Open lgarron opened 2 years ago
I'm going to look for tools to decode the contents of
Music Library.musiclibrary
(Library.musicdb
in particular), we'll see how that goes.
First step:
https://github.com/rinsuki-lab/musicdb-format/tree/master/HexFiend_BinaryTemplates
- Trying to open the
.musiclibrary
package in a fresh user account result in this (note: in this screenshot, the current user account is the owner of the package and its contents, so write permissions shouldn't be the actual issue):
Okay, I tried this a few times and it finally worked.
Turns out that Finder was showing deceptive info about the file permissions, but I think that may have actually helped me. Specifically, I was able to get Music.app
to load the database long enough to take some screenshots and also run "Export > Playlist", although the .m3u8
export ended up truncated and corrupted.
Splitting this out from https://github.com/lgarron/first-world/issues/110#issuecomment-1140427233
It's still really easy to delete a playlist with no practical way to restore it.
I have lots of backups of my iTunes/
Music.app
library. I export the XML format once per month by hand. However, I'm currently trying to restore a particular playlist (infuriatingly deleted due to the issue that led me to finally file #110), and it's a mess.Using a backed-up
Music Library.musiclibrary
package:Even if my XML export were sufficiently up to date, there's no simple way to just re-import a particular playlist (although this would be feasible if I had just a particular playlist export). Reading the XML file by hand is a painful way to reconstruct the playlist, since playlist entries are stored using IDs. I've used tools to read the XML, but that sounds like a pretty onerous way to restore a single playlist.
Opening the package from Finder doesn't work.
Opening
Music.app
and pressing the Option key at startup does allow you to select a library file. However, it runs into this error:Signing out and/or deauthorizing
Music.app
does nothing to make that error go away. I think it's implying that you have to deauthorize all your device to roll back to a backup library, which sounds ludicrous.Trying to open the
.musiclibrary
package in a fresh user account result in this (note: in this screenshot, the current user account is the owner of the package and its contents, so write permissions shouldn't be the actual issue):Apple doesn't have documentation for this. The closest is https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201625, which:
iTunes Library.itl
,I'm going to look for tools to decode the contents of
Music Library.musiclibrary
(Library.musicdb
in particular), we'll see how that goes. If that succeeds, it's probably only another 2-3 hours to actually reconstruct the playlist. 🤷