10 Alternatives to iTunes for managing your iPod
July 8th, 2007 by Ross McKillop |
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This overview details the features (with screenshots) of 10 different programs other than iTunes to manage your iPod. Tutorials are included for every program, and they’re all either free or Open Source.
If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been writing so many “How to use XYZ to manage your iPod” tutorials lately, now you know why.
| Name | Supported Platforms |
| Amarok |  |
| Banshee | |
| Floola |   |
| gtkpod | |
| MediaMonkey | |
| Rhythmbox | |
| SharePod | |
| Songbird | |
| Winamp | |
| YamiPod | |
Amarok
Homepage: http://amarok.kde.org/
About: Amarok includes the following features: Album cover detection and downloads, lyrics support, wikipedia integration, contextual information (a quick view on your currently played music, and suggest similar track which you might like), statistics, Last.fm integration, multiple media devices support (Apple iPod, iRiver iFP and T players, Creative Zen and Nomad players, Generic USB players, Generic MTP players). Amarok is available as a pre-compiled binary for many Linux distributions, and its source is available for those of you who prefer compile your own programs.
Tutorials: How to use Amarok to manage your iPod in Ubuntu
How to install Amarok in Ubuntu (and get it to play MP3s)
Screenshots:
 configure iPod |
 iPod contents list |
 transfer queue |
 transfer to iPod |
Banshee
Homepage: http://banshee-project.org/Main_Page
About: Banshee includes the following features: Rips music, burn CDs, share your music, displays cover art, tons of plugins, controllable via keyboard shortcuts, smart playlists and the ability to rate your music. Banshee is available as a pre-compiled binary for many Linux distributions, and its source is available for those of you who prefer compile your own programs.
Tutorial: How to use Banshee to manage your iPod in Ubuntu
Screenshots:
 main Banshee window |
 highlight files |
 sync to iPod |
 sync in progress |
Floola
Homepage: http://www.floola.com/modules/wiwimod/
About: Floola includes the following features: Cross platform (works on any Windows (98 and above), any Mac and any linux distribution with GTK installed), Portable (put the application on iPod and launch it on any PC), add and extract songs to and from your iPod, integrated with Last.fm, add artwork to your songs easily, lyric support even on older iPods (3G and above), Videos can be added to iPod, Growl support (Mac only),
Tutorials: Floola installation FAQs
Notes: Floola was the only of the 10 iTunes alternatives that I couldn’t personally test. Floola (at this time) requires that iTunes 7.3 has never touched your iPod (works with iTunes 7.2 and lower), and sadly 7.3 is the version of iTunes that’s on all of my computers. Update: floola now works w/ iTunes 7.3.1. But I can’t test it right away as I no longer have direct access to an iPod. But when I do, I’ll update this post accordingly.
Screencast:
gtkpod
Homepage: http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html
About: gtkpod is a platform independent Graphical User Interface for Apple’s iPod using GTK2. It supports the first to fifth Generation including the iPod mini, iPod Photo, iPod Shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod Video. gtkpod includes the following features: Read your existing iTunesDB, add MP3, WAV, M4A (non-protected AAC), M4B (audio book), podcasts, and various video files, view, add and modify cover art, sync directories, detect duplicates when adding songs, and much more.
Tutorial: How to use gtkpod to manage your iPod in Ubuntu
Screenshots:
 main gtkpod window |
 adding files with gtkpod |
MediaMonkey
Homepage: http://www.mediamonkey.com
About: MediaMonkey (free version) includes the following features: Party Mode/Auto-DJ, CD Ripper, audio converter, auto-renamer, album-art lookup, reports and statistics, iPod and MP3 Player support.
Tutorial: How to use MediaMonkey to manage your iPod
Screenshots:
 MediaMonkey artist view |
 transferring to iPod |
 tracks on iPod |
 safely eject iPod |
Rhythmbox
Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/
About: Rhythmbox is an integrated music management application, originally inspired by Apple’s iTunes. It is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop, and based on the powerful GStreamer media framework. Rhythmbox includes the following features: an easy to use music browser, searching and sorting, comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer, Internet Radio support and Playlists.
Tutorial: How to manage your iPod using Rhythmbox in Ubuntu
Screenshots:
 Rhythmbox library |
 iPod library in Rhythmbox |
SharePod
Homepage: http://www.sturm.net.nz/
About: SharePod includes the following features: loads directly on to your iPod - no software to install, automatically finds an iPod attached to a PC, read/write track properties, remove tracks from an iPod, add/remove playlists on an iPod, copy tracks from an iPod to PC with customized output filename formats, integrated iPod backup & restore - tell SharePodLib where to store backups and how many to store, eject iPod from PC. Requires the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework.
Tutorial: How to use SharePod to copy files to and from your iPod in Windows
Screenshots:
 main SharePod window |
 tracks loaded to iPod |
Songbird
Homepage: http://www.songbirdnest.com/
About: Songbird is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins feathers. Like Firefox, it is built from Mozilla, cross-platform and open source. Songbird includes the following features: Plays MP3/AAC/OGG/FLAC/WMA and more, Multi-Language Support, Integrated Web Search, Smart Mixes, Play In Place (Songbird plays MP3s without leaving the page) and Add-ons (plugins).
Tutorials: How to use Songbird to manage your iPod
An Introduction to Songbird
Screenshots:
 default iPod support |
 Songbird iPod view |
Winamp
Homepage: http://www.winamp.com
About: Winamp includes the following features: frankly there are too many to list, so visit their features page. It does pretty much anything you can think of. But I don’t think Winamp supports cover-art - unless there’s a plugin for it, which there probably is. Winamp has been my default media player in Windows since 1997 (it finally replaced Winplay3). As a completely unrelated but ‘fun’ side note, the very first version of ICY for Linux (now known as SHOUTcast, the streaming audio software) was compiled on my computer because Justin didn’t have a Linux machine at the time.
Tutorial: How to use Winamp to manage your iPod
Screenshots:
 portable MP3 players in Winamp |
 iPod view |
 send files to iPod in Winamp |
YamiPod
Homepage: http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/
About: YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. YamiPod includes the following features: works with iTunes 7.3 (if you use the beta version of YamiPod), it’s stand alone program - no installation is required, your iPod is automatically recognized, mp3 and AAC files can be copied to/from iPod, playlist support, auto-download new versions, built in music player, News RSS and podcasts to iPod upload, multiple iPods support
and Last.fm support.
Tutorial: How to use YamiPod to update your iPod in OS X or Windows
Screenshots:
 main YamiPod window |
 YamiPod with more tracks |
74 Responses to “10 Alternatives to iTunes for managing your iPod”
By Jason on Jul 9, 2007 | Reply
What about Ephpod?
By mortimer on Jul 9, 2007 | Reply
Great list, it’s a shame there aren’t much solutions for OSX.
I think you should say that Amarok runs on OS X, personally I use it everyday without problems and it can be compiled automatically with Fink, no messing around, quite “simple”:
http://6v8.gamboni.org/-Amarok-with-OS-X-.html
By Noah on Jul 9, 2007 | Reply
One word:
ROCKBOX
By Ross McKillop on Jul 9, 2007 | Reply
Noah -
Actually I really did want to include Rockbox but the only iPod I have access to is an iShuffle, which isn’t supported by RB. With any luck when my roommate comes back from his vacation he’ll let me install Rockbox on his and I’ll do some kind of tutorial/overview on it.
By John Ralston on Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
What is the song playing during the Floola screencast?
By Tom C on Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
Umm, how the hell did ml_ipod not make this list? Winamp’s iPod support is the product of ml_ipod’s programmer being bought out by Nullsoft.
Currently ml_ipod has better support, more features (including video and cover art), better browsing, native transcoding, and a host of other nicer things than Winamp’s stock iPod plugin.
And it’s open source.
http://mlipod.sourceforge.net/
By B on Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
I support Noah I installed Rockbox on my Nano over a year ago and have never looked back. Real MP3 players support drag and drop of files.
By hillary on Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
Anapod from Red Chair. great software, though a bit of a hassle to import a very large library.
By subcorpus on Jul 12, 2007 | Reply
hello …
yeah … some times its really messy to use iTunes to manage one’s iPod …
was wondering if they had any alternatives for macOS X …
now that you’ve listed a few … will check them out …
great article … thanks for sharing …
By Julian Bond on Jul 12, 2007 | Reply
Big thumbs up for Sharepod. It’s ideal for people who just want to manually move tracks from PC to iPod and back again. It makes an iPod as easy to copy files as a plain old USB PMP or a PFS PMP. And zero install with Sharepod on the iPod Disk area is the icing on the cake. The one catch is when your iPod ends up in Sync mode after being removed without being ejected. You need iTunes to clear the flag.
Maybe I’m weird (probably) but I don’t want sync. I just want to drag and drop individual directories and files. The classic problem is Y Gb of music on your PC and only X Gb available on your iPod. It’s horribly laborious to define 300 sync folders out of your 500 on the PC in almost every ipod management software. And especially in iTunes.
Big thumbs up also for Winamp. Such a shame there isn’t an exact clone of Winamp 5 Pro on Linux. Or alternatively that Winamp 5 Pro ran under WINE. Amarok is neat but it’s persistently buggy. And after 10 years of Winamp some of the features seem odd and counter intuitive.
By engtech @ internet duct tape on Jul 16, 2007 | Reply
And you can even use your iPod to sync your recently played music lists to Facebook
By Mike on Aug 8, 2007 | Reply
Most of the programs here are for Linux only or at least originally made for Linux.
For a Windows list, check this http://ipodmanagers.blogspot.com/ out.
By David Cumps on Aug 10, 2007 | Reply
You forgot another nice tool, called reTune, which also allows you to manage your iPod through Windows Explorer.
Pretty basic even, it just syncs the content on your iPod to Apple’s gibberish iTunesDB format
I just finished writing a small article about how to use it: http://blog.cumps.be/manage-ipod-through-windows-explorer/
By mehmet on Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
I have tried many of these softwares including anapod (not mensioned here) but many of them as some short comings especialy on video support.
Now I am using floola everyday with my ipod. and it is very stable and easier to use than itunes. They are updating frequently to support new itunes versions and adding new features.
For example on 1.5 version now they have added builtin transconverting different file types for i pod. Now you can add youtube videos to your ipod with one click
By Ross McKillop on Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
mehmet -
floola looked great, I hope to test it (soon) now that it supports iTunes 7.3.1.
By Gonza on Aug 27, 2007 | Reply
Do anyone know if these programs work with a motorola v3i cellphone that has iTunes player?
By JC on Oct 29, 2007 | Reply
Floola is terrible. Been trying it for a couple of months now and it’s just plain broken. Good for getting out your MP3’s out of the iPod, but for everything else you’re better off with iTunes.
By Anthony on Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
Vpod is another alternative…A very skeleton interface but gets the job done with no frills.
By Agro on Nov 11, 2007 | Reply
iTunes is the only ipod interface that allows me to adjust the start and stop times for songs. Or is there another ?
This is the only function I need itunes for otherwise I would love to use another.
By R on Nov 26, 2007 | Reply
Is there one where you could pictures??
By caleb on Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
I used Floola to load music at work for a while. It has more bugs than a flophouse apartment. Incredibly unstable; constantly displaying error messages (some of which made no sense); most irritating, however, is the fact that the order of the tracks displayed by the program is NOT the order of the tracks on the iPod. Every time I updated my iPod and reordered the tracks, they would inevitably be in a random order with no resemblance to the one I’d chosen. Terrible software.
By Mike on Dec 5, 2007 | Reply
You forgot the best program for ipod - PoddoX.
By Renato on Apr 22, 2008 | Reply
Well, I’m really into finding alternative ways of adding music into an Ipod…
But I am really concerned about something:
At first, I have tried the Floola. I could add songs and I really liked the program. It seems very useful and complete. Nevertheless, while using some options, Ive noticed that MOST OF MY ARTWORK WERE SITCHED. I was hearing U2 and seeing Madonna’s artwork. I was really freak out. Imediatly then, Ive tried Yamipod, which worked fine, and I didnt notice any artwork damage to my Ipod. A few days later… my Ipod started to work unproperly. My playlists were not working fine, and I coulnd simply select a song and play it. It was working, but seemingly with remarkable malfunctioning.
Then I wanna know if something like that has ever happenned to any of you. I’m not near the main Itunes from which I sync my music and thus I need to use some of these alternative programs..
Glad for your help.
remobra_amigo(at)hotmail(dot)com