macOS Catalina TV app not showing my iTunes library

I had have the exact same problem since October and I have been through multiple chats, long phone calls, emails and levels of support.  I’ve been ghosted a few times by the assigned support analysts and cut off in the middle of conversations without a call back or follow-up.   I still do not have a solution. 

Characteristics of my (our) problem: 

• I have an extremely large library of purchased Movies and TV Shows
• My library IS NOT showing on the AppleTV App Library Tab in macOS Catalina or TvOS 13. 
• If search for and download content, it does appear in the MacOS library tab (except for iTunes Extras)  
  • While this is a clunky workaround; this is terrible browsing experience and I don’t want to take up all the room on my local drives.  I also don’t remember everything I’ve purchased and want the experience of looking through my catalog as I use to be able to do.  
  • Removing the downloaded content is also different. Instead of ‘Remove Download’ the only option I have is ‘Delete from Library’ which moves the content to Trash.  
• My library IS showing in the AppleTV App on iOS 13 and iPadOS 13
• I’ve upgraded to the latest versions on all platforms
• My Music Library works as expected in the Music App on all platforms.  I can view all my purchased Music Content (of which I also have a large purchased library).  I also have Apple Music and iTunes Match subscriptions which seem to be working fine.  
• I started to receive the “We couldn’t make your purchases available. Click on the retry button” error in iTunes on MacOS before even upgrading to Catalina (after I upgraded to iPadOS 13).  I thought upgrading MacOS might fix that error but it instead removed all my content.  
• My TV/Movie Library doesn’t work on my iMac or my MacBook.  I even performed a clean install on both but that didn’t change the behavior.   I do not think this is not a specific hardware issue.  
• Even though I had hidden a few Movies and TV Shows a long time ago, 99% of my content was never hidden.   Now my Apple ID is not showing anything hidden so I wasn’t able to try to un-hide anything as a solution.  
• With my Apple ID…. I’ve deauthorized, re-authorized, signed out, signed in, changed passwords, turned sync on and off (Music App preferences) many times but none ever changed the behavior. 
• I created a new Apple ID and purchased a movie and a tv show on it.  Using that new ID, my purchased content showed in the Library on MacOS and TVOS.  So, I think this proves that its an issue with my primary Apple ID and I’m suspecting it because of the amount of content I’ve purchased.   Again… THIS WORKS FOR ME IF I CREATE A NEW APPLE ID AND PURCHASE NEW CONTENT.  
• Lastly,  I haven’t been able to figure out how to get to my iTunes Extra content while streaming from the Watch Now tab or downloading the content.   Even if I search for one of my purchased movies and get to the Movie ‘store’ view, I can play or download the Movie from there but the iTunes Extra is just the dummy table of content view.  

TadMarshall:

My issues on iPad and iPhone went away with 13.1, so may be an issue where yours just finally updated and cleared out whatever was messed up.

A couple more points:

• My AppleTV 4Ks also don't show my purchases in the AppleTV app under Library. Like everyone else, they show up under purchased movies/tv shows.
• I have over 3500 movies and 150 tv shows in my purchased library, so the number of purchases most definitely makes a difference.
• Upper tier support stopped responding to me. I finally sent another email, cc'd to Tim Cook's email. Been over a week and still nothing.
• On machines (Mac and Windows) that I haven't signed out of iCloud, I see my library as it was in late October with all purchased content, but they are grayed out and it can't connect me to my purchases." It also doesn't show me any new purchases since October (of which there are several.)
• On machines where I did sign out of iCloud and back in to try and reconnect (one of the first things support asked me to do), I get this:

The number of people noticing they have this issue is growing. When will Apple change whatever is borked on the servers for us? Is it possible that those of us with this issue are mapped to the same server cluster and it's a "localized" problem?

I sent this thread to some Apple execs a couple days ago. Apple exec relations reached out to me yesterday to arrange a call with an engineer who will gather logs & details from me. It's something I guess. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I've investigated the tvOS logs while reproducing the error. Seems like a server side timeout to me. (I had to attach the log messages because the ridiculous Apple discussion forum gives me this error: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted.")

You'll notice there's a URL in there that times out. I hit it with a browser and with curl to see what was happening and I instantly got back an HTTP 500 Internal Error response. That could mean something significant or absolutely nothing depending on how the service is constructed.

Just got off the phone with my Apple contact. They have “officially confirmed” that this is a server side problem. The recommendation is to ensure that our Macs remain updated - the fix will eventually come thru. No official timeline of course.

I think this confirmation is a big first step so I’m pretty satisfied. Hopefully we will see our fix in the next update release.

I'm not 100% sure what's up yet but on my MacBook after updating to 10.15.4 and leaving the Music app and TV app open overnight, today I'm finally seeing all of my content in my library on the TV App Library tab. Recent, Movies and TV. 3,376 items 9.19 TB. All cloud based and showing in my library as I would expect. This is the first time since October that I have had access to my library without going to purchase history on any of my MacOS devices.

However, its still not showing on my iMac after going to 10.15.4 and not showing on my Apple TV. I'll update again when I know more.

Has anyone tried Apple Customer Relations yet: 1-800-767-2775? I haven't gone down that rabbit hole but if we have our facts straight this may be an approach.

Dear TadMarshall,

I've found how to locate all missing library. Go to TV app, under "account", log into "Family Purchases", and locate all your previous library. You'd have to manually "re-download" your shows and movies!

Let me add to this horrific mess. I was able to finally see my movies, by choosing to unhide everything in the account page. I did the same for TV shows, but it forced me to unhide each one separately, and that was a lot of music. TV shows will not allow me to unhide, so I am waiting for that to work. Music also wants me to download everything, again, even though I showed the preference pane where my library is at.

Also, where in the **** is all the downloading going? I bought a new song, downloaded it, yet it does not show up in my any folder on my iMac or external drive. I am loosing a lot of space on my internal drive, while my library is on the external, WHY? The iMac said I ran out of space, yet in each app, I have specified the library is on the external drive and restarted each app. Movie, Music, TV are all ignoring the preference and downloading to my internal drive, plus, the titles never show up on a search, where are they going????? I can not have them downloading to my internal drive, I am working on my Grad degree and use the very little space I have for that work. Apple if your reading this, this is causing a huge issue with my course work. If your apps are eating up space, that I can not see to manage, this is a big problem.

After waiting a day, for the Apple server farm to catch up, my TV is now populating. But I appreciate your comment. I have always found clean-my-mac to be equivalent to a virus-really being serious. if you think it is adguard, try Kablock it works well for me.

I'm confused by what you meant by this:

"once I made changes, I could see a couple of thumbnails, so quit the app, left it alone till he next day, and everything caught up fast."

I created a new admin user and launched the TV app - I signed in with my Apple ID - and the Library is still empty. It behaves identically to my default/main user account. I guess I can leave it alone for a day but my newly formatted Mac mini has had the same problem.

I anticipate that the problem is due to code in the macOS TV app that breaks because of large libraries. I say this because I don't have this problem in iOS 13.1 or tvOS 13.1.

I gave that same instruction further back in the thread, some of these users are beyond that now, as they performed this instruction and same issue persists. If the same issue persists in a new admin user, and they are close enough to a Genius Bar, then it is logical to use the expert advise, as the answer lies in an issue greater than a new clean admin user. One person in this thread performed a fresh install of the Catalina OS and still had the same issue, again, this would be something an in-person visit would really help with, since the frustrated user is close enough to a genius bar. Many people are visual learners, and no amount of instruction from this thread will help them, this is a known element, and very okay element in the education world. The visual help of a Genius Bar, will assist them a great deal.

I am hoping I did not say something offensive. It seems we agree, this issue most likely is with Apple servers. My TV app filled in all the thumbnails, except new purchases. Strangely I had to go into the "purchases" selection, find the new purchases, and download them to make then show up in the library. This is very very inconvenient, as I did not really want to download them. I am hoping Apple reads this, and fixes this issue, when I am on my laptop I don't have the space to download new purchases. (BTW, Apple hates the use of "laptop", legal issues, heat builds up when placed in the lap, so they had to stop referring to it as lap comparable".

Hopefully everyone keeps updating any news results or issues related to the TV app and movies in general.

First time poster but I have been paying attention to this board as I have had similar issues and have had no luck for months. Although I didn't find a solution to the issue, I found something interesting and I don't think I saw it listed in the entries before (I could be wrong). I too have a large iTunes movie and tv library. Well, today I was in the Apple TV app on my MacBook, went to "account" and then "View My Account". At the top of the page I saw I thousands of movies and tv in my "Download Queue" which was odd. I clicked "Download Now" figuring "Why Not, I've tried everything else". The "Download Now" button was unresponsive, or so I thought. I clicked it a bunch of times, the button turned blue a bunch of times and then I left it for like 20 minutes. Eventually it did work. Suddenly it started downloading all of my movies and tv shows. I paused all the downloads because I prefer to stream off the cloud, and then cancelled all the downloads. So, at this point I had nothing downloading or queued. Just for the heck of it, I clicked on "library" and FINALLY I saw movies and tv shows listed. The only downside was that there was no thumbnail for anything and many titles were missing. But it was the first time anything was in the library without a download going for months. I closed the app and opened it again and once again my library was empty. Interesting, even if I'm back to square one. I'm going to try again but let it sit overnight just in case.