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“.
Chris Fox says
The only solution I’ve found is to kill iTunes and restart it. If I remove readonly attribute it might work for three files out of ten. This stinks.
It doesn’t stink as much as watching the memory disappear on my brand new iPad; iTunes calculates it as 9GB free, the iPad says it has about 100 MB free. And it keeps getting worse
Darryl A says
Thanks for the information. My iMac and iTunes are now fully functional; again…
Paula says
This is very helpful!
Although—the read-only continues to check itself after I apply the settings. I did everything listed here more than once, and it still doesn’t work…
Nujw says
Didn’t help me either. I have my music on an external hard drive and it kept turning back to read only.
Stephen Elmore says
This did not work for me. ITunes keeps changing the information back from what I entered
Samantha says
Thank you very much! Very clear instruction which is much appreciated :) Thanks again!
dorothy says
Artist shows up OK in iTunes, but does not display when saved on flash drive and played in car. What will correct this?
Nick Smith says
Thank you so much. Such a simple fix to a problem that has been driving me mad for some time!
Lex says
So nothing that was in this article or what anyone said in the comments worked. It took me putting the files on my iPod (yes, I still have one of the old 80gb iPods) then editing the files on my iPod adding the artist name and stuff.
Alina says
This was very helpful but what do I do if the settings reset every time I close the box after pressing apply.
Jackie says
Thanks so much for your help with this problem. You described the fix very clearly. And it worked!!