If you’re a user of Apple iTunes who experiences a problem where you cannot rename anything about your music including “Song Name”, “Artist”, or “Album”, you may have a problem where your music files are set to “Read Only”. You will need to make them writable with these steps.
- Open “iTunes“.
- Have a look under “Edit” > “Preferences” (Windows)/”iTunes” > “Preferences” (MacOS).
- Select the “Advanced” tab.
- Note the “iTunes Media folder location“.
- Close iTunes and do one of the following based on your operating system.
Windows
- Right-click the “Start” button, then select “File Explorer“.
- Navigate to the location for your “iTunes Media folder location” you gathered in step 4.
- Right-click the “Music” folder, then choose “Properties“.
- Deselect the “Read Only” box, then select “OK“.
- “Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files” should be selected. Select “OK“.
- Wait until the attributes are applied to your files.
MacOS
- Navigate to the location for your “iTunes Media folder location” you gathered in step 4.
- Click the “Music” folder to highlight it.
- Select “File” > “Get Info“.
- Expand the “Sharing & Permissions” tree.
- Select the “Lock” icon. You may be prompted for credentials for an administrator account.
- Set your account or “Everyone” to “Read & Write“.
- Open iTunes and see if you can modify your music files now.
FAQ
I followed the Windows steps, but “Read Only” gets re-checked again. Why does this happen?
You may have to apply security permissions to the folder as well. Use these steps:
- Right-click the “Start” button, then select “File Explorer“.
- Right-click the location for your “iTunes Media” folder located at the place you gathered in step 4.
- Select “Properties” > “Security” > “Advanced” > “Change Permissions…“.
- Double-click your account and check “Full Control. Do the same for the “SYSTEM” group.
- Check the “Replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object“.
- Select “OK“, then “OK” again.
- Now follow steps 1 through 6 again.
Note: If permissions are grayed out, select “Disable inheritance“, then choose “Convert inherited permissions into explicit permissions on this object“.
Lawson says
Thanks for providing the info, Mitch. Sadly, none of this works for me. I followed all of the steps multiple times and also took the advice of commenters. Is it possibly the issue that my music files are on an external hard drive?
XyKOPAT says
Thanks you’re my hero!
Jasper 12 says
Thank you for your explanation on how to add artwork to iTunes. It was so simple due to you.
Anya says
Thank you sooooo much. This was a life saver.
Ben says
Thank you very much 👍🏻
Rachel says
After searching around in frustration, I found this page and it finally fixed the problem. I still dislike the new iTunes, though. :) But thanks so much for your help!
Louisa says
Followed all the steps but can’t deselect “read only” because it’s not an option. Early iTunes was so much better. Fix it.
Vampire says
I do not let iTunes organize folders as you have no control over the folder layout and quite frankly it makes a mess of things. It is contrary to the way everything else organizes it and if you use other players, the organization it uses does not play nice.
I found that my problem was limited to using the “Recently Added” view. In Album view, it works fine.