Level 1

34 points

Duplicate songs on iPhone 12 Pro Max after syncing

I just got my phone and, after setting it up, tried to restore it from a backup. It kind of worked, but most of the music was still missing. Since I didn't want to go through the thousands of songs I have and redownload them one by one, I decided to sync my phone on iTunes. After syncing, Music shows one album, but every track is duplicated under the same album. Two track ones, two track twos, etc. I checked to see if one was a cloud file and the other was actually on the phone, but every one I tried, both songs were on the iPhone and I didn't have to download anything. I tried restarting both the computer and iPhone and resyncing, that didn't work. I checked the duplicate songs on iTunes option in iTunes and yes, those are duplicated, but there are thousands more that don't show up on iTunes as duplicates but was put onto the phone as a duplicate. If it comes down to it, I'll remove all of the music and just resync and hope it doesn't duplicate again. But if it happens in the future, it would be nice to have a solution. Thanks for any help you can give me!

Windows, Windows 6

Posted on Nov 17, 2020 3:05 AM

Top-ranking reply

cp53x11

Level 1

8 points

Posted on Mar 5, 2021 8:32 AM

Success!

I unchecked "Sync Entire Library" when I plugged the phone to the PC to sync with iTunes library.
This reduced my on phone music to the original 70% of what was carried over when I set it up as a new device-copied from old phone.
Then I went to Settings>General>iPhone Storage>Music-Edit All Songs-Then Delete all songs. With only 200ish GB, it deleted straight away leaving the phone with zero songs.
Plug back into PC and resync library to a clean phone. All there, zero duplicates.

Thanks for your help gpd461!!

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51 replies

gpd461 Author

Level 1

34 points

Apr 25, 2021 1:10 PM in response to Angelafromfinchampstead

Odd. Try resyncing again and see if that does it. And do it twice. For some reason, if I sync it, it won't sync music, but the second time I sync it without unplugging the phone or anything, just hit "Sync" right after its done, it adds the music. Its weird. If it doesn't, clear your music again and sync a couple of times. I had that happen to me too, where the album covers were all screwed up. I resynced it and they went back to where they were supposed to be. The only one song thing, that's a new one for me. Maybe double check in iTunes to see if there's something that got checked. I've run into a problem where albums got split into multiple "albums" because some were marked as a compilation, others weren't. And if there's a space in the song info of one song and not the others, it'll split it when that happens too. I'm kind of taking a shot in the dark, so hopefully something works. If not, let me know and drop some more info. Is it just the one album with one song or multiples of the same album with single songs? Are you in the artist view, album view or does it happen in both? Maybe iTunes just confused itself when it shuffled the album covers and it'll fix itself once it gets its head out of its butt.

Wxlord

Level 1

8 points

Dec 5, 2020 11:57 AM in response to gpd461

This is weird. The duplicates show up when I sync iTunes to my iPhone, but disappear when I turn sync off. I now have a single set of music. This may become problematic down the line especially if I purchase new music.

gpd461 Author

Level 1

34 points

Mar 6, 2021 4:48 AM in response to cp53x11

Oddly enough, I ran into the same problem, but it wasn't until much later. Everything was dandy until I added a couple of new albums I had ripped into iTunes. After syncing, every album had the wrong artwork. Never did figure out why. I hadn't even noticed until a couple of days later. By then I needed to resync again for another album. After I synced it again, everything was back to normal. Nothing was messed up on iTunes, but my phone was like, "Nope." Hopefully after syncing again it'll go back to normal. If not, maybe just try adding some random CD into iTunes and syncing it onto your phone. Syncing is a pain in the butt, but if all else fails, you could try turingtest2's solution and hope for the best. I love my iPhone, but iTunes makes me want to throw my computer out the window sometimes.

Nov 27, 2020 8:43 AM in response to gpd461

Thanks gpd461, that worked for me.

PSMcAtee

Level 1

4 points

Jan 26, 2021 7:15 PM in response to gpd461

Do you rip music to a computer and then put them in folders? I then add the folder in iTunes and got this problem.

Your solution worked though.

I accidently deleted some songs from my computer because i thought that would fix it and it didnt (falsely showed them as dupes).

Insanely confusing that this happens and has been happening for years

gpd461 Author

Level 1

34 points

Jan 27, 2021 6:03 AM in response to PSMcAtee

Glad it worked for you! I do both. A lot of ripped songs, a lot bought on iTunes. It doesn't seem to matter whether its in a folder or from the iTunes store, it duplicated. I have no idea why, but at least there's a solution out there now. It would've been a massive headache going through song by song to get rid of them and then risk having them duplicated again when you sync..... Oof. Not sure why it hasn't been fixed yet on Apple's end. First time for me, but I've seen it happen for a while. Anyway, I'm rambling. Luckily its not too complex of a solution, just time consuming depending on how much music you have.

cp53x11

Level 1

8 points

Mar 3, 2021 8:48 PM in response to gpd461

gpd461,

Hi, I'm having trouble with this.

I too have the duplicate problem described in the thread.

I go to General>iPhone Storage>Music>All Songs "Edit". I hit "Delete, but it just sits there and does nothing until the screen times out and it goes back to the home screen.

I can delete artists one at a time, but I have 400GB of music, so that's not gonna happen.

Also-I tried deleting the Music app. I was thinking I'll delete the app and reinstall it -then sync all my music from my PC back into the phone with a clean slate. I deleted the app-no problem. But then I reinstall it, and it has all my old music (with duplicates) in it just like before I deleted it.

Any suggestions?

cp53x11

Level 1

8 points

Mar 4, 2021 7:39 AM in response to gpd461

Thanks for the quick response.

I have an iPhone 12 Pro. When I deleted the music app, I deleted it from settings, where it says "Delete App-it can't be undone". In my case-it could be undone! :)

What do you mean by "Soft reset"

Also the phone does not have any downloaded music that is not also in iTunes on my PC. Both libraries match each other, but the phone has duplicates of most of it.

cp53x11

Level 1

8 points

Mar 4, 2021 10:17 AM in response to gpd461

OK-I did the soft reset. Everything still looks the same. I still am unable to delete songs as you described.

No problem asking questions. I totally get it. I appreciate your time and effort so much.

What would you recommend trying next?

PSMcAtee

Level 1

4 points

Mar 4, 2021 10:24 AM in response to gpd461

Has Apple ever commented on this issue? Been ongoing for more than 6 years? I had the same issue on my iPhone 6 when it first came out. Sad to see it carried over to my next iPhone se20. I actively looked for a fix now that my phone can actually run the applications again.

gpd461 Author

Level 1

34 points

Mar 4, 2021 10:28 AM in response to PSMcAtee

In a forum, no. I searched for almost an hour to see if anybody was having the same problem and if there was a solution. I saw a lot of questions, but no actual solutions from anybody, let alone Apple. ****, most helpful answers I've ever seen on the forums is from some random person and the Apple person responding does absolutely diddly squat as far as offering an actual solution other than "factory reset your phone". Gee thanks, you useless so-and-so.

cp53x11

Level 1

8 points

Mar 4, 2021 10:59 AM in response to gpd461

I did go into iTunes and uncheck all the music. Essentially to sync nothing into the phone. It was probably more than a month ago-so my memory of the details is unclear. As I recall, there was nothing -no music in the phone. But I am not certain of that. I might have assumed it was empty and then synced the whole library again to get duplicates.

But...

I feel like I should preface with this just in case this is an important piece of the mystery...

When I got my new phone, one of the reasons I did was I went from 256GB to 512GB, so I could get my whole music library into my phone. So I followed this process https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210216. That got my entire music library from my old phone copied to my new phone. Probably 70% of my total library.

So then I went to sync my phone with my iTunes library on my PC to get the remaining 30%. I checked "sync whole library". Which it did. But it duplicated what was already in my phone.

And here we are today.

cp53x11

Level 1

8 points

Mar 5, 2021 9:01 PM in response to gpd461

It's a good thing I didn't put the victory gif in yet. I just realized that the album artwork is totally messed up on my phone.

The artwork is all wrong, cross genres...Some are correct. But very few. If I flip through and look at 50 songs, probably 5 have the correct artwork.

I'm going to try syncing again and see if that fixes it. Also going to see if the artwork is screwed up in iTunes on the PC. That'd be a disaster. But I'm not expecting to see that.

Tamseg

Level 1

4 points

Mar 25, 2021 9:18 AM in response to gpd461

I tried to see how to contact them to ask but gave up quickly. I think they assume we all using icloud storage. I restored my new phone from the old phone but then when plugged phone in to add more music it just copied everything over again.

Apr 26, 2021 2:12 PM in response to gpd461

Well, deleted music from phone again having made sure I’d unticked auto sync etc. Now I’ve problems with ‘Various artists’ 😳😳 There is a solution for that but not remember at the moment. SO aggravating.

thanks for help

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Duplicate songs on iPhone 12 Pro Max after syncing