Catalina and iPhone playlists. Where?

I have the SAME exact problem. Apple screwed the pooch on this one! First of all, why mess with the way it worked in iTunes? Playlists with my music. Apparently, that's a concept. One would think Apple's "Music" app would contain ALL of the things "music" related, such as play lists. But nope. ONLY the things that are using their paid Music service will show up there, from what I can gather from the internet. The kicker is that IF you wanted to use their service the way they want you to, you will have to upload your ENTIRE music library to Apple's servers. and pay for that privilege after 90 days. If I did that, I'd also need to pay extra on my internet bill because it would blow my usage plan like the US's 1945 Trinity test.

My opinion is that Apple had to solve two problems: {Apple users want access like Windows/Linux users have to files on iDevices} .and. [Apple wants to replace cable TV, making another huge profit]. So, Finder has become what Windows/Linux users have been seeing forever: a half-hearted attempt to let users access their data, while keeping Apple in control of how you can access your data. Opening a Finder window is absolutely useless in this instance and was a standard response from a techie. Had the responding poster listed the steps on how to show you your playlists, then THAT would have been a proper answer to the OP's question. It's kinda like asking someone directions on a trip, them pulling out the state map and saying, "It's on here, somewheres..." as they point at the map. And then walk away.

The Music app is Apple's way of roping you into their media ecosystem, once again. iTunes must not be making enough money for Apple right now, because they sunk a bunch of money and time into this Apple TV fiasco. I have always noticed that when Apple comes out with something new, it's kinda like a skeleton with ONLY loose skin hanging off of it. Over time, it will eventually get "fleshed out" and become a proper entity. The interesting thing is that while you can still see the skeleton, you can also see where Apple is REALLY going with this new product/service. Eventually, the fleshy bits cover this up and hide the underlying skeleton, where upon most users/new users just accept that everything works great and Apple is a super-friendly company.

So, what was once a "semi-easy" thing to do (Apple can't make thing simple) is now a bastardized mess. ALL of those folks at Apple who build and test all of Apple's proprietary stuff and they can't even make it work before releasing it for public consumption. I am seriously thinking about dropping all 5 Mac computers, 3 iPads, and 2 iPhones and going back to Android/Linux. At least I KNOW I'm always going to have to be tinkering, but at a fraction of the price and headaches. AND I can even use my old Macs to run Linux!

Boy, do I miss Steve Jobs right now!!!

So now unless you automatically sync, you cannot manage your playlists on Music App as you could before in iTunes? I'll have to go in and do on the screen of my iPhone? Yuck. Not happy if this is the case.... can you please confirm that what I am surmising is true?

I have this problem also. I have gone to the product feedback page, but there is no mention of the Music app..only itunes! So i added the comment there..hopefully they will get it. not being able to manage playlist on the phone via the music app is silly.

Apple user since 1992. What have you done to iTunes? I'm one of those idiots who can't see the point of putting my whole music library on my phone or in the cloud. I used to be able to easily select and modify different playlists from my computer. I can work around it on my iphone by re-importing, and then selecting recently added to a new playlist. I have an old iPod that I'm very attached to but can't do it with that unless I delete each song one by one and then re-import a new playlist. Weirdly when I drag and drop a playlist from the computer to the 15 year old iPod it shows it, so it's doing better than the iPhone in that respect. If anyone from Apple is listening...why have you done this????!!!! Maybe you're all to young now to remember that we like to have choices.

I don't know if anyone else is seeing this but I'm on catalina 10.15.2 and it just extensively truncated one of my playlists (like cut it from ~70 songs to 12 songs). Wierd because so far it only truncated one playlist that I can see.

I have the same issue. I bought a new iMac. Transferred my music manually as I had it backed up on an external drive. My new iPhone 11 Pro Max has my playlists on it and my IMac doesn’t!!! 🙄. I have around 850 songs in my main playlist

This problem is even worse if you just want to synch individual albums--using Finder is a more than one step backwards from iTunes that provided easy navigation to add and remove songs from a device when synching. Now it is an aggravating joke with no work around.

Totally silly to 'sync' your music to all devices etc. I also manually managed my music and now I'm afraid to connect my ipod containing eons of music - not only purchased on iTunes but also from A LOT of Cd's I have in my collection that I extracted in iTunes back in the day and put on my iPod - so now I'm stuck because this finder window is NOT HELPFUL AT ALL. I gave it a try on my iphone which had only like 50 songs on it anyway and it's all gone. On top of that I am a singer so I record my own songs and have to listen to demo's and only parts of songs that I'm sent and now ALL those versions are synced to my iphone, so I have one song in 50 versions some of which 5 seconds long etc. This is not user-friendly at all Apple! Come on! WHat happened to user-friendliest, no-crashes, keeps on ticking forever??

I have about 100,000 songs on my Mac and syncing is a cumbersome concept. I used to be able to use iTunes to create and manage playlists on my iPhone with ease. Now, with Catalina and the Music app I can't. How easy it used to be to see all the content and playlists on my iPods/iPhones and manage/manipulate them manually. Now all that is gone. Sad.

I am downright angered at Apple for purposely crippling the managing of music on my IOS devices using my iMac. They likely do this to coerce us to use their streaming service. I use Spotify and will NEVER use Apple Music as I feel Apple is being unethical in its diabolical scheme to cripple music management on Macs so as to force users to subscribe to Apple Music.

Steve Jobs is crying somewhere ...