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“.
Jackie says
Thanks so much for your help with this problem. You described the fix very clearly. And it worked!!