iEcosystem iTunes

Add, remove, or purchase items from your iTunes Wish List

Apple introduced in iTunes 9 the "Wish List", and removed the "Cart checkout" feature: any items you had inside your cart in iTunes version 8 and earlier were automatically moved to Wish List when you upgraded to the latest version of iTunes. In this tutorial, you will learn how to add items from the iTunes Store to your Wish List, and how to access the Wish List to remove content from it, or purchase items you added earlier. We will also explain how the Wish List is structured to help you make the best of it and easily find content (adding items to your Wish List is so easy, that we'll all likely end up with a monstrous amount of stuff we'd like to buy).

Add an item to your iTunes Wish List

When you find an item in the iTunes Store you would like to purchase later on, simply click on the item's dropdown menu, as shown on the screenshot, and choose "Add to Wish List": if all goes well the album, song, TV show or season, etc. - has been added to your Wish List.

Add something to your iTunes Wish List

 Since iTunes does not give you a clear visual cue to confirm that an item was added to the Wish List, look at iTunes' "LCD screen" - as it tries to add an item to your Wish List, the information screen will read "Accessing iTunes Store". If nothing further happens, the item is now in your Wish List.

iTunes adding an item to your Wish List

Otherwise, the iTunes Store will display one of two messages; either "[item name] is already in your Wish List - You cannot add the same item again" (which confirms that the item in question is already in your Wish List)...

Cannot add an item already in your Wish List

...Or (typically) the following error message: "We could not complete your iTunes Store request. An unknown error occurred (414) - There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later."

Problem adding items to iTunes Wish List
Sure enough, trying to add the same item again a minute or two later usually works flawlessly.

Access your iTunes Wish List

To access your Wish List from iTunes, first go to the iTunes Store: either click on the Store menu and choose "Home", or press the equivalent keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+H on Windows, or Command+Shift+H on Mac.

Access your Wish List from the Apple ID / Account menu Once iTunes has loaded the Store homepage, move your mouse cursor above your Apple ID (the email address attached with your iTunes account), and click on the dropdown arrow that appears: on the menu, choose "Wish List".

iTunes will load your Wish List as a mix of grid view and list view, separated by media type; first (as shown on the screenshot), the first 36 albums you have added to your list as shown, followed by individual songs, movies, TV seasons, individual TV shows (episodes), Apps, and audiobooks. (Free podcasts and iTunes U programs cannot be added to your Wish List.)

Your iTunes Wish List

Navigate through pages of Wish List items For "sections" of your Wish List that extend beyond a certain number (36 items for the grid view "tables"), iTunes displays navigational arrows in the bottom right corner of each box of content type. Simply click on the Back or Next buttons, or individual screen numbers.

Sort items from your iTunes Wish List Wish List Tip: a dropdown menu is visible in the top left corner of each "box" of items; use it to sort items of this type any way you want. For items displayed in row, simply click on any of the row headers to sort by a particular field, and click again to reverse the sort order.

Remove an item from your iTunes Wish List

Currently, iTunes does not automatically remove from your Wish List items you have purchased from the store, so you will have to clean up yourself regularly (although Apple is likely to add this functionality in the future, something like a "You just purchased an item from your Wish List - Would you like to remove it from the list?" confirmation message).

Delete items from your iTunes Wish List So, in the meantime, to delete an item from your Wish List, simply move your mouse cursor above the album / TV season / movie / audiobook, and a close button will appear (with a "Remove from Wish List" tooltip). Be careful before removing content from your Wish List, because iTunes will not ask for a preliminary confirmation before permanently deleting the item from the list. Within a second or two, the item in question disappears, and all items are shifted to fill the gap (assuming you have multiple "screens" of Wish List items). Remove a line item from the iTunes Wish List

 In the case of "line" items, hover your mouse above the row, and a close button appears at the right end of it (see screenshot). Here too, just click it, and the row (song or TV episode) is deleted from your Wish List.

Note: There is currently no way to delete your entire iTunes Wish List / remove all items at once.

Buy items from your Wish List

The iTunes Store gives you two options when it comes to purchasing content from your Wish List: you can either buy individual items, or buy the entire Wish List. Buy your entire iTunes Wish List To buy your entire Wish List, a scary thought for most of us, simply click the Buy All button displayed in the top right corner of the Wish List screen. (We did *not* click to test if iTunes first gives you a confirmation message :)

Buy an single item from your iTunes Wish List To purchase an individual item from your Wish List, just click on the corresponding Buy button, and iTunes will start downloading the item(s).

Note that if you want to first preview the audio/video content, you can either click the small "i" icon floating above the album cover to load the summary popup with content preview, or click on the artwork itself to go this item's page in the iTunes Store.


iTunes Tutorial

Unless specified otherwise, our free iTunes tutorials apply to both Mac OS X or Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

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