Q: Playlists won't sync to my iPhone 5!

Further to my last, I should mention that the problem re-emerged on one of the iPhones, though not the other iOS three devices.  (Go figure.)  However, this time there were no incomplete or stalled downloads showing in iTunes Store/Downloads on that iPhone.

On a hunch, I made a note of the songs that were not making it to the playlist in the Music app on the iPhone.  I then called up the Song list and swipe-deleted those songs, revealing the accursed fluffy white cloud icon with the red arrow rampant thereon.  I then re-synced, the result being the demise of the fluffy whites and a fully populated playlist.

Such fun.

Hi, I was having the same issues with playlists not downloading to either my iphone 5s and ipad 3.

I read in another post (thank you) to delete all your playlists on your device and then go back and put them back on. This worked for me.

1. go to MUSIC and uncheck "sync music" and select sync - this should erase all your current playlists on your device. A box will appear telling you that it is going to delete everything on your device

2. then check "sync music" and choose your playlists again and select sync

3. I started out by selecting only 3 playlists and it worked fine, then I did 5 and 10 and it seemed to be ok

4. I did this to both my iphone and ipad and problem solved

It worked! (for me...)

Like everyone else on these feeds been having serious amount of trouble getting playlists to update. I have iPhone5 and am connected to a mac mini. Having fixed problem previously by luck, I think, following previous suggestions Scottmccomb86's suggestion of actually unchecking the playlists in itunes on my mac mini, and also unchecking each song in the playlist, managed to get all the songs off my iphone. The re-checking each song and each playlist to then manually sync playlists has worked and my iphone is now back up to date.

Realise a bit laborious if, like me, you've got a lot of songs to check and uncheck, but this seems to have worked. I am a bit suspicious though because I have already gone through everything I went through last time to fix it and tried everyone else's suggestions above. It seems to just be very random for everyone how and when the fixes work.

Good luck all.

COME ON APPLE, SORT IT OUT !!!!!

This is BS!! having same issue everyone else is. Tried everything. I called Apple Tech Dept and they were great. Took control of my PC and found Bonjour errors which apparently has something to do with itunes. They said it's a very common problem and they could fix it...BUT IT WOULD COST $150!!!! I said so many effin people are having the same effin problem! It's not their computers is effin Apple!! He told me to calm down but i said go eff yourself and hung up. Sick of the BS!!

okay i found the issue. if u purchased itune songs, they will sync with your iphone 5s. you can add or remove them without issue.

im finding uploaded songs from the internet are the issue. if u pull up one of these songs & double click it to play, my itunes states "song" could not be used because the original file could not be found. it then states would u like to locate it. click yes and find the song in your documents folder under music (or wherever u have downloaded music from the net go). Click on that song and hit save. the song will then be in your itunes & u can play it and sync it. Yes u will have to do this with every song.

<Edited by Host>

I had the same issue out of nowhere with my iPhone 5S: playlist won't update with new songs.  I spent over :90 min with apple tech and we ultimately reinstalled itunes software on my iMac and then restored my iPhone (oy vey).  so of course everything sync'd lovely on a virgin run.  Then within a week later, I update my playlist on the computer, resync and no update to playlist.  NOTE: THE SONG IS IN FACT TRANSFERRING TO MY PHONE, it's just not listed in the playlist. I can update the playlist on the iPhone independently, and it won't duplicate the entry on the computer's playlist when I resync the next time. But this is really an onerous problem and should be entirely fixable by the folks at iTunes.

i was going crazy ... and this worked for me. thanks.

i'm having the same problem, iPhone 5 with a 2010 macbook. didn't have any problems until i got the 5 and this is driving me insane. just read through this entire thread and nothing i've tried has worked.

I am having this EXACT problem. Nothing works. Have you found a solution yet?

I am having major issues trying to get my playlists to update and sync. I never had a problem before and now nothing is working. I update a playlist on my pc in itunes, connect my phone and sync. The playlists are not transferring and the existing lists wont update. When I I go back to my updated playlist in itunes on my pc the new music I added is no longer there. I've trying un-syncing all music from my itunes and applying but it automatically ticks and syncs anyway. I am also getting duplicates of all my playlists. I've deleted them over and over and they just keep re-appearing. I read that someone restored their phone to factory settings and started over that way but there were no other comments of anyone else who tried that with success. I didnt want to do that unless absolutely necessary. Can anyone give me any suggestions, Im very frustrated

ksap38's solution WORKED!

Painstakingly making sure that ONLY Playlists are selected, and no Albums, Artists or Genres are selected, FINALLY causes the playlists I had selected to actually sync to my iPhone 5s. THANK YOU ksap38, that's one less iPhone thrown at the wall!

Same problem with my iphone4s, I tried ksap38's solution and it didn't work, BUT>....

Been watching these posts for a month or more. Nothing worked.  Finally got it to work.  Will list everything I did today.

1)Changed to automatically synch from manual synch under settings.

2) Removed check marks from ALL of my music (playlists, artists, albums, etc)

3)At that point I also loaded (from the cloud icon on my phone) the ibooks app (because I kept getting a message "cannot synch books because you don't have the app installed" and whenever that warning came up I noticed the indicator as to how much data was in each of the categories on my phone would resort to what it was before I removed the check marks in my music).

4)I then synched and although I had removed the check mark, the only music left on my phone was the "purchased' playlist. 

5)I then turned my phone all the way off and then back on again, then plugged it into my macmini (mavericks) and let it synch automatically.  Then I started putting my check marks back in my playlists, resynched and VOILA!! everything I checked got synched!!!!

OK, I've been playing with iTunes for several hours now.  I tried deleting all the songs on my iPhone.  I can't.  Seems there are about 15 to 56 songs (depending on where I look) that stay on my phone no matter what I try to do.

Oh, Yea, I updated to iTunes 11.1.5

Here is what I'm getting.  After deleting all of my Playlists and trying to delete all of the songs on my iPhone, (Note: there are still a lot of songs left on my phone that I can't find a way to delete.)  I created a new Playlist.  Note: I only have one playlist.  Here is what I have right now.

My library has 2616 songs, including 666 purchased songs.

    • Only one purchased song from my iPhone.

The Playlist I created for my iPhone has 1797 songs.

Clicking on the iPhone in "Devices" reveals "Music" and a folder with the name "iPhone"

         and the Playlist titled "iPhone Playlist" as residing in the iPhone folder.

Clicking on Music shows 1803 songs

    • (or 6 songs more than the Playlist)

While in "Device," if I click on 'Music' (instead of Summary), it shows 1802 songs on my iPhone.

    • (or 5 songs more than the Playlist)

Opening "Music" on my iPhone and finding the number of songs I find 1851 songs.

    • (or 54 songs more than the Playlist)

What gives?  There is no correlation between any of them.

Why Can't I select which songs go on my iPhone from a Playlist? 

      ( I thought that was the whole purpose of a Playlist. )

Where are these other songs coming from?

I really don't want to go through one-at-a-time and find the duplicates

This is really frustrating.  Not only do the extra songs eat up memory, but, if I wanted them, I would have selected them.  I would just like to have ONE location where I can find out what music is going to go onto my iPhone.

PS, the good news is, the clouds seem to have disappeared on the songs I deleted from my iPhone.

Hello everyone.  Like you, my playlists would not sync and it was driving me nuts!  What finally worked for me was:

1. Go into Itunes

2. Select the playlists that are not syncing properly

3. make sure that there is a check mark next to each song

4. Apply and re-sync your device

This worked for me and hopefully works for everyone.  Thanks!

Found what worked for us...go to your phone music

our problem was 1 device, the iPhone 5S, had 15 songs showing in the playlists same as other devices but were showing in the cloud and we couldn't get them to play or download.  Tried deleting them, putting them back in, wiping out the playlists from this phone then re-installing, and all the tricks on the board but nothing worked.  Here's what did finally work for us:

on the iPhone music,  click 'More'

then under "Shared" there were 2 options, 1) it had the name of his phone checked and then 2) the name of my music library but it wasn't checked

I checked the name of my music library and sync'd phone and all songs that were in the cloud downloaded to the playlists

Now this iPhone has all the same songs downloaded in the playlists and work just like all of my other devices - I hope this works for someone else.  This took hours to figure out....really, Apple?  does it need to be this complicated?