Calculating playlist sizes

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Calculating playlist sizes

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Q: After searching for an hour or so, I can’t seem to find out how to PREVIEW the amount of space required by selected playlists that I want to transfer to my iPod. iTunes 8 only looks at available space AFTER I try to sync, at which point it tells me that I do not have enough space and refuses to sync. Is there a way I can find out how much space my selected playlists are going to take up before I try to sync my iPod? Any help would be appreciated!

- Chris

A: iTunes will show you total size of items in a given selection at the bottom of the iTunes window, so if you select a specific playlist, the total size of the items in that particular playlist is shown.

To add up the size of several playlists, simply use a folder in iTunes to group them together into a single folder. You can do this by selecting File, New Playlist Folder from the iTunes menu, and then dragging the playlists into that folder.

Once all the playlists are grouped together, selecting the top-level folder will show an aggregate listing of all of the tracks contained in all of the playlists within that folder, with a summary of the total size of all of the displayed items at the bottom of the iTunes window.

Note that this total size will only sum up unique items, so if you have the same song in multiple playlists, it is only counted once, which will yield more accurate results than simply adding each of the individual playlist sizes together.

As an added bonus, once you’ve grouped your playlists into a single folder, you may find it much easier to manage those playlists for synchronization to your iPod, as you can simply select the entire folder for synchronization.

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