How to Add Folders of Music to iTunes

Quickly add songs to your music library

Add Folder Flat Icon on Blue Background

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by Sam Costello
Sam Costello has been writing about tech since 2000. His writing has appeared in publications such as CNN.com, PC World, InfoWord, and many others.
Updated September 05, 2019

When you want to add songs to iTunes, you don't have to add them one at a time. Instead, you can put them into folders and add the whole group at once. When you do that, iTunes automatically adds all the songs in the folder to your library. Here's how you do it.

These instructions apply to iTunes 8 and later.

How to Drag and Drop a Folder of Music into iTunes

You have a couple of options for bulk-importing music into your iTunes library. The first involves dragging and dropping.

  1. Create a new folder on your desktop (or somewhere else that's easy to find).

  2. Drag the songs you want to add to iTunes into that folder. These files are likely to be ones you downloaded from the Internet or copied from an MP3 CD or a thumb drive.

  3. Open iTunes.

    A Mac desktop with the iTunes icon in the Dock highlighted

  4. Navigate to your music by clicking Library in the top menu and then Songs on the left side of the screen.

    iTunes open on a Mac with the Library and Songs headings highlighted

  5. Drag the folder from your desktop into your iTunes library. A blue outline will appear around the window.

    iTunes on a Mac with a folder dragging to the music library

  6. Drop the folder, and iTunes will copy its contents to your library. You can delete the folder from the desktop once the transfer is complete.

How to Import a Folder of Songs into iTunes

You can also use menus in iTunes to import a folder of music files. Here's how.

  1. Create a new folder on your computer and add the music files you want to import to it.

  2. Open iTunes.

  3. Click the File menu and select Add to Library (on a Mac) or Add Folder to Library (on Windows).

    You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command-O (Mac) or Ctrl-O (Windows).

    iTunes on a Mac with the Add to Library option under the File menu open

  4. A window will pop up asking you to select the folder you want to add. Navigate through your computer to find the folder you created on your desktop and click to select it.

    Selecting a music folder to import in iTunes on a Mac

  5. Click the Open or Choose button (depending on your OS and the version of iTunes you're running).

    The Open button highlighted in iTunes on a Mac

  6. iTunes will copy the contents of the folder to your library. You can delete the folder from your desktop once the transfer completes.