iTunes De-Dupulator

>> Download iTunes De-Dupulator 1.0 <<

WARNING: Use this software at your own risk. I recommend backing up your iTunes library file before using this app just in case.  You have been warned!

This is a quick app I threw together this afternoon to help us remove duplicates from our iTunes library at the office.  We’ve all added our own music collection to the office machine and over time it’s become loaded with duplicates.

There’s already other de-dup scripts and applications for iTunes, however they didn’t quite work the way I wanted and so I decided to write one myself.  One thing I wanted was to be able to preview the detected duplicates before deleting them.  This app hunts through the library and adds all potential dups to a table where you can preview them and decide whether or not to delete them.

A feature that I like is being able to ignore certain tracks if they are not within the same album.  There are often legit duplicates of a song, however they appear on multiple albums.  For example a song appears on the artist’s album, but also on a compilation album or a sound track.  Even thought the track is a duplicate, I don’ t like removing them because I prefer to leave all the albums as-is.  iTunes doesn’t have a way to “link” the same song to more than one album, so until then I prefer to leave those dups alone.

Another feature I like is ignoring songs where the length is significantly different.  A lot of times the same song exists but one is an extended mix or a live version.  The option to ignore songs if they are greater than a certain number of seconds different in length helps to filter out those different versions.

F.A.Q

Q. Will this run in OSX?

A. No, however it is possible to open up the same iTunes library using both Windows and OSX.  You need to run Windows as a virtual machine (using Parallels, VMWare, Virtual Box, etc).  Start your virtual machine and open your OSX iTunes music library.  It will say “Updating Library” each time you open it on a different OS but it works fine.

Q. Do you plan to write a native OSX version?

A. No.  I wrote this for my own use and I needed it to run on Windows.  For OSX I recommend  Dupin by Doug Adams, the master of iTunes automation.

Q. What software license is this releases under?

A. The app is freeware with no restrictions on usage or distribution

Q. Will you release the source code?

A. As soon as someone offers to contribute a new feature I’ll create a OSS project.

Known Issues:

  • The app is minimally tested so use at your own risk.  I highly recommend backing up your iTunes library files just in case.  You have been warned!
  • You cannot move the app while it is analyzing the library.  This is because I was too lazy to write the app using threads.  Maybe I’ll look into it later.
  • The app is “always on top.”  I actually find this helpful to operate the iTunes control while going through dups.  Perhaps I’ll add an option in later.
  • After using the app, you may be prompted with a “scripting” warning when you close iTunes.  iTunes will warn you if it thinks another app is using it’s scripting interface.  You can ignore this.

Feel free to leave a reply with any comments or suggestions.