Sync your media to a portable media player or smartphone.
Paul Cutler
pcutler@gnome.org

# Sync

Banshee supports syncing your music to portable media players and smartphones. You can add specific music tracks, albums or playlist or allow Banshee to keep your music player in sync with your entire library. After your player is connected to your computer you can also play back the songs on your portable player in Banshee. When syncing music in a lossless format, such as FLAC, Banshee will automatically transcode your music for you to a lossy format such as Ogg Vorbis or MP3, if you have the correct codecs installed.

# Device Support

Banshee supports almost all modern portable music players and smartphones with the notable exception of the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

When you plug your device in, Banshee will display it in the left menu. Pressing the device icon will take you to your device home page in Banshee displaying your sync preferences.

# Sync Your Music

You can choose to manage the media on your portable music by having Banshee automatically sync it or manage your music and media manually.

Choose your device from the Banshee menu and then choose how you want to sync your media, including:

Music

Audiobooks

Videos

Podcast

From the dropdown menu next to each of the media, choose from:

Manage manually

Sync entire library

If you choose to sync your entire library automatically with your portable media player make sure your portable media player has enough storage space. If your library is larger than the space on your portable media player, Banshee will sync media until your player is full and then stop.

If you have created playlists or smart playlists in your music library, they will also be displayed as a sync option for Music. This can be helpful when creating smart playlists, as smart playlists will automatically update as new content is added based on the playlist rules, and Banshee will sync the new playlist to your device every time you plug it in.

Banshee will display the total hard drive space of your portable music player in a graph in the bottom center of Banshee. The graph will show you how much space is taken by audio files, video, other and free space. Directly below that Banshee will show you how many total items are stored on your portable music player, how many hours or days of listening that is equal to, and total space used.

# Sync Your Entire Library

You can drag and drop media to your portable music player from Banshee. Select the file or files you want to copy to your portable media player and then press and hold your right mouse button and drag the file(s) to your portable media player icon in Banshee. This will copy the files to your device.

If your music library is encoded in a format that your portable media player does not support, such as OGG or FLAC, and you have the necessary codecs installed, Banshee can automatically transcode these files to MP3 when transferring to your portable media player. Check with your Linux distribution for the necessary codecs as it is outside the scope of this help and varies by distribution.

You may need to eject your device to load the files correctly on your portable music player. To eject your device in Banshee, using your mouse right click the device in the Banshee menu and press Disconnect.

# Play Music From Your Portable Music Player

You can play music stored on your portable music player directly in Banshee. Choose your player in the Banshee menu on the left and your portable music player's library will be displayed. You can then play music in Banshee just as you would music in your own library.

# Remove Music From your Portable Music Player

To remove songs stored on your portable music player, choose your player in Banshee to view its library. Then choose the tracks you would like to remove and right click the tracks and choose Delete or from the menu choose Edit Delete.

Deleting files from your portable music player will permanently remove the files and you will not be able to recover them.