Music Deleted Off iPhone Will No Longer Drag And Drop From MUSIC (on MAC)

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Music Deleted Off iPhone Will No Longer Drag And Drop From MUSIC (on MAC)

Thank you to the person (tt2!) assisting me with the plethora of iPhone music issues I've been having! And there have been MANY...

I deleted some songs and albums off my iPhone 12 Pro directly while it was plugged into my MAC (the option "remove from library" has no warning of any kind...such as "deleting items from phone means they also leave the old iTunes library" (now opened with "Music"). As a non techie, I wouldn't have been the wiser and that's what I did).

When I search for the songs in Finder on my MAC, they show up. They still have a file size (versus 0kb), and they open back up in Music without issue. Sadly, they still won't drag and drop to the iPhone.

I am NOT wanting to restore the iPhone because it's been updated since with a ton of music manually dragged, some of which is working better than it was (other problems). Does anyone know:

1) are these songs now deleted even though they show up in Finder and play in Music?

2) if so, how can I restore them. They are not all purchases - some were cds, others downoads from friends etc.

Grateful for any help - not really tech savvy, and somewhat embarrassed by all my questions!

Posted on Mar 13, 2021 4:53 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

275,068 points

Mar 14, 2021 7:45 PM in response to PLMFB

Deleting a track directly from your phone shouldn't affect any copy in your library. If you can see them in Finder and they play in Music then you should be able to copy them back to the phone. If they won't copy there is likely some corrupt information clogging things up somewhere. Erasing all music from the device, or a backup, factory restore, restore backup cycle is likely going to be needed to resolve the problem of incomplete music transfers.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

275,068 points

Mar 15, 2021 8:14 AM in response to PLMFB

See my reply here. You don't need to restore the Mac. You probably need to restore the iPhone, but please confirm that you don't subscribe to either Apple Music or iTunes Match first, if you do then there are other steps to take.

tt2

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Answer 3

PLMFB Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 15, 2021 7:07 AM in response to turingtest2

AH! Just saw this now. I appreciate this note - I'd found a bunch of pages online that suggested deleting from one device (perhaps when, for example, the phone is plugged into the MAC, as mine was when I deleted off the phone), meant a loss across the board.

I was wondering the same (about "corrupt" info behind the scenes. Beyond "get info" I'm not sure how to figure that out. I wondered if restoring my computer from backup from last week might clear that up (no clue, but saw that suggested online as well. The almighty Google, right?! lol Who knows what's right).

I'm totally okay doing a factory restore but, as with a phone restore, I wasn't sure if that would then do away with all the positive music changes I was able to make on the phone. (I did a lot in Music on the MAC too - cleaned up that "work" area, resorted music... So a restore on the MAC will probably do away with all that. BUT...if it clears up some songs suddenly being difficult, maybe it's worth it. If songs drag and drop after that, I'd be less nervous to delete everything on the phone and try to start a playlist in Music to sync (I'd need to look up how to do that too). LOL

You are the best for all this info - THANK YOU! And please excuse my delay - massive snow storm and I was toast yesterday after hours of clearing!

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

275,068 points

Mar 15, 2021 12:10 PM in response to PLMFB

Great, so we're looking at an erratic syncing issue rather than anything related to iCloud Music Library.

As mentioned in one of your other threads you can try Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Music > Edit and then tap the red stop sign icon next to All Music to remove all existing music from the iPhone, after which you may find that you can reliably sync a selection from the Music app using Finder.

If things still won't transfer properly then backup the iPhone, restore as a new device, then restore the backup, before again using Finder to sync a selection to the device.

tt2

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