I just went into my Windows 7 computer, installed iTunes (it wasn’t installed yet), loaded up the ‘genres.plist’ file and changed an entry for this test, and was easily able to save the file back.

Looking at the properties of the ‘genres.plist’ file, I see I am allowed to: Modify, Read & execute, Read, and Write to the file. That was the “Everyone” group. My “Group or user names:” list shows: Everyone, SYSTEM, Administrators (Dave-PC\Administrators), and Users (Dave-PC\Users). The only user that doesn’t have write access was the Users (Dave-PC\Users).

I can only guess that you don’t have Administrator access to your computer? If you do, then I am at a complete loss for why you are not allowed to save to that file. It’s really just a text file with a different extension.

Also, the genres.plist file is loaded by iTunes, but it isn’t kept open. The only time it’s opened is during launch. I was able to write to the file even though I was running iTunes. I suggest making sure iTunes isn’t running in case iTunes writes to the file when it is quit. You wouldn’t want an hours worth of work editing the file to be lost because iTunes writes to the file later.

Of course, I am making the assumption that you are running Windows 7 or Vista.

Thanks for the answer!

It’s one of the reasons I have given up on custom genre artwork for iTunes. Maybe someday, they will allow custom artwork for genre’s.

I tend to think it is a ‘bug’ since ‘user crated genres names’ are pushed to the iPad and not their associated artwork.
For example if I create genre ‘IOANIS’, I do see it on my iPad but not the default artwork associated or the one I have added by manipulating the ‘genres.plist’
What do u think ?

THANKS
Ioanis

Also, that’s a great insight into the syntax of the genres.plist file. That may very well explain why I was having problems getting new genre art to show up.

sudo cp *.jpg genres.plist /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/

with the usual caveats about using sudo responsibly (ie, do this, only, and then close the terminal so you don’t accidentally screw up your system).

Another note about the syntax in the plist file. iTunes seems to use a wildcard system so that a string like “classic” will match any genre that starts with classic.

If you have, say, genres called “Classical” and “Classical Jazz” then you need to put Classical Jazz entry after the Classical one, otherwise they’ll both have the icon for Classical.

It might be possible, by jailbreaking your iPad, to change and add Genre art to the iPod app on the iPad. However, since the iPod app is not sync’ed to the iPad but is part of the OS, modifying the iPod app on a stock iPad is pretty much impossible.

Interesting question though. I haven’t thought of Genre art for quite some time. I have all but given up changing iTunes’ Genre art since every iTunes update, those changes are lost and have to be made again.

Great tutorial, but here’s an interesting follow-up challenge. Is there a way to push the new genre art to an iPad? The fix above fixed iTunes on my PC but synching to the iPad didn’t bring the new art to the iPad. Any thoughts on that?

My only suggestion would be to search your HardDrive for copies of ‘genres.plist’. If you find more than one copy, try to determine which copy is actually being used by iTunes.

To be honest, I haven’t messed with this technique for quite some time now. Each time Apple updates iTunes, the ‘genres.plist’ file gets restored to Apple’s defaults and I’m sick of restoring my entries into that file.