How to Browse Your iPod’s Music?

Choosing music with playlists is great, and you might often find that method to be the one you end up using most because it gets you to specific music quickly. However, some music stored on your iPod might not be in a playlist, you might want to listen to all the music by a specific artist, and so on. In these cases, you can browse the music stored on your iPod to choose the music to which you want to listen.

You can browse your music by the following categories:
■ Artists
■ Albums
■ Songs
■ Genres
■ Composers
To browse your iPod’s music, do the following steps:

1. Choose Main menu, Browse. You’ll see the Browse menu, which contains the categories listed previously.
2. Highlight the category by which you want to browse your music, such as Artists to browse by artist, and press the Select button. You will see the menu that shows you all the music that is associated with the category you selected in step 1. For example, if you choose Artists, you will see all the artists whose music is stored on your iPod
3. Browse the resulting list of music that appears until you find a category in which you are interested; then press the Select button. You will see the list of contents of the category you selected. For example, when I was browsing by artist and chose B.B. King, the list of my B.B. King music was displayed.
4. To move down to the next level of detail, select an item on the current list and click the Select button. The resulting screen will show you the contents of what you selected. For example, I selected the B.B. King album called “Spotlight on Lucille” and saw that album’s contents.
5. To play everything shown on the screen, starting at the top, press the Play/Pause button. To start with a specific song, select it and press the Play/Pause button. The Now Playing screen will appear, and the first song or the song you selected will start to play.Although the previous steps used the Artists category as an example, you can browse and select music in any of the other categories in just the same way.

Selecting Music with Playlists

When you transfer music from your iTunes Library to an iPod, the playlists you have created and that are shown in the iTunes Source List come over, too. You can select music to listen to by choosing a playlist using the following steps:

1. Choose Main menu, Playlists. You’ll move to the Playlists menu. In order to play music on an iPod, you must have some stored on it. You do this by loading music into your iTunes Library and then transferring that music to the iPod. For help with the first part.
2. Highlight the playlist you want to listen to and press the Select button. The songs in that playlist will be shown.
3. If you want to play the entire playlist, press the Play/Pause button. If you want to start with a specific song, highlight it and press the Select button. The Now Playing screen will appear, and the first song in the playlist or the one you highlighted will begin playing .

How to Put an iPod on Hold?

The Hold switch disables all the controls on an iPod so that you don’t inadvertently press a button, such as if you carry your iPod in your pocket.

To disable the iPod’s controls, slide the Hold switch to the right on an iPod or to the left on an iPod mini (these directions assume you are looking at the iPod’s face with its top pointing up). When you do so, the area underneath the switch that was exposed when you slid it will be orange to indicate that the iPod is in the Hold mode. You’ll also see the Lock icon on the iPod’s screen.

To reenable the iPod’s controls, slide the Hold switch to the left on an iPod or to the right on an iPod mini (these directions assume you are looking at the iPod’s face with its top pointing up). The orange area of the Hold switch and the Lock icon on the iPod screen will disappear and you can again control your iPod.

How to Use the iPod’s Backlight?

The Backlight lights up the iPod’s or iPod mini’s screen so you can see it in dark conditions. (The iPod’s Backlight also causes its buttons to glow.) You can turn the Backlight on or off manually and you can configure it to turn off automatically after a specific period of time.

Turning the Backlight On
To turn the Backlight on, move to the Main menu, select Backlight, and click the Select button. The Backlight will come on and your iPod’s world will be a lot brighter.
After the current backlight time passes, the Backlight will turn off automatically.

Configuring the Backlight
If you don’t want to have to manually turn the Backlight on, you can set the iPod to turn it on briefly each time you press a button. This is very useful because you can always see what you are doing no matter what lighting conditions you are in. You can also have the backlight on at all times, but I don’t recommend that option because of the drain on the iPod’s battery.
You can configure your iPod’s Backlight settings by performing the following steps:

1. Choose Main menu, Settings. You’ll see the Settings screen.
2. Choose Backlight Timer. You’ll see the Backlight Timer screen. To enable me to write and you to read fewer words, I’ve used some shorthand to indicate iPod menu selections. For example, when you see “choose Main menu, Settings,” this means to move to the iPod’s Main menu and then to the Settings menu by highlighting the Settings command and pressing the Select button. When you see “Choose Backlight Timer,” that means to highlight the Backlight Timer command and click the Select button.
3. you want the backlight to come on each time you press a control, choose the amount of time you want it to remain on. Your options are 2, 5, 10, and 20 seconds.
4. If you want the backlight to come on only when you choose the Backlight command on the Main menu, choose Off.
   
5. If you want the backlight on all of the time, choose Always On.
6. Press Menu twice to move back to the Main menu.

Understanding iPod's main menu

The iPod’s Main menu provides the major (dare I say main?) commands available to you.

The Main menu commands are the following:
■ Playlists
■ Browse
■ Extras
■ Settings
■ Backlight
■ Now Playing
All these commands take you to their respective menus, except for the Backlight and Now Playing commands. The Backlight command turns the iPod’s Backlight on (more on this later). The Now Playing command, which appears only when you have selected and are playing music, takes you to the Now Playing screen (more on this later, too).

When a menu choice leads to another menu, a right-facing arrow will appear along the right edge of the screen for that choice. If you don’t see an arrow for a command, that command will cause an action to happen instead.
When there are more options on a menu than can be listed on the screen, you will see the Scroll bar; the dark part of the bar represents how much of the menu you are seeing on the screen out of the total menu, which is represented by the full bar. (Remember that to scroll up and down a menu, you use the Scroll Pad or Click Wheel.)

The Playlists Menu and Screens
The Playlists command takes you to the Playlists menu, which lists the playlists that are stored on your iPod. On the Playlists menu, you will see each playlist you have created in iTunes. Because each playlist represents a “menu” of the songs in that playlist, when you select it, you will see the songs menu that lists each song in the playlist.

The Browse Menu and Screens
The Browse command takes you to the Browse menu. This menu enables you to browse the music stored on your iPod by Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres, or Composers. When you select one of these options, you will move to a menu that lists each category within the category you selected. For example, when you browse by Artists, you’ll see a list of all the artists with which music on your iPod is associated.

The Extras Menu and Screens
The Extras command takes you to the Extras menu. On this menu, you will find various options that are related only because they are on the same menu. These commands enable you to access the iPod’s non-music features, such as the Clock, Calendar, and so on.

The Settings Menu and Screens
The Settings command is like the Preferences command in most computer programs. It enables you to configure various aspects of your iPod, such as the contrast of the screen, the Clicker settings, and so on. You’ll use this command to configure the Backlight.

The Backlight Command
This option turns the iPod’s Backlight on if it is off or off if it is on. See the section titled “Using the iPod’s Backlight” below to learn more about the iPod’s Backlight.

The Now Playing Menu
The Now Playing command appears on the Main menu only when you have selected and played music. When you choose this command, you move to the Now Playing screen, which shows you the song that is currently playing . This is an important screen because you can control various aspects of how music is playing from this screen, such as the volume level.

Looking at the iPod’s Menus and Screens

Now that you have an idea of how to move around your iPod, let’s get a good understanding of its menus and screens.
Although the controls you use to move around menus and screens are slightly different on the two models, the steps you use to move around are the same. Here they are:

1. Slide your finger or thumb clockwise on the Scroll pad (iPod) or Click Wheel (iPod mini) to move down a menu or counterclockwise to move up a menu. As you move your digit, different menu options will be highlighted on the screen to show that they are selected.
2. When you want to use a menu command, highlight it and press the Select button. That command will be active and the screen will change to reflect what you have done. For example, if you selected another menu, that menu will appear on the screen. If you select a song, the Now Playing screen will appear and that song will start to play.
3. To move back to a previous screen, press the Menu button. You’ll move back to the screen you were on before the current one. Each time you press the Menu button, you’ll move back one screen until you get back to the Main menu.

How to make selections on an iPod?

The previous information about selecting a language gives you the general idea of how you control an iPod. Now, let’s give you a very specific idea of how you move around your iPod to make it follow your commands. The iPod is based on menus on which you make choices. To make a choice on a menu, you slide a finger or thumb clockwise on the Scroll pad to move down the current menu or counterclockwise to move up on the current menu. As you move up or down, a different command on the menu will be highlighted. When the command you want to use is highlighted, press the Select button to choose it. If the command is for another menu, that menu will appear. You can then move up and down that menu to choose another command. If the menu provides a list of songs, albums, or other categories, you can use the same process to select and play an item, such as a song.

To move back to a previous menu, you press the Menu button. You’ll learn the specific menus and screens you will use later in this chapter. For now, just understand how to move up and down the iPod’s menu structure.