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how to clean up iTunes' folders of songs accidentally "removed" (vs. deleted)

Summary: trying to locate, select and remove all unlinked songs hiding throughout iTunes' artist folders. I am not trying to relink or recover missing songs and unfortunately Googling for a solution only yields those inquiries from others. Hence my post today.


Details: I often delete batches of tracks from my 10,000 or so song library. Songs I intend to remove from my library I always want to entirely purge from my drive as a space saving measure. Sometimes though I hit "remove" instead of "delete" by accident, and this action is undoable. This results in all of the tracks I "removed" being pulled out of iTunes while remaining in their individual albums folders among the hundreds I have for iTunes. Basically if I screw up and hit "remove," those songs are lost to the ether.

I wouldn't even have known of what I call the "ghost tracks" since they're no longer in iTunes, however I now use a Sonos system that pulls the tracks directly from the folders, so now the duplicates and tracks I intentionally deleted long ago are now playing again.


So I'm wondering if there's an easy way to separate out these songs I intended to delete. For instance when this happens in Lightroom with photos, I can pull all the linked files to another folder, purge the unwanted/unlinked photos, then move the linked pics back. Voila! Does iTunes have a similar capability possibly? I.e. move the linked songs to another location, purging out anything that's left, then moving songs back? I would experiment but I don't want to mess anything up I might regret. I prize my play count and other related data tied to my iTunes library and don't want to poke the beast for no reason.


Any advice/input appreciated. Thanks,

Max


Posted on Apr 15, 2021 9:05 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 15, 2021 11:41 PM

Use File > Add to Library and select your media folder. This will scan the media folder and add in all tracks not currently connected to the library. Use the Songs view sorted by date added descending. Select all the tracks added today and delete them. Confirm that you want the deleted items sent to the trash.


tt2

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 15, 2021 11:41 PM in response to LongIslandCity

Use File > Add to Library and select your media folder. This will scan the media folder and add in all tracks not currently connected to the library. Use the Songs view sorted by date added descending. Select all the tracks added today and delete them. Confirm that you want the deleted items sent to the trash.


tt2

Apr 16, 2021 12:38 PM in response to turingtest2

Genius, thank you! This imported almost 1500 unlinked songs among the hundreds of various folders. I was able to easily delete them. This saved me space and now my Sonos will pull from a folder system without duplicates and internally deleted.


Two points of clarification for anyone encountering this issue in future;

(1) The thing that got me into this mess has been selecting photos to delete, hitting delete, then rushing through the prompt by hitting ENTER, which confirms to KEEP FILES, vs. Move to Trash. And undo feature here would be nice.

Secondly, File > Add to Library is now simply File > Import

how to clean up iTunes' folders of songs accidentally "removed" (vs. deleted)

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