Some unchecked smart playlists syncing

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Level 3

955 points

Some unchecked smart playlists syncing

Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated!

My iTunes is set to sync only selected playlists with my iPhone. While all of my checked playlists sync, so do some of the unchecked playlists as well. The only unchecked playlists that sync are smart playlists. Also, not all of the contents of the unchecked playlists sync. For example, one smart playlist has over 1,000 tracks on iTunes but that playlist on the iPhone only contains 11 tracks.

I thought perhaps if a track was contained in a checked playlist and present in an unchecked playlist, iTunes was forcing the appearance of the other playlists on the iPhone. While I still think there's a connection, spot checks show tracks which exist in checked playlists appear in other unchecked playlists which are not present on iPhone.

Running iTunes 8.0.2 on the Mac, 1st gen iPhone version 2.2 (5G77)

2.5Ghz MBP, 1.42Ghz Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Feb 4, 2009 5:50 PM

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Answer 1

Damon M.

Level 4

3,705 points

Feb 4, 2009 5:58 PM in response to Douglas Weber

One thing that might help.

When you connect your iphone to itunes, try setting it to manually manage.
Remove the playlists from the iphone that you do not want.

Now try syncing the playlists that you want.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Douglas Weber Author

Level 3

955 points

Feb 4, 2009 6:59 PM in response to Damon M.

Thanks for the suggestion, but no joy. While I was successful in deleting the unchecked playlists when in manual mode, they reappeared went switched back to syncing selected playlists. The only difference is that now a few more unchecked smart playlists are now on the iPhone.

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Answer 3

Feb 12, 2009 8:41 AM in response to Douglas Weber

I have this too... but my playlists are empty. Even after telling iTunes to not sync ANY music they're still there.

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Answer 4

Feb 19, 2009 8:54 AM in response to Douglas Weber

My iPhone just started syncing what appears to be playlists I had set up to sync with my old iPod. I have tried checking/unchecking playlists, still it syncs whatever it feels like.

I haven't tried syncing the old iPod, who knows maybe it will sync the iPhone playlists! Frustrating.

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Answer 5

Feb 19, 2009 9:01 AM in response to George Coghill

I just remembered that I recently added info to the Comments field for some songs to help with sorting Smart Playlists, but nothing that should have added new dependent Smart Playlists. But maybe I am missing a loop of logic here, and I did something to change the dependencies.

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Answer 6

Feb 20, 2009 9:00 AM in response to George Coghill

I fixed this by attaching my iPhone, unchecking ALL of my synced items, running a sync, then went back and re-enabled the syncs. Finally got rid of those pesky unwanted smart playlists.

Note that if you just uncheck the master checkbox for each section (Music, TV, Podcasts, etc.) when you re-check that box all the sub-items you had checked will be maintained.

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Answer 7

wildkoba

Level 1

0 points

Mar 9, 2009 10:47 PM in response to Douglas Weber

i've been having the same problem with my iphone/itunes. i erased what i had and re-loaded, tried manual sync, etc. to no avail.

here's something i noticed:

i have a smart playlist called "jazz". it's unchecked for iphone syncing purposes. however, i have a "coltrane" smart list that IS checked. for whatever reason, the unchecked jazz list is prompted to show up on my phone, but only with songs that appear on other, checked playlists. so the miles davis songs that belong under the jazz list don't appear on my phone, because they're not synced up on another playlist. it doesn't appear like the songs themselves are being doubled; just the playlist(s) they're on.

but still...doesn't make sense the way it looks.

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