Retrieve S/Ns of iPods connected to your computer

Apr 14, '11 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: nathanator11

If your iPod is lost or stolen you'll want to find its serial number. Luckily, your Mac keeps a record of all the iPods that have connected to the computer with the s/n and other info.

The file that stores info about iPods is located at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPod.plist. Open it with your favorite text editor.

Here's the hierarchy of the XML file with (descriptions):

<dict> (everything/root)
  <key>Devices</key> (the section that stores info about the iPods themselves)
  <dict>
    <key>XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</key> (a unique identifier for each iPod, not useful to us
    <dict>
      <key>Connected</key> (the first iPod)
      (In here is the info about the iPod. Subsequently, I will refer to things at this level of the tree.)
    </dict>
  </dict>
  (ignore stuff in here; it's not useful to us)
<dict>
If you've connected more than one iPod, you'll see another of the blocks that starts with <key>XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</key>.

[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. This is pretty handy to know.]

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