A native macOS app for syncing music to classic iPods, built on libgpod.
Apple removed iPod support from macOS years ago. My Pod puts a modern SwiftUI interface on top of libgpod so a click-wheel iPod can still be kept in sync with a music library on disk — including transcoding formats the iPod can't play, writing cover art, and syncing playlists.
- Automatic device detection — the iPod is picked up as soon as it mounts; no pairing or setup.
- Library mirroring — pick a Plex-structured folder (
Root/Artist/Album/Track) and check the artists, albums or tracks you want. Sync is a two-way mirror: checked music is added, unchecked music is removed. - New-music highlighting — anything in your library that isn't on the iPod is marked with a dot, rolled up onto album and artist rows, and counted in the toolbar. Optionally it's checked for you automatically, newest albums first, for as long as the device has room.
- Transcoding — FLAC, OGG, Opus, WMA and APE are converted to AAC 256 kbps
.m4aviaafconvert, cached in a hidden.mypod/folder beside the source so a given file is only ever encoded once. - Cover art — artwork is located per album and written into the iPod's database as rendered thumbnails.
- Playlists — backed by plain
.m3ufiles in~/Music/MyPodPlaylists/, with a drag-and-drop editor. - Dock progress — sync progress is drawn onto the app icon, so you can start a sync and switch away.
The Music tab is the library. Checkboxes drive what syncs; the dot marks what isn't on the iPod yet.
Nothing is written until you confirm. The plan shows exactly what will be added, removed, left alone, and transcoded.
Sync runs in phases, each with its own progress and a working cancel. Cancelling finishes the current track and saves what's already been done, so the iPod is never left mid-write.
| Converting | Copying |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Saving | Complete |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Backed by plain .m3u files in ~/Music/MyPodPlaylists/, so anything can read them. Drag tracks across from the library to build one; they sync to the iPod as real playlists.
Grab the latest My-Pod-*-arm64.zip from Releases,
unzip it, and drag My Pod.app to /Applications. Everything it needs is inside the bundle — no
Homebrew required to run it.
Apple silicon only. On an Intel Mac, build from source (see below) with BREW_PREFIX=/usr/local.
The app is signed ad-hoc rather than with an Apple Developer ID, so macOS quarantines it on download and reports it as damaged. Clear the quarantine flag once:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/My Pod.app"Or open it the first time via System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. Building from source avoids this entirely.
These are for building from source; the release download needs none of them.
- macOS 15.7 or later
- Xcode 26 or later
- Homebrew
Install the C dependencies:
brew install glib pkg-configThe first build also generates libgpod's configure script, which needs the autotools. These aren't required for subsequent builds:
brew install autoconf automake libtool gtk-doc intltoolgit clone https://github.com/jbartolozzi/My-Pod.git
cd My-Pod
./build.shbuild.sh compiles the vendored libgpod into a static library (first run only — it takes a few minutes), builds the app, and launches it. Use ./build.sh build to skip launching, or ./build.sh clean to remove all build output.
You can also open My Pod.xcodeproj and build normally; a run-script phase builds libgpod if it's missing.
My Pod/ App source
IPodKit/ C shim exposing libgpod to Swift (ipod-api.c/.h + bridging header)
Models/ Value types — library, tracks, sync plan, device
Services/ Scanning, conversion, sync engine, device control
Views/ SwiftUI interface
Vendor/libgpod/ Vendored libgpod (modified fork), statically linked
Scripts/ build-libgpod.sh
Config/ MyPod.xcconfig — search paths, link flags, sandbox settings
Swift talks to libgpod through IPodKit/ipod-api.c, a small C wrapper that keeps GLib's memory semantics (GList, GHashTable, GError) out of Swift. Everything above it is ordinary Swift.
Library layout. Music is read from a Plex-style tree — Root/Artist/Album/Track. Track numbers and titles are parsed from filenames.
Matching. The iPod's database doesn't store source file paths, so library tracks are matched to device tracks on (artist, album, title), Unicode-normalised so accented titles compare equal across the filesystem and the database.
Transcoding. Formats the iPod can't play are encoded with afconvert to AAC-LC 256 kbps, constrained VBR, forced to 44.1 kHz. Those specifics matter on older hardware: true VBR breaks seeking on an iPod Photo, and hi-res sources passed through at 48 or 96 kHz skip during playback. The conversion cache is versioned, so changing the encoder settings invalidates it automatically.
Metadata. afconvert output carries no tags, so title, artist, album and artwork are written directly into the iPod database rather than embedded in the file. The iPod displays everything correctly; previewing a cached .m4a in Finder or Music.app will show no tags.
Built on libgpod, which does the real work of reading and writing the iTunesDB format. The copy in Vendor/libgpod is a modified fork.
The split follows the directory layout:
| Path | License |
|---|---|
My Pod/, Scripts/, Config/, root build scripts |
MIT |
Vendor/libgpod/ |
LGPL 2.1 or later |
My Pod/IPodKit/ipod-api.c is MIT despite linking libgpod. It contains no libgpod code — it calls the public API and includes itdb.h, which LGPL 2.1 §5 defines as a "work that uses the Library" rather than a derivative work.
Because libgpod is linked statically, LGPL 2.1 §6 requires that anyone distributing a compiled binary also provide the source or object files needed to relink against a modified libgpod. Distributing this repository's source satisfies that; shipping a prebuilt .app or disk image on its own does not.
iPod, iTunes and macOS are trademarks of Apple Inc. This project is not affiliated with, authorised by, or endorsed by Apple.