iTunes 8: How to Remove Genre from Browser View in OS X
Posted by David Kirk in 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.
This tutorial is for older versions of iTunes. In versions of iTunes 10 and later it is much more simple to configure the browser (or column) view.
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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October 01, 2008 at 6:17 pm, Tony said:
Thank you for the fix, i could not for the life of my figure out how to remove the genre bar.
October 02, 2008 at 7:48 pm, Paul said:
Thanks for the usefull tip
October 08, 2008 at 4:19 pm, great tip said:
nerrrrrrrrrrds!
October 08, 2008 at 8:32 pm, azazaz said:
thanks man, genre bugs the hellhounds out of me.
October 12, 2008 at 2:43 am, Leo said:
This tip has saved my love of Macs. So incredibly lame that Genre is even included.
Thanks a million.
October 12, 2008 at 3:35 am, davak said:
My pleasure! Thanks for all the kind comments!
October 18, 2008 at 5:16 pm, Jason Wilson said:
Very nice and thanks. You should offer more cool terminal scripts if you don’t already.
October 24, 2008 at 11:27 am, Bakis said:
Thank a lot
November 16, 2008 at 10:09 am, Brian said:
Thank you SO MUCH.
December 03, 2008 at 10:37 pm, Anonymous said:
Thanks a million!
December 08, 2008 at 3:44 pm, JIM said:
Thank you so much.
December 10, 2008 at 12:56 pm, Nick said:
Thanks a million
December 15, 2008 at 6:05 pm, Dan said:
Thanks!
December 19, 2008 at 11:35 am, tim said:
genius. been trying to get rid of the genre list…..it’s ridiculous.
Thanks a million!!!!
December 24, 2008 at 5:15 pm, music is for lovers said:
Thanks! So annoying that it’s not just a checkbox…
January 06, 2009 at 10:23 pm, danny g said:
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!
February 25, 2009 at 4:01 pm, shawn said:
man that pisses me off
why would they take away ones ability to control that.
thanks for the tip.
March 02, 2009 at 1:28 am, Jak said:
Awesome – Thanks a bunch
March 07, 2009 at 11:07 am, guervo said:
Ditto, genre is Lame.
March 10, 2009 at 9:56 pm, luke said:
thanks so much! why the hell did they remove the ability to hide/show genre in itunes 8?
March 30, 2009 at 4:42 pm, Andy said:
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…
April 17, 2009 at 8:44 am, Mahatma_dj said:
genius! Honestly, does ANYONE actually use the genre thing/
April 24, 2009 at 9:59 pm, mick said:
Thank you, thank you!
May 09, 2009 at 4:11 pm, Dustin said:
Thanks that was getting annoying and now it looks so much better.
March 18, 2012 at 12:47 am, Howard said:
duhhh… sorry I’m such a dolt but in the directions above… What does “Open Terminal” mean? Where’s the Terminal?
March 20, 2012 at 5:43 am, David Kirk said:
@howard — If you’ll update to the latest iTunes, the whole process is much easier. I just crafted this new tech-recipe for you to see how to do it with the latest iTunes.
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/22653/itunes-10-remove-columns-from-browser-view/