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When the first iPod was introduced, it was simply a portable player that enabled you to take your music on the road with you. Hence, it made perfect sense to manage the device and its contents from within iTunes. As iOS devices evolved, though, from the simple iPod to the iPhone and then the iPad, they became much more powerful and more independent. As we’ve noted, it’s now perfectly possible to use one without ever connecting it to your computer. If you do so, though, it’s iTunes you’ll use to manage it, just as before. So here are some tips and tricks for getting it all working smoothly…

In previous versions of iTunes, an iOS device would by default attempt to sync as soon as you connected it to your computer, which was annoying if you were connecting it to a different computer (to charge it, for example) or if it was synced with a different iTunes library (such as one belonging to another user of your computer). You did get an alert asking whether you wanted to erase the device and sync it with the current iTunes Library, but it was an extra step to decline this all the time (and it was hard to avoid that moment of panic before you did so...).

In iTunes 12 Apple has very sensibly changed the default: go to iTunes >Preferences (Mac) or Edit Preferences (Windows), click the Devices tab and you’ll see that ‘Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically’ is on by default. If you opt to untick this so that your device does sync automatically when you connect it, you can prevent other iOS devices from attempting to do so by holding down as you connect the device to your computer, and keep these keys held down until the device appears in the iTunes window.

What not to sync
Under the Info tab in iTunes, there’s a range of data you can sync to your iOS device, including calendars and contacts. If you use iCloud to keep these things in sync, then iTunes 12 will helpfully tell you so, and you won’t get the option to sync them via iTunes. This is a great improvement in earlier versions it was possible to set them to sync via both iTunes and iCloud, which simply meant you were likely to up with duplicate data on your device.

Sync back, too
Another quirk of iTunes sync is that, depending on your settings, content you download on your iOS device doesn’t always get copied to your computer when you sync in particular app updates. To be sure that such content properly makes its way to iTunes on your PC or Mac, go to the File menu or right-click your iOS device’s name and choose Devices > ‘Transfer purchases from [device name]’.

Optimise media to sync
When you sync music and movies to your iOS device, you may want to shrink them to save space. (The device will scale standard movies down to display them on its smaller screen anyway, so there’s no reason to fill up its limited storage space with the huge original-resolution file.) On the Summary screen in iTunes for the
device, under Options, you can opt to convert higher-bit-rate songs to smaller AAC files or to ‘Prefer standard definition videos’. Movies can be converted to device-specific formats using the options in iTunes’ File > Create New Version menu, or you may prefer the more extensive options in a third-party utility such as Handbrake (free from handbrake.fr). This gives you more control over parameters such as size and quality, but usually involves an extra step: saving the optimised movie as a new file and re-importing it into iTunes before syncing.

                                         Managing media manually

If you want more control over the media on your device, you can manage music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and iTunes U materials manually. This is useful if your entire library can’t fit on your device, or you just want to choose what you take on the road with you.

To switch to manual management, open iTunes, connect your device and click its name if necessary. Click Summary, scroll down and under Options tick ‘Manually manage music and videos’, then click Apply. You might see a message that your device is synced with another library. This means that you’ve used a different computer to sync your device in the past, and iTunes can’t sync without first erasing and replacing all iTunes content on your device. (An iPhone cannot sync with more than one library. With an iPad or iPod you can add music, but not video or other content, from multiple libraries.) Note also that you can’t switch to manual

management if iTunes Match is activated on the device.

Now to add items to the device, simply start dragging from any view and a sidebar will pop open on the left; drag the item onto the name of your connected device and it will be copied over into the correct category. In playlists view things are a little simpler, because the sidebar stays open. Click a heading under On My Device, then click the Add To button at the top right of the display. The left-hand panel shows your library, the right-hand panel your device. Simply drag items from the left-hand panel to the right-hand one to add them.

If you change your mind about any item, click on it in the right-hand pane (which shows what’s on the device) and press ∫. This removes that particular selection from the device, but doesn’t delete it from your iTunes library. Note that switching back to auto-syncing later on might remove some of the media you’ve added. Note also that you can’t manually sync photos (though you can select folders of photos to sync) or data such as contacts, calendars and bookmarks.