Can’t Add Artwork in iTunes? Greyed Out? Here’s How to Fix

Got a few songs that don’t have artwork or have artwork you don’t like and want to manually add the cover art? 

Many users like to use their own album artwork for their music in iTunes. Some readers have said that when they are trying to add artwork to tracks/albums with iTunes, they are unable to do so as the Add Artwork option is greyed out and inaccessible.

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If you are experiencing this issue with iTunes, here are a few tips that should help you.

Let’s Review How To Add Album Art In iTunes

1. Find and download the missing album art image from the Internet or elsewhere
2. Save the image as a JPG, BMP, GIF or PNG file
3. Open iTunes and highlight all of the songs on the album
   1. Select the first song
   2. Hold the Shift key
   3. Choose the last song in the album
4. Right-click on one of the selected songs and select Album Info (or Get Info) 
5. iTunes asks if you are sure you want to edit information for multiple items 
6. Select Edit items
7. Choose the Artwork tab and click Add Artwork 
8. Find the image you already saved and click Open
9. The artwork embeds into the music files and should show up

Check That Your Album Art Meets The Requirements

1. Artwork inserted into music files must be in one of the following formats: JPG, BMP, GIF or PNG
2. Maximum resolution for embedded artwork is 1024 x 1024
3. iPhone / iPad / iPod touch support album artwork up to 320kb in size with no resolution limit

Add Artwork Button Greyed Out in iTunes

Please check each of the steps below to see if it helps with your issue.

1. Check if the song/album has been downloaded to your computer or is it only on the iCloud
   1. The cloud button on the right side would suggest you would need to download it
   2. Right-Click and choose ‘Download.’
   3. Once it has downloaded, you should be able to change the artwork via the ‘Add Artwork’ button
2. If the media is locally available on your machine, and you are still unable to access the Add Artwork function, start by checking the permissions.
   1. You may not have the right permissions to change the artwork in iTunes
   2. Right Click on any track and choose ‘ Show in Finder.’ 
   3. Once the item opens up in Finder, right click and choose ‘Get Info’
   4. Here you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the information and locate ‘Sharing and Permissions’ 
   5. If you have only ‘Read Only’ permissions, you will not be able to use the ‘Add Artwork’ feature
   6. Click on the lock icon, enter your credentials and change this to ‘Read and Write.’
   7. Click on the lock icon again once you finish with any changes
   8. Now you can go back and try adding the artwork to the album
3. One other item to note while adding Album artwork in iTunes is the file type
   1. In older iTunes, people had challenges using the ‘.WAV’ file type
   2. If you are trying to use this, you may instead want to convert it to ‘.AIF’ and then try adding the Artwork. AIF is lossless so you shouldn’t have an issue

Where is the Find Album Artwork Function in iTunes?

If you recently upgraded to a newer iTunes version and were used to Find Album Artwork, you will not be able to find that function.

Apple replaced it with ‘ Get Album Artwork’ in the newer iTunes versions. For this article, we are using iTunes 12.9 running on macOS Mojave.

Right-Click on the Album and you should be able to access the Get Album Artwork function.

How to Add Album Artwork in iTunes 12.9 and above

• This functionality has not changed in the newer iTunes
  • Right click on an album iTunes and choose ‘ Album Info.’
  • Next, open the Artwork tab on the top
  • The function to ‘Add Artwork is at the bottom left of the screen

• When viewing Songs, right-click and choose ‘Song Info.’ 

We hope that you found this short article helpful! Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.