MacOs Catalina add music manually on iPhone 11

The answer to my earlier question is yes - after doing a Mac restart, the stubborn tracks now copy from Mac Music to my iPhone,

not ideal solution but it's a better workaround than making playlists!!!!

I just updated to Catalina and updated my iPhone and have also discovered this problem. Thanks to all who wrote about this because I thought I was going crazy.

To everyone who suggests "Just turn on Manage Music manually" please stop. You're missing the point. Here's what I've discovered. Perhaps someone from Apple will take note? BTW - I'm writing " iTunes" in place of the new "MUSIC" name for the app.

• I can no longer Drag and Drop songs from iTunes into my iPhone, unless the songs have been in the library for a while. I have no clue why that is. If I download an album from Bandcamp and import it into iTunes, I can't then copy it into my iPhone via Drag and Drop. Also, the same issue occurs when I rip a newly purchased CD into iTunes.
• I can make a Playlist of the newly downloaded album (simply by dragging the entire album into the left sidebar of iTunes). Then I can drag and drop that playlist into the iPhone, but why in the world would anyone consider that an improvement? And why hide that information from users?
• For those who mentioned using a Right Click and choosing Add To Device -- again, that only seems to work with older tracks. With my newly ripped or downloaded tracks, Add to Device is either not available (if I'm clicking on the songs) or greyed out in the menu bar.
• Another weird thing - I can't Drag and Drop tracks from my Desktop into iTunes if I'm in the "Recently Added" window. I can Drag and Drop from my desktop to iTunes if I'm in the Songs window. Seems odd. MLately I've been using the menubar's IMPORT function instead when bringing a new album into iTunes.

BTW - I generally listen to entire albums, so making Playlists of select songs is not something I do. Perhaps Apple has forgotten that people purchase and listen to entire albums?

One more weird thing - this recent upgrade also changes how Apple's Carplay looks in my car. Generally, the improvements there are excellent. However, the need to import via Playlists into my iPhone has an unintended impact. Now, when I select Recently Added from the Music App in Carplay, all my new albums have two icons - one for the album and another from the Playlist of the album. So I only see half as many albums at once. That's annoying.

I have discovered that I can manually delete the Playlists from within my iPhone and it doesn't delete the song files. In fact, a user's ability to manage songs and playlists within the iPhone has improved, which is lucky because this screw up with the iTunes/Music app sucks big time. Something tells me the people who did this don't actually listen to full albums. They just build Playlists from lots of songs. If you do that, this might all seem fine.

I have not found any other workarounds that are reliable for this issue.

Did you try the solution mentioned below?

On your iPhone: Go to Settings -> Music -> Turn off "Sync Downloads"

On your Mac: Open Music app -> Preferences -> uncheck "Sync Library"

Now, simply drag and drop songs directly onto your device icon on the left (make sure device is highlighted as you hover over while dropping)

This worked for me post Catalina with new songs as well.

I made a very detailed reply describing what i ended up doing but the post button hung up on me and the reply was lost.

In short is this: I don't see any intention from Apple to fix the problem so i gave up, i made 1 playlist and all the music i want on the iphone on the mac, i add and remove the music manually from that playlist and sync only that playlist over wifi. hope this helps anybody else stuck with this.

I was able to manually add music to by iPhone 7 after a restart of everything.

but No update fixes the terrible design.

Yep! Drag and drop works with playlists too. The songs show up right away.

This is beyond frustrating. I wish there was a page (if there is, point me to it please) with bug issues with each release. Had I known about this bug, i would NOT have updated to Catalina last night.

I rely heavily on creating/modifying playlists on my iMac, and with iTunes (music) matching, my playlists then appear on all my devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch)

it's much easier to click and drag as we were able to do in iTunes.

No Bueno Apple. Fix this !!!

My workaround is to create the playlist on my iPhone and with iTunes (music) matching, it appears on all my devices, including my iMac. However, I can't add tracks to the newly created playlist from anywhere but my iPhone.

UGH

I think people are missing the point. Catalina doesn't allow you to manually manage your music. You have to sync to be able to manage any playlists.

It is very inconsistent now. After doing every update and restarting several times I am able to click and drag only full albums that were added before the updates. Better than before when nothing would transfer in manual mode. New stuff I have added will not transfer, but shockingly anything newly purchased from Apple Music transfers just fine. I agree the new interface is horrible. Ironically my whole reason for choosing Apple many years ago was because of the music management interface. It was the best in the biz. I have no problem buying music from Apple. But I have 500+ cds I like to listen to on my phone too. This Catalina platform seems to want me to repurchase all of my collection to make it mobile. Not fair Apple. Why do this? Just for a little more money? Stock price? I'd love to know the logic behind it all. Or is this just a dumb mistake by a really dumb software engineer? Sounds like your going to loose some folks over this, or at the very least have a lot of folks time machine back to the last OSX. I'd like to see iTunes come back. I'd like to see it but back the way it was. The interface was easy and very user friendly. See what the next update brings I guess.....

I'm still not able to manually add music, even with the suggestions above.

In addition to not being able to drag-and-drop, the "Add to Device" item is grayed out in the "Song" menu even though my phone is attached and showing in the left pane under Devices.

I believe this is a bug. The expected behavior is that if your device is attached you should be able to manually add songs to that device (unless perhaps there is some copyright management, but that isn't the case here).

I suggest EVERYONE download the Apple Support app from the App Store and flood their customer service reps with complaints about not being able to manually manage their own music on their iPhones. All these sessions are recorded. All the subject data is collected. This may get Apples attention.

I have tried everything suggested here and nothing works well at all. I tried the sync and non-sync methods and they still won't add random files of music, not just to playlists but to my phone. I'm on all the latest software updates, so that shouldn't be the problem.

I also signed up for Apple Cloud thinking that would help. It doesn't.

When I have tried to add music/playlist to my iPhone, via the finder and Apple Music, it takes forever and then some files won't transfer so I have to unplug and restart the manual sync. Then the system switches all of the "sync" options (phone and laptop) to "on." Then it starts the process all over again.

This morning, I tried this again:

bandic00t wrote:

Did you try the solution mentioned below?

On your iPhone: Go to Settings -> Music -> Turn off "Sync Downloads"

On your Mac: Open Music app -> Preferences -> uncheck "Sync Library"

Now, simply drag and drop songs directly onto your device icon on the left (make sure device is highlighted as you hover over while dropping)

This worked for me post Catalina with new songs as well.

It totally messed everything up and when I re-synced, of course it took forever and then there were STILL files on the iPhone that I had to manually download in the music app on the phone - playlist by playlist.

I added a CD yesterday and it wouldn't add to my iPhone until I synced. Well, some did and some did not. This was after trying to drag and drop the playlist I made of that CD to my iPhone via the finder. They all should have added since they were all imported from the same CD in the same format.

Speaking of which, there are many audio files that just refuse to sync and/or get dropped manually in the finder. They were fine before this horrible update.

I'm tired of fighting with Apple Music and my iPhone every time I want to add new music. Not only does it not work correctly, but it takes forever. I'm done.

I'm going to look for a third party app/software and simply delete everything from Apple Music and re-upload my music to that.

If anyone has any links to music apps/software, that would be great.

If that doesn't work, the next time I upgrade my phone I'll switch to Android.

Seriously Apple, you really screwed this one up and you don't even seem to care. :(

and last time this happened if i restarted my computer i could actually move music to my phone! imagine!!!!

But obviously restarting my entire computer every time i want to put a playlist on my phone... ugggggg...... i'll try this later and report back if that is even the case.

There's still no way to add individual songs to your phone from a desktop, as you did previously in iTunes under IOS 13.4 and Catalina 10.15.4. A giant step backwards for Apple, who just doesn't care about restoring this much needed feature. They obviously just want you to subscribe to their streaming service instead, which I will never do. Especially after this.

Easy, plug phone into Mac, open up your music library, right click on song that you want to transfer to iPhone.Pick( send to device)should show up as your iPhone name.click on that and Voila!