De-Genre is a script that re-assigns the Library tracks of selected Genres to another Genre so that the original—and consequentially un-assigned—Genres disappear from iTunes' Genre pop-up list.

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Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/

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I don't think that script removes the default iTunes genres, according the the information that accompanies the script. The key is to remove the default genres, not the user-added ones.

I've been longing for a way to remove the default "Electronic" from the list so that I don't have to constantly mouse the the end of the word and add an "a." I'll definitely be giving this hint a try.

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One other thing I noticed is that if you have songs that use the default categories (in my case classical) and you use my hint, then relaunch itunes, it may look like those songs remembered that they are classical... but really they forgot. What I mean is if you play one of them you might notice their genre goes blank. To fix that, just select all the songs in that genre, change to some other genre, then change to the desired genre by typing it in (as it wont be in the list). Basically you have to add Classical to your custom genre list before iTunes will remeber it again.

Sorry if thats confusing, but you should see what I mean as you twiddle.

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Instead of mousing to the end of the word, why not use CMD-right arrow?

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Rockin' good hint! :-)

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True, this script does not remove default Genres. I just mentioned it in case anyone was interested in tidying up their Genre list since it seemed relative to the original hint.

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Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/

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So yeah, I posted this hint after not being able to find anything that got rid of Apples default genres.

I've been trouble free for about a week. I have 6 genres, and I like it this way a lot!

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Alas, it ain't so simple. I looked at this file, and a few others in the same folder, but still I don't see any files which store a few of the genres I created over the years, genres I now can't seem to get rid of, like "Baroque - Realized Electronically" or "1059" [I can't recall why I made a genre called that].

Using Spotlight to search the contents [presumably, it's searching contentws] of that folder turns up nothing with "baroque" or "1059" in it, so I must assume those genres are stored elsewhere.

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Spotlight does not search a number of directories (or should I say it only searches a number of directories). In particular, it generaly does not look at system files or directories and almost certainly not within .app packages.

There have been instructions at to how force Spotlight to look at stuff it would normally not look at but even after following them I had the strong impression that Spotlight would not search my system files (maybe it cannot be done, or the instruction were incomplete, or I did not apply them correctly, or subsequent updates broke things again).

What I had used was an app named Spotlightindexer.app, which right now even refuses to start (it predates my Intel machine, which could be the reason).

If you can figure out how to use grep on multiple files (or better whole directories), you should be able to find your genres.


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Sure, I could make a research project out of finding out why Spotlight doesn't find the file .... or one of you who already found the file could just tell me where you found it. :)

BTW, I saw the tip about changing the genre "1059" in iTunes. Sure, we can do that .... but if we want to remove more than one or two genres, not reassign them, it gets cumbersome with the iTunes interface. Considered versus editing a text file, I'd rather edit the text file.


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Can't you get rid of your own custom genres by selecting all the songs that are set to a particular genre and then changing all their genres to something else?

In other words, if no songs are classified as 1059, then doesn't 1059 go away all by itself automatically?

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No, changing all the tracks of a genre to a different genre doesn't delete the genre. I (also) made a apple script to tame my genres, put the genre pull down is just as bad as ever. For example , I still have a genre called
"Downtempo Lounge Spy" , (perhaps from a radio channel), and I can prove it by making a smart playlist that matches that genre, which is empty.
I tried the hint, and it didn't help my list at all, in the process of putting the copy of the file I made back, I noticed the file time stamp was back in '05 and thats its root:admin; so any added genres must be in some other file.

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I tried looking for the 'hidden genres' by first using SpotlightIndexer. But guess what? no luck.

So, I figure that the genres are hidden someplace; the original hint that started this thread, suggesting commenting them out, just does not work.

Michael

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That is a HUGE list of genres in localizable.strings and its interesting that many of them never show up in iTunes.. in particular.. they never auto-complete when you start typing them. Wonder what there purpose is if you can't really auto-complete them. Seems like that would be the purpose of such a list of strings in the app.

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What's interesting to me is that I see genres in iTunes that are not in the file described in this hint. I don't know how to search for other files that might have these mystery genres in them, since Spotlight won't do it and what I need is to search the contents of files....

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to look in the itunes prefs file or the library info file would be my first instinct. to search contents that spotlight won't, use Easyfind.

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Your directions are very easy to follow. However, I don't know if it's because I don't have hacker skills, my Mac is messed up, or I'm just plain dumb, but I can't figure out how to do it.

I can follow you up to "Applications » iTunes.app" and then I'm lost. When I click on iTunes.app all it does is open iTunes. I also tried to search "Resources", "English.lproj", and "Localizable.strings" but the only files that popped up were in Microsoft Office folders. Is there a program other than Finder I'm supposed to be using?

If you can help me with the "iTunes.app » Contents" portion, I'm sure I can handle the rest. Thanks!

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YES, please address this issue. I don't consider myself completely ignorant, but I cannot navigate past applications/itunes.app

I've used spotlight to search for the "English.Iproj" file, but I cannot find one that is from itunes...

Is something missing from my computer's OS? Did I delete something?

Where am I going wrong here?

Cheers
JM

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Right click iTunes and click show package contents - the author should have mentioned that, but, just like in real life, once you learn about something and have been doing it for a long time, it's easy to start taking it for granted.

Just a warning though: Keep in mind that this hint talks about a version of iTunes from three years ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work and/or had unexpected results.

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