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Apple Music: How to get a comprehensive list of all missing music files, without trying to play each and every one?

I had a severe hard drive crash, and my Apple Music library was on that drive. I bought a new external hard drive, and restored as many tracks as possible from the damaged drive, and from backups that I have.


However, there are still a significant number of music files that are missing, but I can only discover them by attempting to play each and every track (40,000+). The missing track icons will sometimes appear spontaneously, but I have no way to control when this happens.


As you can see, I need a better way to see which files are still missing, other than attempting to play each and every song manually. I need a way to force Apple Music to verify the presence of every music file. Is there some trick or technique to force Apple Music to verify the presence of every music track in my library without manually attempting to play every track?


Ideally, I would like to be able to repeat this search technique over and over, as the manual recovery process continues; I'm not going to be able to do this in one day, or even in one week, so I need to be able to rerun the check of the music library as I repair it over a period of weeks.


I want to see the entire list of my music library, with the circled exclamation mark icons flagging every track that could not be found, or that could not be opened for any reason.

Mac mini, macOS 15.1

Posted on Nov 21, 2024 8:28 PM

Reply
1 reply

Nov 22, 2024 1:15 PM in response to Sleazey

Lost & Found Playlists

Create a regular playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost matching only Music items and the rule Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist. (iTunes/Music should only add a track to a regular playlist when it can 'see' the file at the relevant location.)


Or see https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=mxlistmias.


tt2

Apple Music: How to get a comprehensive list of all missing music files, without trying to play each and every one?

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