Q: I can’t seem to get the album covers to show up on my girlfriend’s iPod, but using the same computer they do show up on my slightly later edition 80 GB iPod. Any ideas?
– Keith
A: Each iPod that you connect to iTunes has its own independent sync settings, so you should ensure that your girlfriend’s iPod is actually set to have album artwork synchronized to it, since the problem may simply be that this setting is disabled.
You can check this by connecting your girlfriend’s iPod to your computer and choosing it from the iTunes Devices list. Select the “Music” tag and ensure that the option to display album artwork is enabled.
If this option is not enabled but you are using automatic sync, then simply enable it and click the “Apply” button in the bottom right corner. iTunes will begin syncing the iPod and will transfer any album artwork to it in the process.
Note that if you’re managing the content on this iPod manually, then you would need to enable this option and re-transfer any tracks that are missing album artwork. In manual mode, there is no direct relationship between your iPod and iTunes—they are treated as distinct libraries, so although iTunes will do its best to rebuild your artwork on the iPod, there’s no guarantee that everything in your library will match everything on your iPod.
If this option is enabled and you’re still not seeing artwork, the simplest thing to do is to disable the option, click “Apply” to resync the iPod (which will remove all album artwork, including any that might be corrupted). From there, you can simply re-enable the option and re-sync the iPod again to put the album artwork back on. Note that even if you’re using manual management, iTunes will try to re-transfer the artwork to your iPod as best as it can, although there’s no guarantee that it will get it all as the tracks in your iTunes library may not match up with the tracks on your iPod. You may still have some tracks that are missing artwork and would need to retransfer these from your iTunes library manually.
