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Quickly find a song in the iTunes library
Authored by: stephen.m on Aug 15, '05 12:12:45PM

This hint also works for quickly locating artists and albums (the "artist" or "album" heading, respectively, must be active). The artist search has the additional feature of ignoring an initial "the" in the name. For example, keying "bea" could return not only Beastie Boys, but also The Beach Boys or The Beatles.



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Quickly find a song in the iTunes library
Authored by: IanWalker on Aug 15, '05 12:16:57PM

iTunes does this not by song title, but by whichever column you have your library sorted by. I keep mine sorted by Artist (and iTunes groups albums by the same artist together), so if I want to go a particular artist, I begin typing their name, and it hops down the list to that artist.

It also ignores 'the' at the beginning of names of artists, so if I type 'natio' it will take me to 'The National'. However, if your library is sorted by song titile, you need to type in 'the' at the beginning - typing 'gambler' doesn't do anything worthwhile, but typing 'the gambler' takes me to that song.

This is in iTunes 4.9 anyhow.

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Ian!



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Use it in Browse Mode
Authored by: ever on Aug 16, '05 02:32:00AM

I was amazed at how long it took me to discover the "Browse" button... that big scary mysterious multi-colored eyeball next to the search button. It took me even longer to realize that there is a checkbox in preferences that removes the (to me) unnecessary Genre column. Anyway, the hint also works very well if you've clicked in one of the Browse columns, so you can quickly zoom to a clean list of say, a particular artist, just by typing... and then if you want to narrow it down to an album just hit tab and navigate that column, hitting tab again you can then go find a particular song. This way you can interface in a bit more of an iPod-esque fashion.



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Quickly find a song in the iTunes library
Authored by: OIZee on Sep 04, '05 04:33:51PM

With OS X 10.4 you can use Spotlight to search for songs in iTunes. Using Spotlight keeps iTunes as it is - just press apple-space and search for your song.



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