Error displaying Album Art in iTunes browser view

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Level 1

8 points

Error displaying Album Art in iTunes browser view

I have been using iTunes for Windows for 20+ years without issue, but recently have found Album Art missing from the browser. Currently using version 12.12.5.8

Example:

All of the artwork is my own, I don't retrieve album art from Apple. This is only happening to a small minority of albums, but continues to affect new albums sporadically. The art obviously remains intact on the ID3 tags. Searching the forums, I see users recommending to delete the Album Art cache folder, and let iTunes rebuild the database. First I want to confirm this is a safe practice (should I backup the itl/xml files and cache folder beforehand?) Second, even if rebuilding the art database corrects the current errors, this issue has continued to occur in new albums, little by little - what caused this malfunction to start happening after decades of use? Won't the errors just start over again once I rebuild the database?

Thank you very much for your help!

Posted on Dec 18, 2025 8:18 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,149 points

Dec 18, 2025 9:04 AM in response to jsa307

See Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows - Apple Community in case this is a multiple ID3 tags issue. It is possible Windows Explorer is displaying an embedded artwork image in a tag that iTunes doesn't see.

Failing that then yes, deleting the Album Artwork folder inside your iTunes folder will completely reset the iTunes artwork cache, forcing it to be regenerated from any embedded artwork, with other images being fetched from the iTunes Store if no local image is found, provided you are signed into the store and have allowed for this. If all images are embedded then it should rebuild correctly.

You should ideally backup everything before making changes. See Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy - Apple Community for the method I use.

tt2

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