2.3. Do I Have to Play a CD in Order?

Of course not. Just like a CD player, you have several options. You can shuffle (play in a random order), repeat (have the CD loop and continue playing until you’re tired of it), or even choose which tracks you want to play:

• Shuffle a CD: There are four buttons at the bottom-left of the iTunes window: the two center buttons are for playback. (I’ll talk about the other two later.) Shuffle is on the left, Repeat on the right. To shuffle tracks of a CD, just click the Shuffle button; the arrows become blue to show that shuffle mode is activated. You’ll see the track order of your CD change. You can click it to un-shuffle, then click it again to get a new random order.

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  Note:

  Do you prefer using menus? Commands for Shuffle and Repeat, along with other playback features, are also available from the Controls menu.

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• Repeat CDs or tracks: Click the Repeat button (shown in the previous bullet item) once to repeat the entire CD until your battery runs out, you fall asleep, or you’re tired of listening to that CD. Click it again for the Repeat One feature; this plays the current song over and over, until you simply have to turn it off.

• Play only selected tracks: If there are certain tracks on your CD that you don’t want to listen to, just click the checkboxes next to them to uncheck them. iTunes plays only selected tracks.

• Program your CD: With a CD player, you can “program” tracks, choosing which order you want them to play. You can do the same in iTunes. Just drag a track to the position you want. You can combine unchecking and dragging to program only those tracks you want to hear. (Note that the CD must be sorted by track order for this to work; the left-most column header above the track numbers must be darker than the other column headers. If it’s not, click it.)

  If you want to play a CD often with a specific order, Control-click on the CD’s name in the iTunes sidebar and choose Copy to Play Order from the contextual menu. iTunes will then remember this order the next time you insert the CD.