beaTunes News

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

beaTunes Dev Version for Apple's new Music App

As you have probably heard by now, Apple has decided to split up iTunes for macOS 10.15 into separate apps for music, TV, podcasts etc. What you might not have heard is that Apple apparently decided to remove the XML library dump, known as iTunes Library.xml. Both changes require some adjustments to how beaTunes works.

I believe that I have addressed most, if not all, apparent issues and would like to offer a development snapshot to all the brave souls who took the plunge and already upgraded to macOS 10.15/Catalina. Since there are some substantial changes under the hood, the new version will get a new minor version number, i.e., the final version will be called v5.2. As per the long-standing beaTunes update pricing policy, minor version updates are always free. Catalina compatibility is not the only thing addressed in v5.2, there are also some database layout changes and the capability to drop all fingerprints from the database to free some disk space.

Always Backup!

Because 5.2 changes the internal database, you cannot simply downgrade back to 5.1.x. So if you want to take 5.2 for a spin, please backup your database before you do.

Here's the macOS download link: beaTunes-5-2-0-SNAPSHOT.dmg

Please let me know via the support forum, how well this snapshot works for you.

Thank you!

PS: Should you encounter application crashes, please upload your crash logs upon application restart. You should be prompted for this.

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Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Update: beaTunes 5.1.14

This update fixes a couple of issues, most notably a potential stack overflow on Windows. To counter issues with the Amazon integration, some error messages have been revised to be more precise and browser-based alternatives have been enabled to view Amazon charts. I'm aware, these are certainly not ideal solutions, but for the time being the appropriate step.

On another front, Apple has apparently decided to drop the automatic export of the iTunes Library.xml file from their macOS 10.15 iTunes incarnation, dubbed Music.app. This is an issue as beaTunes still relies on the file. I'm actively working on resolving this and am confident there will be a solution before macOS 10.15 is released to end-users.

As always, you can download the new version from the download section of the website.

Changes in 5.1.14

  • Fixed potential stack overflow on Windows (MediaKind).
  • Provided browser-based fallback for failing Amazon charts.

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