Duplicate songs on iPhone 12 Pro Max after syncing

You would think, but no such luck. I do the same thing, backing up to the PC. I just have more info on my phone than the cloud would allow me to back up, so I just do it on the computer. I think I found a way around it though. I unchecked the "sync all music" box and synced my phone. Then I went to Settings-General-iPhone Storage. I hit the Music section and there's an All Music section and a thing for each artist. Next to the "Music" label above the all songs part is an edit button. I hit that and deleted all songs. They still showed up on the phone, but as downloadable songs rather than actually being in the phone. I synced my phone again after I deleted all of the songs and it put the songs in the right places with no duplicates. None that I've found anyway. I have over 10k songs, so I didn't check one by one. It put the songs in their rightful place instead of downloading them or putting in a duplicate where one is there and the other is a download. Give that a try and see if it works. I don't think you have to uncheck the sync music box since you don't have to sync it before you delete everything. Unless you have songs on there that you purchased but aren't on iTunes yet. Otherwise, just go into your settings, delete all your songs then resync your phone to iTunes. Its not ideal, but by that point, I was desperate and figured I'd give it a shot. Lo and behold, it worked. Hopefully it works for you!

Give my solution a try. I had the exact same problem. I'd uncheck sync music, but it would show I still had all of my music on there. Thing was, the listing of the song was on there, but I'd have to download it. Give it a shot. Next time you sync, uncheck the music you want to sync and sync your phone. Unplug your phone from the computer if its plugged in, delete all the music on your phone, recheck the music you want to sync and sync your phone. That should do it. Fingers crossed, of course.

A couple of quick questions. Which iPhone are you using and when you deleted the music app, did you delete it from the icon on your home screen or in settings? If you delete the icon from your homescreen, it doesn't get rid of the info, just the icon itself. Like all the other apps that comes packaged with the iPhone, you're basically "hiding" the icon and not deleting anything. If you're on iOS 14.whatever, There should be an option in the same area that says "Delete App" in red. You can reinstall the Music app, then resync your music to your phone. It'll take a while with 400GB+, but that should do it. Looking at it now, there's a warning that says it "can't be undone". That's true, you can't just reverse it, but you CAN resync your iTunes library to your phone. Deleting it from your phone won't just delete it from iTunes because, as far as I'm aware, Apple doesn't have any wizards on the payroll. It could also be that your phone sees the 400GB, thinks about it for a minute and just "nope"s out. Start simple and work your way up. Restart the phone. If that doesn't work, do a soft reset. If THAT doesn't work, delete the music app from that same screen: Genereal-iPhone Storage-Music-All Songs. If you have any downloaded music on your phone that isn't on iTunes yet, download it to iTunes first. Otherwise you'll have to go through and download it on your phone and I would imagine hunting those down would not be fun either.

I'd give it a try again and see what happens after you uncheck all the music. When I did it, it got rid of the duplicates and all that was left was the little cloud icon next to each song. That's when I went in and deleted all the music from my phone so it was a completely clean slate. Then I synced my music again. It took 2 or 3 times before it all got put on there, so it might be a pain for you.

I didn't do it like that, sadly. I backed up my old phone and just restored from a backup and ended up with duplicates for some reason, even thought it was a brand new out of the box phone with nothing on it. Are your duplicates the 70% or is it all of them? I guess it doesn't really matter too much. 30% of 400GB is still a lot of music to go through and delete, especially if it happens every time you sync your phone. If you can, start completely fresh. Uncheck sync music, sync it 2 or 3 times just to be sure, then check the music app. If it has the little download cloud next to it, try deleting everything through the delete all music thing, then plug it back in and sync up your music again. Short of that, I'm running out of ideas. The nuclear option might be the way to go at some point if none of this works. I hope it doesn't come to that though.

Huh. We have basically the same phone, so it should be working. I'm thinking maybe a soft reset would help. A soft reset is like force restarting a computer. Not sure how much you know about computers, but it basically clears the memory so whatever junk is in there gets dumped out. Nothing gets deleted or changes, it just gives your phone a...."cleaner", I guess, way of working so its not having to work passed all the stuff that might have built up in the memory. After you delete your music, is there music still there but with the cloud icon to redownload it or is your library just empty? Sorry if I end up asking any dumb questions. Since I can't see the screen, I just want to make sure I don't miss something on my end. You can try a soft reset and try deleting your music again to see if that clears anything up. If not, the only thing I can think of is, when you plug into iTunes, uncheck your music, sync it (which might take two attempts or more since that happens to me when I try to put new music on it), eject your phone then try deleting again. Or at least check the storage to see if its gone. If it is, plug it in and try resyncing your music. As a last resort, (and I mean LAST if we can't figure something out), would be to do a full reset of the phone. Back it up, reset, then restore it from the backup. But again, that's a hail mary, can't think of anything else, I'm going to punch a wall soon type option. Let's try a few other things first.

So first dumb question. Did you go into iTunes, uncheck all the music, sync your phone and made sure the duplicates were gone but still had your library on the phone? If you did, the next thing I'd try is uncheck the music and create a backup. After you uncheck it and have a backup ready, eject the phone from iTunes and try deleting the music again from the music settings thing like the original solution. It might have the info of the music, but not the music itself so your phone won't have a fit and refuse to delete anything. It might just delete the info on the phone. After that, you can plug your phone back in and try resyncing your music to your phone and if that doesn't work, restore it from the backup.

No problem. Don't forget to delete all music after you uncheck and sync your music. That should (hopefully) get rid of the duplicates that are on there already.