iTunes is a media player developed by Apple Inc, that allows you to download, organize, and play media on your system as well as sync it to other devices. iTunes is available for downloading and using on Windows and Mac, but it is yet not available in Ubuntu or any other Linux distributions. You can use several different media players as an alternative for iTunes. However, if you are using an iPhone, iPad, and iPod, then you will need only need iTunes. No other alternative will work in that case as iTunes is the only way to sync audio, video, and other data between their devices. With iTunes, you can even buy and stream millions of music.
But what if you are a Linux user and want to play Apple Music on it. Luckily, there is a way using which you can play Apple music in Linux. However, you will require some additional work for this purpose. As iTunes software is available for Windows OS, so we will the same Windows software for installing iTunes on Linux by using the Wine program. Wine is actually a free and open-source compatibility layer that allows users to run Windows programs on Linux.
In this article, we will see how to install and run iTunes on Linux. For installing iTunes, we will first need to install Wine. Let’s get started on the installation procedure.
We will use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for describing the procedure mentioned in this article. The same procedure works on the latest Ubuntu 21.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 too.
Installing Wine on Ubuntu
As mentioned above, we will first install the wine program. So download and install Wine standard packages from the Winehq official repository. Follow the below steps for the installation.
Step 1: Download the Wine repository key
Press Ctrl Alt T to launch the Terminal and then run the following command in order to download Wine repository key.
$ wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
Step2: Add the repository key
Now run the following command in the Terminal to add the key which was used to sign packages of Wine.
$ sudo apt-key add winehq.key
Step 3: Add the repository
Now run the following command in Terminal to add the repository from the WineHQ:
$ sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ bionic main'
Step 4: Installing Wine
After adding repository, update your local apt repository by running the following command in Terminal:
$ sudo apt update
Now in order to Install the wine latest and stable package, run the following command in Terminal.
$ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable
Wait for a while until the installation is completed.
After installing Wine, You will be asked to install mono and gecko. Click on install to install these packages.
Installation of Wine has finished, now we are prepared for installing iTunes.
Installing iTunes on Ubuntu
Launch any browser in your system and then open the Apple iTunes official download page. Then download the iTunes installer file for Windows named as iTunes64Setup. It will install on the Ubuntu in the same way as you install it on Windows.
Step 1: Download iTunes
To install iTunes, go to the downloads folder, and then double click the downloaded file. It will open the setup page. Click on Next to start the installation.
Step 2: Start iTunes Installer
Change the destination folder for installing iTunes or leave it as default. Then click on the Install button.
Step3: iTunes setup
Once you click on install, setup will start copying all the required files as shown in the below image.
Step4: iTunes Installation completed
Once the installation is completed successfully, you will see the below screen, click on Finish to exit the iTunes installer.
Step 5: Accept license agreement
After the installation is finished, you will be presented with the following screen. Click on Agree to accept the iTunes Software License agreement.
After accepting the agreement, you will see the iTunes software shortcut on your desktop.
Step 6: Start iTunes on Linux
To launch the iTunes application, double-click the shortcut on the desktop. You will see the following default view of iTunes.
Step 7: Sign-in
To set up your account, go to Account > Sign In.
A dialog box will appear. Enter your Apple ID and password and click on Sign In button.
So that is all we required in order to install and run iTunes on Ubuntu. Now you can start using the iTunes on your Linux machine to access Apple music.
