I’ve read many articles that just recommend to let the “Determinign Gapless Playback” feature run overnight. This may work, but what if I don’t care that my songs have a short pause in between? In most cases, I’m running some random playlist of all my songs, or I just put it on shuffle – do I really need Gapless Playback? I think not.
So here is my solution*:
- Open iTunes
- Select all songs in your library – “Ctrl + A” on a PC – that little funny key on the Mac
- Right Click and select “Get Info” – It will warn you about editing all files
- You’ll get the following window
- Check the “Gapless Album” box and set it to “No”
* If you have tried this solution unsuccessfully, make sure that you have first stopped iTunes from Determining Gapless Playback as detailed on the next page of this post.
Update
See this post: Disabling iTunes Determining Gapless Playback
79 Responses
anon
November 24th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
1Really useful, thanks !
Ben
November 27th, 2006 at 3:46 am
2Thanku thanku thanku!!
‘Gapless playback blah blah’ principle; good idea. Practicality; pain in t’arse.
Hopefully I won’t have to re-boot my Mac each time I plug my ipod in now…
Neil J
November 27th, 2006 at 7:10 am
3Thank you sir. This has been tormenting me for weeks now! A very useful read thanks again.
Neil
Jsmore
November 27th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
4May i note that you may want to include that doing this will also turn “Skip when shuffling” and “Remember Playback Position” to off as well.
It’s no problem i just went through the audiobook, comedy album, etc categories afterwards and changed them back, but its something to keep in mind.
Thanks for the advice, helped me sort out my gapless playback problem!
Poolio
November 27th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
5Brilliant – I love you!
How many times has my PC ground to a hlat whenever I forget to stop that pesky Determine Gapless Playback Information function.
Poolio x
i.nconspicuo.us
November 27th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
6Hey, I appreciate the feedback!
Glad I could help a few of you out. Don’t forget to add links to this page from your blogs!
Juliette Perrot
November 28th, 2006 at 4:55 am
7Hi from Sitzerland,
Sorry for my poor English writing. I was fortunate enough to escape the mayhem of iTunes 7 and I’m still on a 6 version. But obviously, I’ll have to switch one day. May I ask, I thought that once you install V 7.x it automatically begin to look and modify your files. Will I be able to put “no” as stated BEFORE it begin reading ? I work in a radio and our collection has more than 45k VBR mp3’s on a 500Gb drive… so you can imagine our stress of switching to v7 !!
So, can we ctrl-A BEFORE it acts reading on the first place ? Thanks a lot ! Juliette Perrot. Geneva, Switzerland.
Arthur
November 28th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
8I just got my 2000t and all of my songs are skipping in iTunes, and I cant figure out why. If someone could help me out and tell me how to fix this I would really appreciate it because its driving me crazy. Thanks for the replys.
i.nconspicuo.us
November 29th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
9Juliette,
I’m not sure you’ll be able to stop it before it starts, however you should be able to interrupt it. I was able to stop the process by pressing the “x” in the upper status bar of iTunes while it was processing.
Hope the helps… and good luck!!!
Carlos
November 29th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
10veeeery useful thanks a lot!
Rachael H.
November 30th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
11The instructions at the top of this page saved my life and my sanity.
I couldn’t stop the gapless analysis except to quit. When I quit, I couldn’t transfer songs to my ipod. I was going beserk.
In five minutes, my mind, my life, and my computer are all mine again! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
BK
December 1st, 2006 at 2:36 pm
12How long does it take to rewrite all those tags? That would probably crash my computer as well. Another suggestion: Just click the ‘x’ in the iTunes progress bar when its trying to get em. That way, it may determine it for a few songs before you click it, but it wont slow you down after that.
I just refuse to rewrite all my mp3 id3 tags cause itunes wants to build its own crap information.
i.nconspicuo.us
December 1st, 2006 at 6:24 pm
13Don’t forget to digg this story if it helped you!
http://www.digg.com/software/iTunes_Determining_Gapless_Playback_Information
Lloyd Sommerer
December 3rd, 2006 at 10:06 pm
14Great information. iTunes was actually crashing on me on startups (There was just time to click the little (x) if I was quick, but I’m often not. Dugg it.
SeanLazer
December 12th, 2006 at 12:25 am
15I tried this but it didn’t work. As soon as I closed and reopened iTunes, it started trying to determine gapless playback information again. My music is coming from a network share and I wonder if that has something to do with it. Does anyone know why this is happening or if there’s another way around this?
Michelle
December 13th, 2006 at 9:45 am
16THANK YOU!!!
Michael I
December 18th, 2006 at 7:37 am
17Been driving me nuts! Thanks and now I can stop stressing about it!!!!
i.nconspicuo.us
December 18th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
18SeanLazer >
My music comes from a network drive as well. When iTunes starts going through your songs, press the X to stop it inside the window that tells you the progress. Since your songs are on a network, it could take iTunes awhile to respond and recognize that you told it to stop, but it should stop none-the-less. Once you’ve done this, select all your songs and remove them from the gapless album.
Good luck!
Claudio
December 21st, 2006 at 3:31 am
19Thanks for the post.
b
January 4th, 2007 at 11:15 am
20I’m having the exact same issue as SeanLazer. I set every song to Gapless album=no, restarted iTunes and away it went determining gapless info again…
yoyo
January 17th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
21ALLLL this time later it is still happening…no solution. I cant get the x cause it happens on song 10-11 etc. oh well. thanks apple!
Toto
January 24th, 2007 at 5:22 am
22Please, HELP! I have the same problem as the others: even though I check the flag No Gapless Album of my tracks, this silly f****** iTunes do the gapless analysis anyway, causing the crash of the program… Ctrl-Alt-Del and so on.
Furthermore, I have no time to press the X to interrupt the process!
The last solution I think about is to find an ancient version of iTunes (before version 7) so that this stupid option won’t break my nerves anymore.
I really need help ’cause I can’t transfer music on my iPod without provoking iTunes crash. Please
rsw
January 25th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
23Same problem as seanlazer and b
I’ve tried everything. Now I have to downgrade my itunes and figure out another way to get music onto my wife’s shuffle.
Oh well.
DaMan
February 8th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
24Wow! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Justin
February 27th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
25Its a great idea and all… but with 2000 songs, it takes a while and uses almost all of my bandwidth.
Thanks,
Justin
http://www.jdbeitz.com
http://www.gmail-lite.jdbeitz.com
http://www.techscantstopus.com
David
March 2nd, 2007 at 9:08 pm
26I’ve got 55000 MP3s on a NAS. Importing 1050 of them into ITunes brought my system to a halt becasue of all the crap that ITunes does (getting artwork, this gapless stupidity, etc.). I’ve managed to turn everything else off, and am now trying your solution. I did what you suggested, and it’s processing them about 2 seconds per song (while still processing the gapless stuff). Now it’s 2X ground to a halt!
Have you people ever heard of Winamp? Does everything that ITunes does, faster, better, more efficiently; none of the garbage. Oh, and IPod sucks, Sansa is much better.
Ali
March 4th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
27Thanks for your help. It’s great to be able to escape this annoying and time consumptive feature…
Stephen Brown
March 13th, 2007 at 7:46 am
28Hi people,
It’s bad!
I’ve the exactly same problem as detailed here: http://www.jasongraphix.com/archive/2006/12/gapless_playbac
But with 7000 songs to determine. Because my bloody 5G iPod crashed and needed to be restored, gutted! And my computer only just working again so needed to add them all back to itunes. Same as the link, even after i’ve clicked ‘NO’ to Gapless Album and its processed all the tunes, but nope when check ‘get info’ the ‘no’ box is unticked and when itunes opens again, bloody kills laptop trying to find gapless info. Even got crossfade on, but NO still don’t help.
Grr..!
Anyone know a solution??
Cheers
i.nconspicuo.us
March 13th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
29Hey, thanks for the digg!!! I appreciate the recognition!
N/A
March 16th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
30If you get that repeatedly on the same song or podcast, you may want to try identifying that song/podcast on your hard drive and deleting its overlying folder. This at least worked for me.
Good luck to everyone!
Gene Quagmire
March 21st, 2007 at 6:38 am
31It still doesn’t work for me. As soon as I’m done changing all the tags, it starts determining gapless playback information again and when i try it again the box is unchecked. Crossfade is on, but I don’t want that, either. What a horrible mess. WTG, Itunes.
Gene Quagmire
March 21st, 2007 at 6:39 am
32You must be very proud.
Didn’t they stop development on Winamp?
Steve Brown
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:53 am
33Does Apple know about this problem? Would they fix it? Or do they care?
Fucking stupid like, trying media monkey, not bad, but want Itunes back! But can’t deal with the hassle of it stuffing my comp up.
i.nconspicuo.us
March 22nd, 2007 at 5:01 pm
34Unfortunately, I think Apple sees this as a “Cool Feature”… which for most of us with large amounts of music, it is not.
Jen Gobeille
March 25th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
35This was a great tip…thank you! but I am still experiencing issues with gapless playback and my searches for help have been fruitless. I have over 9000+ songs and the relentless gapless playback crap hangs my iTunes on the same 28 or so songs. The only article I can find from apple states that I should try to “re-add all songs to my libary, make note of the ones that will not reload, and “avoid loading those…
Does anyone have a better idea for figuring this out? I am happy to reload the 28 songs, and other than sitting at my laptop for hours watching it, I do not know which of the 9000+ songs are the culprit. It would be nice it iTunes would just let me know…an export, or report perhaps?
Any ideas would be appreciated!
i.nconspicuo.us
March 26th, 2007 at 12:25 am
36So you’re unable to disable Gapless Playback on only 28 songs? But it works for the other 8,972?
That’s wierd, I haven’t had that problem yet. Any time I add new music to my library, I have to repeat the process, but other than that it seems to work fine as is.
Can anyone else help Jen out?
Lauren T
March 28th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
37Dang! Forgot to insert the URL for Songbird…
http://www.songbirdnest.com/
LeekMibles
March 29th, 2007 at 4:38 am
38Oh man! Thank you so much! Shit was driving me mad!
Stuart
March 30th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
39Hi
I got the new itunes & windows vista – so when i add file to itunes it took the whole day & when it finished there were only 1/3 of my mps. Then when i look in the windows file 1/2 my songs are gone, i can search them, but when i click to play them it says they are either moved deleted etc.
I hate itunes & vista, this shit is not user friendly..
please can any1 help me
i.nconspicuo.us
April 2nd, 2007 at 7:23 pm
40Wow, I have never heard of that happening. I’m running iTunes on Windows Vista and it seems to work fine (knock on wood). Have you downloaded the most recent version from apple.com?
krunch
April 10th, 2007 at 7:44 am
41I can’t believe I never noticed that little ‘x’ to cancel the process. Maybe it needs to be higher up or something so that it looks like a mini window? And shouldnt the default be off; I mean, I love gapless playback but any process that seems to just take over the computer should be relegated to a premeditated choice by the user.
Anyway thanks for the web page, this issue was driving me nuts.
i.nconspicuo.us
April 12th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
42Yeah, that’d be really nice if Apple would allow you to turn it off – is there anywhere on the Apple website to suggest features/functionality changes for their products and software?
Pepito The Enlarger
April 17th, 2007 at 5:29 am
43NICE! gapless playback, a function that no one ever wanted, which ruins you music collection and drives your customers half mad.
I love software that knows best, ‘i know, I’ll do it like this…’ Has anyone mentioned to Apple that you loose customers through stupid things like this? I wonder how many people haven’t found this advice. Thank you for the help, big love.
P
iPod Video 5G
April 17th, 2007 at 10:44 am
44This happened to me but i let it do its thing and when it was done MY MUSIC AND VIDEOS WERE F***ED UP THE VIDEOS ONLY PLAYED THE AUDIO AND THEY WERE MIXED IN WITH MY SONGS I WAS PISSED b/c I was going on a trip the next day and was gonna use my ipod to pass the time but NOOOO!!! Ituned decided to F*** me over and F*** up my songs and videos, I had to reload them all, now I’m afraid to add songs on my ipod now, THANKS ALOT APPLE, NO WONDER YOU SEE VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE OF PEOPLE SMASHING THEIR IPODS B/S YOU CANT MAKE A PRODUCT THAT DOESNT F*** PEOPLE OVER, TELL YA WHAT APPLE MAKE THE NEXT VERSION OF ITUNES WITH THE ABILITY TO DISABLE THE GAPLESS PLAYBACK SCAN
me too
April 26th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
45yep, me too. while i wouldn’t have expressed it quite like ipod video 5g, i did chuckle evilly when i read that. this feature, and the inability to disable it, suck. as soon as itunes launches, it freezes, so even if i have my mouse poised where i know that damn x will be, i don’t even get a piece of a second to turn it off. furthermore, it won’t force quit. further still, my whole computer freezes. all my apps. even if only word and firefox. booooooohssssss!!!
Stevejackswan
May 7th, 2007 at 3:34 am
46Thanks a lot. You’re a star!!!
Srijayanth
May 8th, 2007 at 2:31 am
47Hello,
I have the new 80g ipod video which won’t work with any itunes
Karl Reich
May 15th, 2007 at 9:27 am
48Thanks for your regular updates on this important topic. I’m coming back here from time to time to see if you (or a reader) has something new on the subject.
it’s so weird to have so few pages like yours about this insane feature, and ways to solve the problem.
I’ve got tons of songs and therefore I’m still on version 6.x
i.nconspicuo.us
May 15th, 2007 at 9:57 am
49Yeah, I still can’t believe that Apple hasn’t done anything to resolve this “issue”. Unfortunately, I think Apple sees Gapless Playback as more of a “feature” than an “issue” … I don’t know what it’s going to take to change their minds.
Does Apple have a trouble or support forum???
Seb Taylor
May 25th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
50Awesome, Awesome, Awesome:)
i was getting very p*ssed off at the ‘determining gapless playback’ interupting my syncing shenanigans.
thankyou for this solution.
you rule.
kusoja
May 29th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
51what about turning it on to all files? i mean, that’s the way cd-s work, there is no gap inserted between tracks when you play an original cd in a cd player… so it wouldn’t hurt, right? i’m just surprised no one pointed that out yet, so that makes me a bit uncertain. trying it out now.
Vic
June 4th, 2007 at 2:53 am
52OMFG what a relief ive been at this all night and NOBODY i mean NOBODY had an answer i dont even know how i got to this site. man some times Apple sucks. to not have a way out of this is phucked. Thank you a lot for helping me out.
Vic
June 4th, 2007 at 3:05 am
53i hope my last comment went here THANKS i was getting so pissed man this was a lllooonnnggg nite
juliana
June 20th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
54I tried to highlight all the songs and click “get info” and check the gapless album box when it’s set to ‘no’, and i click ok, and it processes it for all my songs…then after i’m done, nothing has happened! i go back to the “get info” screen and the box is unchecked again. please help?
Peter Nelson
June 27th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
55I didn’t work for me either. I make sure the dropdown is set to “No”; check the box and hit OK. A progress bar comes up showing all the files it’s editing. But when it’s done, if I go back in to edit them again nothing is changed! My changes aren’t sticking!
So when I restart iTunes it STILL says “determining gapless playback”!
How do I turn this #$@&*!! thing off?!
(and I can’t just let it run “overnight” – I have thousands of songs on a NAS – at the rate it processes them it would take DAYS and DAYS to finish)
Peter Nelson
June 27th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
56“I’m having the exact same issue as SeanLazer. I set every song to Gapless album=no, restarted iTunes and away it went determining gapless info again…”
Ditto. I think this idea of a gang edit to set gapless to NO (and checking the box) is an urban myth. It doesn’t work for me; it doesn’t work for lots pof people here, and all over the web people are saying it doesn’t work.
DanWhiteley
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:08 pm
57“Gapless Playback” crashes my PC into the floor. I have a 1.5 GHZ processor, is that the problem? It seems like alot of PC users are having this problem, do you think that Mac would help troubleshoot, I bought an ipod for christ sakes. I’m losing my mind.
drumthrasher109
July 5th, 2007 at 7:37 am
58Well since Mac’s suck ass don’t even bother doin that…
Try, when it says ‘Determining Gapless Playback Information’ in iTunes, immediately press the little X in that area to stop it, since it doesn’t really do anything.
Peter Nelson
July 5th, 2007 at 9:18 am
59I’ve tried this on Windows XP – it works, but only for CD’s you’re ripping fresh – it won’t help with MP3’s you already made . . .
Have iTunes rip the songs. Despite what you may have heard, the iTunes MP3 encoder isn’t that bad, at least at medium-high bitrates. I use 192 kbps, VBR, “highest quality” and I can’t hear any encoding artifacts or deficits WRT fancy-pants encoders like LAME.
If iTunes (7.x+) did the rip it doesn’t have to “determine gapless playback” every time it’s added to the library.
i.nconspicuo.us
July 6th, 2007 at 11:06 am
60Winamp is pretty old and played out… might as well just use Windows Media Player…
Disabling iTunes Determining Gapless Playback | i.nconspicuo.us
July 6th, 2007 at 11:13 am
61[...] back, I wrote this post: iTunes – Determining Gapless Playback Information and though it has worked for some people, I still get many complaints that it isn’t working [...]
i.nconspicuo.us
July 6th, 2007 at 11:18 am
62If you’re still having problems, check out this post:
http://i.nconspicuo.us/2007/07/06/disabling-itunes-determining-gapless-playback/
Let’s solve this problem for everyone!!!
Groumf
August 9th, 2007 at 1:29 am
63A good option would simply be to get rid of iTunes.
This is a list of 10 excellent alternatives http://ipodmanagers.blogspot.com/
Jeffen
August 19th, 2007 at 11:18 am
64Thanks, just seeing that there were people who hate this feature a tenth as much as I do helped me calm down.
What type of music programmers force a feature that cannot be successfully turned off and destroys the original intent of the creators (there is supposed to be a pause between songs on 90% of all albums ever made)?
Plus you can check of all the things you want in the ‘options’ and then they get undone immediately. This seems like such amateur incompetence.
If anyone finds a way of deleting this feature altogether please let us know.
P.S. “I found this page by searching “I hate gapless playback.”
http://musicruinedmylife.blogspot.com/
Stuart
October 5th, 2007 at 5:57 am
65just found this forum while looking for advice on this gapless playback problem- am still on iTunes v7.01, always refuse the update offers (but still get asked every time!). This problem only started recently, not sure why – it seemd to be freezing on one particular track (it’s only trying to get info on 29 of them) but I trashed that mp3 and it now freezes on a different file.
Worst of all, each crash actually corrupts my harddrive. I can do a safe boot and repair but that’s not not exactly ideal – will be checking out the iTunes alternatives for sure!
Paul
October 8th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
66Thanks! That’s saved me much frustration…
Katharine
October 21st, 2007 at 11:48 am
67I’ve only just upgraded to Tiger – prior to this I’ve had no trouble with iTunes and the gapless playback check. Suddenly when adding my music library to iTunes it balked — I’ve only got 3700 songs but it would stop somewhere around 381, assuring me that it was determining gapless playback. Ultimately it froze my system. I looked into alternatives (primarily Songbird) but Songbird sucks up so much CPU that I can’t run anything along with it.
My solution ultimately ended up being this: trash the Library files (but not the music), open iTunes and Add to Library one album at a time. It’s a supreme pain in the rear, and worse for those of you with a lot more music than me, but I’ve shut down iTunes and re-opened it and it hasn’t done the gapless playback check again (because one album at a time it’s already done the check).
With luck, the developers will be able to add an option to turn off the gapless playback check in future releases–surely that can’t be harder than coding the check in the first place.
Ryan
November 24th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
68I’ve had this problem, but it’s reached a much more serious stage. I hit the x enough times that iTunes opened up determining a damaged file and instantly crashed. I deleted said file, but it hasn’t done any good. As soon as I open iTunes, it’s completely unresponsive. Has anyone found a definitive solution yet?
David
January 27th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
69I applied the fix you suggested, and it works great! now I also know how to manually assign which albums to play gaplessly (is that a word?)! Hooray for i.nconspicuo.us, and hooray for Google (top of the list under “disable gapless playback itunes”)!
Bryan
March 9th, 2008 at 8:14 am
70Much appreciated! Hate this ‘feature’
Marc
May 10th, 2008 at 5:03 am
71Please where are the instructions for turning off gapless playing, I can’t find them on this site. I need Help itunes is the poorest piece of programming I’ve ever come across. This is my first Mac and i won’t be buying another one because itunes sucks so much. All I want to do is play my tunes but i tunes just freezes.
Thanks
ashley
October 13th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
72thank you SO much. i thought i had a virus and i kept downloading it again and again. it was so frustrating! this reallllly helped thank you so much!
linnea
March 29th, 2009 at 8:09 am
73when itunes “determined gapless playbackinfo” on my comp it deleted all my playlist, plus some songs in “my music” file. HOW DO I GET IT BACK??
Krys
June 20th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
74Thank you for this article!
I had always thought it was required to let it run, but waiting so many hours for my 30GB of music was getting tiring.
Not to mention the wait for it to sync with my crappy, out-of-date iPod!
Thanks for saving me a few hours (considering it’s on song.. two-thousand-something?)
It’s much appreciated!
sopgent
September 28th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
75Thank you for this, this was driving me crazy, I knew what it was for “Gapless Playback” but I have too many Albums for iTunes to “Determine” rather it needs it or not… whew, I was about to choke the #$%@ out of iTunes lol
Will
October 16th, 2009 at 3:11 am
76Thanks! I have 240 GB of music on an external HD and it was taking forever to do this gapless album information! Now I have switched it off I have control over iTunes once more! Now if only iTunes could work out a way of keeping playlists when moving music to an external HD then I would be happy!
J.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
77thank you so much. It could have been months before i noticed that little X in the corner.
Turning off "Determining Gapless Playback Information" | Forever iPhone
November 30th, 2009 at 6:49 am
78[...] Apple does not provide an option to turn this off in iTunes. Try the method suggested in the 2nd page of this post: iTunes – Determining Gapless Playback Information. [...]
Lara
January 1st, 2010 at 8:21 am
79Wow– appears this post is over 3 years old and the problem is still rampant. I finally ported all of my music (over 3000 tracks) over to iTunes after previously only using it to sync my iPod to particular albums. I was tired of trying to juggle two players which inevitably resulted in duplicated tracks, etc. Anyway, as soon as I brought all my tracks in, I’d boot up iTunes and it would freeze my desktop after about 20 seconds. Your suggestions solved the problem– thank you! Seems pretty stupid that this buggy “feature” is turned on by default, and turning it off is hardly straightforward.
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