Dina Bader: What happens to your iTunes library in macOS Catalina?

Apple killed iTunes, but your old music and other iTunes files should still be in macOS Catalina.

After 18 years, Apple is finally getting ready to kill off iTunes for good. While it's hard to imagine iTunes being no more, nixing the app makes a lot of sense with the addition of the dedicated apps for podcasts and video content like TV shows and movies — not to mention the rise in popularity of music streaming on Apple Music. With iTunes going away the question remains, where does all my music go?

While the developer beta for macOS Catalina is brand new and there's still some questions with some unclear answers, there are a few interesting tidbits about how your iTunes library will live on in macOS Catalina!

Apple occasionally offers updates to iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS as closed developer previews or public betas for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac (sadly, no public beta for the Apple Watch). While the betas contain new features, they also contain pre-release bugs that can prevent the normal use of your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, or Mac, and are not intended for everyday use on a primary device. That's why we strongly recommend staying away from developer previews unless you need them for software development, and using the public betas with caution. If you depend on your devices, wait for the final release.

Where's your iTunes library in macOS Catalina?

The good news is macOS Catalina should roll your entire iTunes library into the Music app. There you should be able to see any music you've purchased on iTunes, tracks you've ripped from CDs, MP3s you've imported into your library from outside sources, and any other files (like recordings) that you've had in your library. Nothing should be lost, just moved to a new centralized location in Music.

Syncing your iPhone or iPad to macOS Catalina

In prior versions of macOS, when you'd connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, iTunes would launch and you could check for updates, sync your information with your Mac, manage your data, and create backups. Instead of doing all this in iTunes, macOS Catalina instead moves this to Finder.

In Finder you'll see your iPhone or iPad pop up in the sidebar when you connect it to your Mac, and when you click on it, you'll see an interface very similar to the one that was in iTunes before. Here you can sync your iPhone or iPad, create backups, manage your data, and all of the other things you used to do through iTunes.

What happens to iTunes on Windows?

iTunes was so popular and big that many people did and still do use it with Windows, so it begs the question how iTunes shutting down in macOS would affect those users using the software on other platforms. According to Ars Technica, they asked Apple at WWDC and there's wasn't a ton of information.

"Apple says users of iTunes under Microsoft Windows will not see any changes. It won't be broken up into several apps; it will work just like it does now. However, Apple did not provide any clarification about what support will be like for future features."

It appears for right now, iTunes in Windows will remain unaffected, but there's no clear indication of how long iTunes will continue to be supported on other platforms, now that Apple has decided to kill off the program for its own operating system.