Question: Locking iTunes

jaredjared
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
I was curious, does anyone know of a way you could lock iTunes? So that they playlists and their contents cannot be deleted or altered? I am having a little party tomorrow night and I do not want someone to be able to alter the playlists or delete anything either on purpose or by mistake.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    The only thing that occurs to me is to change the permissions on your itunes music folder to read-only. That's for the songs. Maybe someone else can tell you where the playlists are kept.



    --B
  • Reply 2 of 9
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bergz

    The only thing that occurs to me is to change the permissions on your itunes music folder to read-only. That's for the songs. Maybe someone else can tell you where the playlists are kept.



    --B



    You could create a new login, and chmod the files to be that login. (this is "from memory", so try it on a test file first):



    cd to directory with files

    chmod 755 *

    chown newuser *



    and after the party



    chown olduser *



    Or, you could back up the files to some offline storage (iPod in closet?) and restore them after the party.
  • Reply 3 of 9
    wiftywifty Posts: 70member
    Surely a far far simpler solution would be to start your music and then set the screensaver. You can then configure it so you need a password to unlock the screensaver but the music will keep playing while the screensaver is on (won't it?)



    That's what I'd do anyhoo
  • Reply 4 of 9
    jaredjared Posts: 639member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Wifty

    Surely a far far simpler solution would be to start your music and then set the screensaver. You can then configure it so you need a password to unlock the screensaver but the music will keep playing while the screensaver is on (won't it?)



    That's what I'd do anyhoo



    Sure but with over three thousand albums I think people would get tired of hearing the same song over and over again.....and some stuff I have is rather heavy (grind/hardcore punk) and not everyone wants to hear that so I cannot shuffle the master Library.



    I was thinking about changing permissions but that would really lock down the playlists. I guess I could just make a copy of the iTunes folder (music not included) in case someone were to mess with the playlist settings I would have it backed up.....



    Thanks for the advice so far, but still taking suggestions.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Jared

    Sure but with over three thousand albums I think people would get tired of hearing the same song over and over again.....and some stuff I have is rather heavy (grind/hardcore punk) and not everyone wants to hear that so I cannot shuffle the master Library.



    Smart playlists. It'll take two minutes to set up.



    Party shuffle doesn't have to be from your entire Library.



    --B
  • Reply 6 of 9
    jaredjared Posts: 639member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bergz

    Smart playlists. It'll take two minutes to set up.



    Party shuffle doesn't have to be from your entire Library.



    --B



    Yeah I thought about that but the ID3 tags are not to well organized in terms of genre. Besides, I would rather let the people decide what they want to listen to.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    if you share the music to another computer with iTunes there will be no way of changing anything in the library, but all of your music will be accessible...



    This should also work when sharing libraries on the same machine (fast user switching). What OS are you running?
  • Reply 8 of 9
    jaredjared Posts: 639member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Paul

    This should also work when sharing libraries on the same machine (fast user switching). What OS are you running?



    It creates a new music folder, in which the Library will be blank. Tiger on my laptop and Panther on my jukebox.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    geekdreamsgeekdreams Posts: 280member
    Backing up the "iTunes 4 Music Library" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" files is the easiest solution, because if anything changes you can simply replace the new one with the old one.



    You can also Get Info on those files and set the permissions to read-only, which would let your friends play music but not alter the playlists.
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