iTunes 8: How to Remove Genre from Browser View in OS X

Contributed by davak

September 9, 2008

Tagged: Apple Mac

Many people do not use the genre setting in iTunes. The genre window therefore becomes annoying in the browser view. Here is how to disable or hide the genre column from iTunes.

Music often falls into more than one genre. People often classify songs differently. For these reasons and many more, the genre classification is frequently not used in iTunes. In the browser view, the genre column takes up a great deal of space. Here is how to remove it.

Before:

After:

1. Open Terminal
2. Enter this command and then hit Enter:

defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE

3. Close and reopen iTunes

Obviously, you can reverse these changes with the following command:

defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool TRUE

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Dustin

Thanks that was getting annoying and now it looks so much better.

mick

Thank you, thank you!

Mahatma_dj

genius! Honestly, does ANYONE actually use the genre thing/

Andy

Thank you! I've hated the genre screen so much that i haven't used iTunes in months.

I wonder why Apple put that window there with no easy way to remove it...

luke

thanks so much! why the hell did they remove the ability to hide/show genre in itunes 8?

Jak

Awesome - Thanks a bunch :)

guervo

Ditto, genre is Lame.

shawn

man that pisses me off
why would they take away ones ability to control that.
thanks for the tip.

danny g

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! ;)

music is for lovers

Thanks! So annoying that it's not just a checkbox...

tim

genius. been trying to get rid of the genre list.....it's ridiculous.
Thanks a million!!!!

Dan

Thanks!

Nick

Thanks a million

JIM

Thank you so much.

zacparker

Thanks a million!

Brian

Thank you SO MUCH.

Bakis

Thank a lot :-)

Jason Wilson

Very nice and thanks. You should offer more cool terminal scripts if you don't already.

Leo

This tip has saved my love of Macs. So incredibly lame that Genre is even included.

Thanks a million.

davak

My pleasure! Thanks for all the kind comments!

azazaz

thanks man, genre bugs the hellhounds out of me.

great tip

nerrrrrrrrrrds!

Paul

Thanks for the usefull tip

Tony

Thank you for the fix, i could not for the life of my figure out how to remove the genre bar.

Anonymous

Any idea how to disable the "create file names with track number". I find this really annoying and it is now removed from iTunes 8 as a preference. I tried adding "defaults write com.apple.itunes create-file-names-with-track-number -bool FALSE" but that did not work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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iTunes 8: How to Remove Genre from Browser View in OS X

Many people do not use the genre setting in iTunes. The genre window therefore becomes annoying in the browser view. Here is how to disable or hide the genre column from iTunes.

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