My wife and I both use this nice new MacBook as our main computer. We have seperate accounts on the computer. However, we would like to have only 1 iTunes Library and 1 iPhoto Library for both user accounts. Is this possible? Is there a "best" way to go about doing this?
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2 Users Accounts but 1 iTunes and iPhoto Library?
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I would think that the best/easiest way to do this would be to house both libraries on an external drive and point the particular programs to it.
My sister wanted to do this, so here's what I set up for her:
If you're just starting out, move the "iTunes" folder in "~/ Music" to "Users/ Shared".
In your user account, create an "iTunes" folder shortcut in "~/ Music" that points to the one in "Users/ Shared". Do the same thing for all additional user accounts.
If you already both have separate libraries and you want to combine the music in each of your accounts, you'll have to choose one library as the one to move to "Users/ Shared", and then copy the others' files into what's now the source library.
If it all goes wrong when updating someday and you lose your music (though you shouldn't), don't blame me. She wanted a quick and easy fix to this problem, so that's what I did. And it seems to have worked well so far. But I'll probably get a hundred thousand follow-up posts telling me what a dumb idea it is. The only thing I see as a potential hang-up is if you're both logged into your accounts with iTunes running, and one of you is adding files to iTunes.
You can also share iTunes libraries using that function in iTunes. It's safer, I guess, but it requires both of you to be logged in and have iTunes launched.
If you're just starting out, move the "iTunes" folder in "~/ Music" to "Users/ Shared".
In your user account, create an "iTunes" folder shortcut in "~/ Music" that points to the one in "Users/ Shared". Do the same thing for all additional user accounts.
If you already both have separate libraries and you want to combine the music in each of your accounts, you'll have to choose one library as the one to move to "Users/ Shared", and then copy the others' files into what's now the source library.
If it all goes wrong when updating someday and you lose your music (though you shouldn't), don't blame me. She wanted a quick and easy fix to this problem, so that's what I did. And it seems to have worked well so far. But I'll probably get a hundred thousand follow-up posts telling me what a dumb idea it is. The only thing I see as a potential hang-up is if you're both logged into your accounts with iTunes running, and one of you is adding files to iTunes.
You can also share iTunes libraries using that function in iTunes. It's safer, I guess, but it requires both of you to be logged in and have iTunes launched.
You can do it either with an external hard drive or the /users/shared folder, but you MUST take a couple of additional steps. The basic reason for this is that, when different users modify the library, they will be modifying files with incompatible permissions (because they will each try to "own" the library files).
So, you have to take some additional steps described here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050904072808460&lsrc=osxh
So, you have to take some additional steps described here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050904072808460&lsrc=osxh
See, this is something I'd read about, but in practice I haven't seen it happen. -- though I fully expected it to. My sister's been using the "User/ Shared" scenario for about a year with her iTunes library, and she's had no problem with permissions. And she and her husband are even using Limewire (ugh!) on top of that with its auto-add to iTunes features.
Is it because they're both classed as admins?