Access Hidden Files on Your iPod

Apple keeps the music files on your iPod hidden, but with a little hackery, all your music will be revealed, allowing you to copy the files (legally, of course) from one machine to another.

If you have ever activated your iPod’s Disk mode [Hack #32] and taken a peek at the disk in either the Macintosh Finder or the Windows File Manager, you might have found something missing–your music, that is. Sure, it shows up in iTunes, but where is it on your iPod? Hidden, that’s where. In order to put some muscle behind the label that is slapped on every iPod (in multiple languages) — "don’t steal music" — Apple hides the iPod’s tracks in disk view.

Sneaky. But not quite as sneaky as us iPod/iTunes hackers. Of course, we are not doing this to steal music! We are doing this because we want to be able to copy our music from our iPods to our other machines, so we can listen to it in iTunes on those days when we accidentally leave our iPods at home, at the office, or at a friend’s.

eCoustics