Can I Use the iPod Touch on a Different Computer than the Home Computer?

We’ve already told you how you can use many different iPods using only one home computer. But, can you use different computers for one iPod Touch? Whenever something goes seriously wrong with your iPod, or you need to get the latest iPod Touch update, any instructions will first tell you to go to the “Home” computer. This is the computer that you first connected your iPod to, and most likely the first computer you installed iTunes on.

So, what happens if you buy a brand new shiny computer that’s not the computer you first installed all your iPod info on? Is your Touch now completely useless? Of course not! Apple would never have you invest such money and then render it useless just because you have a new machine! Here’s how to use different computers with your iPod Touch, and you can even use the different computers simultaneously! Start by making sure that you’re using iTunes 7 or later.

First, you need to make sure that all the computers that will be plugged into the iPod are all running on the same operating system. You won’t be able to plug an iPod Touch that uses a Mac into a PC and expect the Mac to pick it up. It’s won’t. However, if you already have a PC and switch to a Mac, or vice versa, you can still use your new computer as your new Home computer. What you have to do is restore the iPod Touch through iTunes.

Next you have to make sure that your iPod is set to “Manually manage music.” Making sure that you manually manage your music makes sure that the computer won’t automatically sync when you hook it up to the new computer. When you do this and plug the iPod Touch into the new computer, a dialogue box will pop up. It will say, “The (name of) iPod is synced with another iTunes library. Do you want to erase this iPod and sync with this iTunes library? An iPod can only be synced with one iTunes library at a time. Erasing and syncing replaces the content of this iPod with the contents of this iTunes library. What this means is that everything from the iTunes library that’s on your iPod will be deleted and will be replaced with the iTunes library on the new computer.

You can also set the iPod to sync in manual mode. To do this through iTunes, find the iPod under “Devices.” Click the “Summary” tab and then click “Manually manage music and videos.” Click “OK” and then click “Apply.” This may take a minute or two, so be patient.When ready, drag the files you want from iTunes over to the iPod icon that you’ll see on the side.

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1 comment

  1. why cant I bring my computer to work, connect my itouch, and review and buy things from itunes store , then download them into my ipod????

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