Q: iTunes 12.2 keeps duplicating playlists. How do I make it stop?

Does anyone know how to delete 8400 duplicates of a genius playlist? iTunes only lets me delete one at a time!

Windows or Mac? What is the name of the list? Do all copies have exactly the same name? Are they all at the top level, not in a folder? Do you have Apple Music or iTunes Match?

tt2

Hi,

I have iTunes 12.3.2.35 64-bit (Windows 7) and an iPhone 6 (iOS 9.2.1 (13D20). Over the last few days, my iPhone has had problems synching over iTunes. While fortunately my Outlook appointments are synching with my iPhone calendar, I can't get iTunes to get past "Step 4 of 8"; iTunes freezes when transferring purchases from "iPhone".  It just hangs and never finishes. And, it looks like my iPhone hasn't backed up for a few days.

I have tried turning the iPhone on and off and restarting the computer to no avail.

I don't know what's gone wrong; it had been working fine, except for recently duplicating a few playlists endlessly...actually, it's duplicated at least one of them over 8400 times! I don't think anything to do with the "cloud" is on. Ctrl-Alt-Delete says iTunes is "not responding". iTunes seems to be functioning sort-of, but is extremely slow at reacting.

The name of the genius playlist is Based On: Be Together (feat. Wild Belle). All copies have the same name followed by an incremental number afterwards. They are not in a folder. I have "Music" on my phone and iTunes on my desktop.

Solutions are appreciated.

Thanks,

Derek

I've two scripts which might help you clean up: KillEmptyPlaylists and KillTopLevelPlaylists. The second should work if you can move all the playlists you want to keep inside playlist folders. Alternatively I could write a new script that targets a particular repeated playlist name that you could enter. (But not at 2am )

tt2

Thanks; please see my edited post above. The playlist is called:

Based On: Be Together (feat. Wild Belle)

and is followed by a sequential number.

thx.

Hi turingtest2, I would be hugely grateful if you have a few minutes to write a script to help me get rid the repeated copies of my following genius playlist:

Based On: Be Together (feat. Wild Belle)

I now have 8500 copies of this on my desktop and about 4000 on my iPhone. When I manually delete some they reappear next time I sync along with hundreds more. I have no idea what to do about this. Sigh.

Hi.

The script is ready as KillNamedPlaylists. The Based On: bit displayed in the playlist header for a Genius playlist isn't part of the playlist name. Enter Be Together as the search text. This should be able to clean out all of the duplicate lists in iTunes.

Since I haven't seen this problem personally I'm not certain if syncing will remove all of the copies on the iPhone, or copy them back into your library. I can extend the script to clean up on a connected device if needed.

tt2

Thank you! I'm assuming the script should be run while iTunes is open. It is deleting the the redundant playlists at a rate of about one per three seconds or so. I took my son to hockey and we're now down from 8500 to about 7650. Looks like I should let it run all night.

Very much appreciated. I spent two hours on the phone with Apple today and they were flabbergasted by my problem. They'd never seen this before.

You're obviously talented and knowledgeable. If you have the ability to also write something that could remove the 4000 redundant versions on my iPhone 6, that would be wicked awesome.

Thx!

Hi. Yes in general my scripts will open iTunes if it isn't already running. I've extended the script so that it now scans all sources connected to iTunes as well as the library itself. You will need to switch the device into manually managed mode for the script to be able to delete playlists from it, otherwise the attempt generates an error. Download a fresh copy and set it to work again when you have the time to let it run. You can put the device back into automatic sync mode afterwards. Despite the warning it should remember all of the prior sync selections so should finish quickly without deleting or reloading any media.

tt2

Thanks @turningtest2. I have followed your instructions and your lisp works well. However, unfortunately, even when I delete the corrupted playlist from both my desktop iTunes library and from my iTunes view of my iPhone 6, it does not take it actually off the iPhone 6 and, during a sync, places thousands of copies of the playlist back into the "on my device" view in iTunes on my desktop. If I don't run your lisp while it's doing this, and let it accumulate thousands of copies, iTunes starts to use all 16 GB of RAM on this newish, fast desktop. Syncing takes well over ten minutes. Running three copies of the lisp at once during sync helps speed things up; the lisp finishes and then I have to start it again as the playlists continue to duplicate during sync.

I've been trying to take off copies of the playlist off my iPhone (directly by using my iPhone), but I still have 3200 copies to go. It is taking a while to do that one by one....

Thanks,

Derek

drubinoff wrote:

 

... I've been trying to take off copies of the playlist off my iPhone (directly by using my iPhone), but I still have 3200 copies to go. It is taking a while to do that one by one....

I'm not surprised.

The updated version of the script was able to remove lists from my iPhone as long as I had it in manually managed mode. Sorry it doesn't appear to have done the trick for you.

Having got the library clean rather than deleting one by one on the device I'd be tempted to use the following approach:

1. Backup the device.
2. Restore as a new device (factory settings).
3. Restore backup taken earlier.

tt2

Hi TT2,

Rather than doing a restore, I turned on "sync music" again within iTunes while selecting my iPhone/Music. Oddly, it actually synced normally and wiped out all the thousands of duplicate playlists! I have no idea why it actually worked this time. Now, after a rough week, it's back to normal (I think).

I thought I had already tried this a few days earlier to no avail. I'm not sure why it worked this time.

Thanks for all your help; maybe your lisp did actually fix it.

-Derek

You're welcome.

It is VBScript rather than Lisp. I had a brief play with Lisp about 30 years ago when I had a BBC Master 128. Car, cdr and lots of brackets are about all I can remember.

tt2

I had the same problem and this is what I tried, which seems to have worked for me.

For very Playlist I created as well as the Recently Added and Recently Played Playlists, I switched the view to "Songs".

That is, not "Albums", not "Artists", not "Composers", not "Genres".

This problem is corrected easily. Step 1: remove all occurrences of the duplicated playlists. Step 2a: attach your iPod (or iPhone) and select "restore iPod" (or "restore iPhone"), and set it up as a "new iPod".  Step 2b: go to a movie or eat dinner because "step 2a" often takes a long time to finish waiting for iTunes to download and re-install iPod/iPhone software to factory settings.  Step 3: disconnect the iPod/iPhone and answer all of those once-only questions (like language=English, etc.) that you had to answer when it was brand new. Step 4: reconnect the iPod/iPhone and select "sync" in iTunes.  These actions will delete all files on your iPod (including the files that cause the repeated playlists to appear), but don't worry that you will be losing anything permanently. As long as the files are already in your iTunes library on your computer, they will be copied back cleanly to your iPod after you perform these steps.  Added bonus: doing this usually clears out a bunch of cruft that might have accumulated on your iPod/iPhone, so you will typically have much more storage space on it now!