How to install and use iTunes on Ubuntu

iTunes is a media player developed by Apple Inc. that lets you download, organize, and play media on your system and sync it with other devices. iTunes can be downloaded and used on Windows and Mac, but is not yet available in Ubuntu or other Linux distributions. You can use various media players as an alternative to iTunes. However, if you use an iPhone, iPad, and iPod, you only need iTunes. In this case, there is no other alternative, since iTunes is the only way to synchronize audio, video and other data between the devices. With iTunes, you can even buy and stream millions of music tracks.

But what if you're a Linux user and and like to play Apple Music on it? Fortunately, there is a way to play Apple Music on Linux. However, you'll have to put in a bit more effort to do so. Since the iTunes software is available for Windows operating systems, we will use the same Windows software to install iTunes on Linux using the Wine program. Wine is a free and open-source compatibility layer that lets you run Windows programs on Linux.

In this article, we will show you how to install and run iTunes on Linux. To install iTunes, we need to install Wine first. Let's start with the installation process.

We will use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for describing the procedure mentioned in this article. The same procedure works on the latest Ubuntu 22.04 and the older 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 the 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.