Can't play music from my iphone on itunes?

Select the iPhone in iTunes and tick *Manually manage music*.

When you tick *Manually manage music*, it turns off syncing.

If you uncheck *Manually manage music*, that box will appear.
When you *Manually manage music*, nothing will be put on the iPod.

I've got the same problem. I think what we are saying is the computer we want to play out iTunes music from is NOT the same computer we also use to manually sync our music from. e.g. sync at home mac, but want to play at work Mac.

So as soon as you tell your work mac, please manage music manually and click apply it only offers you the choice to cancel OR erase the whole iPhone - Not the desired result.

On my old iPod I could happilly play music on any Mac once I had set it to be manually managed.

Plug it into your at home and select *Manually manage music*.
When you plug it into your computer at work, it will simply show up in iTunes and not sync anything.

I have the same problem. My iPhone is set to Manually Manage at home. However, at work (a DIFFERENT location and DIFFERENT computer)will NOT allow me to check that box that say "Manually Manage Music" without trying to erase all my songs.

This is very frustrated, all I want to do is play some music from the library of my iPhone. It's not like I'm trying to rip anyone off or anything... arrg

Message was edited by: Margret Li

Same here,

@home I Checked the box: manually manage music..
I even stopped all syncing my iphone does.. (programs, email, photo's etc..)

Still it won't give me the ability to hear music from my phone's library @work.. works like a charm @home..
@work I see the box unchecked..
when I check it, it asks me if I want to format..

Message was edited by: W.grafi

to see (and play) music from ipod on itunes
you have to go on "my computer", you open the ipod, go in option the file options, you check sow hidden files, you open the file "ipod control" that just appeared on your ipod and the musics are inside...

and:
in itunes you have to click on te ipod on "use the ipod as harddisk" but you can only do that on the owners computer...

hope it helped... enjoy!

I'm a mac user..

I don't want to copy/touch/harm any files to hear the music..
It is already on there in a library of the ipod/iphone..
Just want to play it in Itunes..

Using an iphone as a harddisk isn't possible yet, without third party help..

Message was edited by: W.grafi

I have been having the same problem... And basically what I was finally told by the folks at the apple store, is that there is no way to do this without syncing, and I don't want to sync. I want my music to be mobile, I don't want to have to copy it to every computer I want to listen to it on. I want to listen to it from the device, and be able to buy a new album at work or at home. This is a major disappointment for me, as every other device I have owned including my iPod Touch had this capability. I could authorize 5 machines and manually sync, and the music on that device could be played and managed on those authorized machines. For example, my wife has her own music collection, and I have mine, but we have a media center connected to our flat-screen in the living room, that we use for playing music when we are entertaining guests, and with our old iPods and iPod Touch devices, we could unplug one of our devices and plug the other persons in and listen to music from both our libraries without copying the music to that computer. Now with our iPhones there is no way to keep our seperate librarys and be able to play music on multiple computers in our house and at work, which we have always been able to do until our iPhones. The whole point of the iPhone for me was to be able to combine two devices and now because of the lack of this feature I still have to keep all our iPods around too... Dumb. I almost took our phones back because of this, and if apple doesn't fix it, I probably won't buy another. They should have at least mentioned this little fact before selling the devices to us. I know it's a different device, but it's similar enough that you expect it to work the same as the iPod and iPod Touch. It's not like I am wanting to be able to copy music from the device to multiple machines, it's exactly the opposite... I just want to be able to copy music to the device and listen to it at home and at work... why all apples other devices do this, and the iPhone doesn't is completely perplexing to me, and a serious oversight on there part.

Sorry about the rant, but I just spent almost a thousand dollars on these iPhones for me and my wife, and for the functionality we are used to on our iPods and iPod Touches to now be gone from what I expected to be a more advanced device is a really hard pill to swallow 😉.

No answer on this yet? Is there a reason why this is not allowed? Though minor I agree it is very frustrating for many of the reasons you all described above. But hey we got Google Street View in time for the holiday season because thats such a useful addition to the phone. Ability to play your music from you device on your home and work computer? Cut Copy and Paste? Nope, those don't work well for slick ads.

Its strange that its just the phone? as I guess I could see this as a way of limiting people from putting other peoples music on their devices.

It shouldn't have anything to do with copying music that isn't yours, because that's not a problem with the iPod and iPod Touch, they already function this way. You can't play or copy other peoples music from iTunes anyway, because of the protected file type, besides as I already stated, I am not complaining about being able to copy music from my device... I only want to be able to play my music, and put music from different stores, or from my CDs, on the device, without always having to wait until I get home. Syncing isn't an option for me because of the separate library my wife and I keep, as well as the fact that combining our libraries would make the library to large to fit on both our devices. She got the 8GB and I got the 16GB. I don't see this as a minor thing, I think this is a very major problem with this device. Maybe it's apples way of trying to force people to pay for their mobile me service, but what if your library is larger than your than your devices storage space... That's easily conceivable, with applications, photos, music, contact, etc. all taking up space on the device... Then auto syncing becomes an unviable option, as it has for me. Like I keep saying, it wouldn't be so irritating if every other mobile device I have ever owned couldn't do it, but they all can, including my iPod and iPod Touch... So again I say *** 😉.