Column Browser and iTunes Remote Return To macOS

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. With the latest update to macOS Catalina Apple brings back two old features from iTunes to the Music app.

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So when we had the switch over from iTunes to the Music app with macOS Catalina there were two features that a lot of people missed. One was the Column Browser that allowed you to easily browse through a large music collection by genre, artist, album, etc. The other was the ability to use iTunes Remote, an app on the iPhone, to be able to control the music on your Mac. 

So to use Column Browser of course you need to be using the latest version of Catalina which is 10.15.2. This adds Column Browser into the Music app. Now when you go to the Music app you may not see the Column Browser right off. If I go to View it's not there. What's going on here? Well the deal is you need to be in Songs View in order to use Column Browser. So switch to Songs on the left. Then under View you'll see Column Browser appear. Notice it has a bunch of different options but you can change them once you have the Column Browser visible. To turn it on you can use this or Command B to easily bring it up and remove.

Here's what it looks like by default. There's three columns. Genres, Artists, and Albums. The top of each column is All. So by having All, All, and All you're just seeing all of your songs. You can narrow things down by choosing a Genre and then you'll only see the artists that have songs that are in the genre. Artists could have songs in multiple genres and they would appear in multiple places but you're only going to see the songs that fit this genre here. Then you can choose the specific artist and then it will narrow it down and you'll just see the Albums over here. If there are more than one album you can choose the album and it would only show the songs from that one album. So you can continue to narrow things down very easily.

You could use the arrow keys, so I could go to the left here and left again and then arrow down and then go through all of the different genres. Once I've selected one I can go to the right and then I can go down this list as well and I can go to the right again. So you can navigate the entire thing using just the arrow keys. You can also use letters. So, for instance, I'll select an artist here on the left and I'll type a letter. I'll just type one letter here and it will jump to the beginning of that letter here in the list. I can also type multiple letters very quickly to jump to a specific artist. So, for instance, if I just hit b I'll end up here. But if I start typing beat you can see I jump right to that artist. That works in any column. You just have the item selected and then start tapping away and it will jump to it.

Now you can change which columns are here by going to View, Column Browser and then you can add or remove them here. For instance you may want to get rid of Genres and just have Artists and Albums there. You can also add other ones here like Composers and Groupings and you can choose whether or not you Group Compilations together or Use Album Artist. These are things that are in the metadata for the song. So I'm going to do Command I here on a song and you can see here, for instance, there is Grouping, there's Album Artist. So if you're using those fields then you can just recognize them or not in the Column Browser.

You can resize the Column Browser by grabbing the line here at the bottom and dragging it down. But you can't resize the columns themselves. They're just going to split evenly in this space. What you see below the Column Browser is the basic Songs View. So everything here is the same. You have Columns. You can sort by column by clicking on it. Then you can also go and decide which columns are there by going to View and then Show View Options. Then you have checkboxes here. This was all here before in Songs View but it's important to note that you still have all that even if you're using the Column Browser.

So another old feature from iTunes added into the Music app with this update is the ability to use iTunes Remote with your iPhone. This is an app that you get from the App Store. It's from Apple. Make sure you get the official one. Search for iTunes Remote. Then once you've downloaded it you can run it and you should see the name of your iTunes Library show up. Your Mac and your iPhone should be on the same WiFi network. I found that I don't need to have Home Sharing turned on but it may help if you're having trouble connecting. Once you've got it here you should be able to Select it and now you should see everything in your Library. You should be able to tell your Mac to play something. 

So let's go in here and let's play a song. We should see it change on the Mac. There it goes that song is now playing on the Mac. So it allows you to basically to control your Mac from your iPhone or other iOS device. It's more than just picking a song and playing it. You can also see the Up Next list here. You can Edit it. You can Add. See your History. You can also go in and browse through your entire collection. This should work regardless of whether you are using Apple Music or you just have your Library there on your Mac. Again you may need to turn on Home Sharing in some cases but with my setup using Apple Music I didn't have to. It just appeared there and I'm able to control it from my iPhone.

You can also do some other things with iTunes Remote. For instance you can Edit Playlist. Now if you have Apple Music then it's kind of redundant. You would just edit the playlist in the Music App. But if you don't this could be really useful. For those who have their Macs hooked up to a home sound system or maybe they like to have their Mac in the corner at a party just playing music it's great to be able to control your music again using the iPhone.