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.
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





Tony said on October 1, 2008
Thank you for the fix, i could not for the life of my figure out how to remove the genre bar.
Paul said on October 2, 2008
Thanks for the usefull tip
great tip said on October 8, 2008
nerrrrrrrrrrds!
azazaz said on October 8, 2008
thanks man, genre bugs the hellhounds out of me.
Leo said on October 12, 2008
This tip has saved my love of Macs. So incredibly lame that Genre is even included.
Thanks a million.
davak said on October 12, 2008
My pleasure! Thanks for all the kind comments!
Jason Wilson said on October 18, 2008
Very nice and thanks. You should offer more cool terminal scripts if you don’t already.
Bakis said on October 24, 2008
Thank a lot :-)
Brian said on November 16, 2008
Thank you SO MUCH.
Anonymous said on December 3, 2008
Thanks a million!
JIM said on December 8, 2008
Thank you so much.
Nick said on December 10, 2008
Thanks a million
Dan said on December 15, 2008
Thanks!
tim said on December 19, 2008
genius. been trying to get rid of the genre list…..it’s ridiculous.
Thanks a million!!!!
music is for lovers said on December 24, 2008
Thanks! So annoying that it’s not just a checkbox…
danny g said on January 6, 2009
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! ;)
shawn said on February 25, 2009
man that pisses me off
why would they take away ones ability to control that.
thanks for the tip.
Jak said on March 2, 2009
Awesome – Thanks a bunch :)
guervo said on March 7, 2009
Ditto, genre is Lame.
luke said on March 10, 2009
thanks so much! why the hell did they remove the ability to hide/show genre in itunes 8?
Andy said on March 30, 2009
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…
Mahatma_dj said on April 17, 2009
genius! Honestly, does ANYONE actually use the genre thing/
mick said on April 24, 2009
Thank you, thank you!
Dustin said on May 9, 2009
Thanks that was getting annoying and now it looks so much better.