Maria Speaks Episode 33: Managing iTunes Downloads

Transcript:

Although iTunes doesn’t need an Internet connection to work, its real strength lies in its ability to get new content from the iTunes Music Store: songs, music videos, television shows, movies, and, of course, podcasts. You interact with iTunes to choose the content you want to buy or subscribe to and iTunes downloads that content to your computer. You can then update your iPod to add the new content.

One of the new features in iTunes 7 is the ability to manage downloads. This is especially useful when you subscribe to podcasts and don’t update as frequently as you should. Or if you’re waiting for multiple downloads and want one of them to finish up first.

In this article, I’ll provide some tips and tricks for using the Downloads window to manage your iTunes downloads. Although I’ll concentrate on using this feature for podcasts, most of what I cover applies to all of your iTunes downloads.

Getting Podcast Files

When you subscribe to a podcast, iTunes does several things. First, it adds the podcast to the iTunes Podcasts window (Figure 1). Next, it checks to see what episodes are available and it lists them in the podcast window. Then, depending on how iTunes Preferences are set, it begins downloading the most recent episode.

Figure 1: The Podcasts window with a newly subscribed podcast.

Unless preferences are set otherwise, iTunes won’t download all of the available podcast episodes for a newly subscribed podcast. Instead, it’ll list the available episodes with a Get button beside each name. You can’t listen to an episode until you “get” or download it. You can manually start a download by clicking the Get button beside the episode you want. That changes the episode name from gray to black and displays an orange animated icon that indicates it’s being downloaded or a gray icon that indicates it has been added to the download queue. Figure 2 shows an example.

Figure 2: Five items set up to download; three in progress.

Managing Downloads

iTunes can download up to three items (podcast episodes, songs, movies, etc.) at a time. You know when iTunes is downloading content because the Downloads item appears in the Source list under Store. The number of items in the download queue appear beside it and, if downloads are in progress, an animated icon appears beside the count. You can see all this in Figure 2.

Clicking the Downloads item in the source list displays the Downloads window (Figure 3). This windows shows the entire download queue and a progress bar for each item being downloaded. Items being downloaded appear in bold type. Items not being downloaded appear in normal type. When an item download is completed, the item disappears from the list and another item download begins.

Figure 3: The Downloads window with three items being downloaded and two waiting.

Suppose you have limited bandwidth and want to visit YouTube while iTunes is downloading content. You can pause one or more of the downloads in progress, thus freeing up download bandwidth so you can view YouTube videos without pauses or hesitations.

To pause one download, in the Downloads window, click the pause icon at the far right end of the row for the item you want to pause. The item turns to normal type and a resume icon appears beside it. If another item is waiting in the queue, that item begins to download (Figure 4).

Figure 4: When you pause an item, iTunes begins downloading the next item in the queue.

To pause all downloads, click the Pause All button in the bottom-right corner of the Downloads window. All items turn to normal type with a resume button beside them (Figure 5).

Figure 5: You can pause all items if you like.

You can probably figure out the rest. To resume a single download, click the resume button for that item. To resume all downloads, click the Resume All button at the bottom-right corner of the Downloads window. Keep in mind that only the top three items in the queue will resume downloading.

What’s neat about this is that when you resume a download, it resumes from the point at which it stopped. So you don’t have to start all over again. That saves lots of time and makes this feature very convenient.

You can also use this feature to change the order of downloads. Simply drag the item you want to download first to the top of the list (Figures 6 and 7). That gives that item the highest priority. You may need to Pause All and then Resume All downloads to restart the download process with your highest priority downloads to be completed first.

Figure 6: Drag an item to a new position in the queue.

Figure 7: When you release the mouse button, it moves into position.

To speed up the download of a high-priority file, move it to the top of the list, pause all downloads, and then start the download for just the first item on the list. iTunes will take advantage of all available bandwidth to download the file. Since it doesn’t need to share bandwidth with two other files, the download should (theoretically) take one third the amount of time.

If you pause one or more items, don’t forget to resume the download. If you don’t resume it, it’ll remain in the download queue until you do.

And if you change your mind about downloading an item, you can delete it from the queue. Simply select it and press Delete (Mac OS) or Backspace (Windows). To never download it, you must delete it from the Podcasts window (Figure 1) the same way.

Conclusion

As you can see, this new feature offers a lot of flexibility when downloading content from the Internet into iTunes. Play around with it and see how it can help you take control of your iTunes downloads.