You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

My music is gone

I was cleaning a MacBook but couldn’t reformat because I didn’t want to lose installed software and certain files had to stay on there. I turned off iCloud but noticed my iTunes remained. I didn’t want to leave my songs on the laptop so I removed all the music from iTunes. Although I wasn’t on iCloud this removed the songs from all of my iTunes everywhere. Is there a way to recover my songs? That’s a lot of money down the tubes if I can’t. Why does Mac make it that hard to clean up a laptop? there a way to recover my music?

Posted on Aug 26, 2019 7:36 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 27, 2019 3:29 AM

It would have been iTunes > Preferences > General > iCloud Music Library > Off. Simply deleting the entire Tunes folder in Finder, independently of iTunes, would have been the best approach. You can contact iTunes - Official Apple Support in case by some miracle they cache deleted files for a period and can restore them for you, but I doubt it.


tt2

Similar questions

7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 27, 2019 3:29 AM in response to realgingerella

It would have been iTunes > Preferences > General > iCloud Music Library > Off. Simply deleting the entire Tunes folder in Finder, independently of iTunes, would have been the best approach. You can contact iTunes - Official Apple Support in case by some miracle they cache deleted files for a period and can restore them for you, but I doubt it.


tt2

Aug 26, 2019 9:39 AM in response to realgingerella

What you should have done was disconnected from iCloud Music Library before removing the songs, or only removed the downloads and then deleted the library file. This is a setting in iTunes, separate from the system login to iCloud. Is there a backup you've forgotten about? Is the another computer with the downloaded collection of files? When you remove from iCloud Music Library tracks are removed from that library and all devices, but downloaded tracks in another library are marked as removed and can be added back if needed. Can you restore them with file recovery software? E.g. https://www.easeus.com/mac/mac-undelete-free/index.htm


tt2

My music is gone

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.