Size difference between folder with music and what shows up in Music app

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Level 1

13 points

Size difference between folder with music and what shows up in Music app

I've been spending a large chunk of the last several days cleaning up my large music collection and I've run into a head-scratcher. The folder that holds all of my media files is 131.97GB but the Music app shows my collection is only 119.46 GB. Does this mean that 12.51 GB of my music is not in my library? How can I (easily) figure out which files need to be added? Could they be from old podcasts, before the separate app was released?

MacBook Air (M1, 2020)

Posted on Jul 20, 2025 04:12 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

277,729 points

Jul 21, 2025 11:34 AM in response to nanhoa

You can use File > Add to Library to select your media folder. All eligible files not already connected to the library will be added. You can then review the recent additions for duplicates, or content that you meant to discard in the past that hadn't been eliminated form the media folder.

A possible alternate explanation for the discrepancy might be that one process is counting decimal gigabytes while the other is counting in binary. 1000³ and 1024³ are very different values. That said I don't think provides the right difference here. 119GiB≈128Gb.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

277,729 points

Jul 21, 2025 04:23 AM in response to nanhoa

Take a look at Managing your Mac media libraries - Apple Community. Your media folder could hold plenty of iTunes related content that hasn't been absorbed into the Music app, not just podcasts.

tt2

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Answer 3

nanhoa Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 21, 2025 11:18 AM in response to turingtest2

The folder I'm looking at only has music folders in it as far as I can see, unless there's non-music files within media folders. This is purely the folder holding all my music folders and where imported/downloaded files live. I'd be shocked if there were GBs worth of files buried within the music folders (I've pared it down now to less than a 5GB difference). Still scratching my head. Any other ideas?

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Answer 4

nanhoa Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 21, 2025 01:57 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you, that's a great tidbit. I was afraid that if I did "Add to Library" for the whole folder I'd have thousands of duplicates. And I had no idea there was a difference between decimal and binary GB, or that there were even different ways of measuring GBs. The depth of your knowledge and clarity of sharing information is greatly appreciated.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

277,729 points

Jul 22, 2025 02:44 AM in response to nanhoa

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

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