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How do I sync movie on my Mac (Catalina) to my iPad?

The movie is an MP4, and it's in the Movies folder on my Mac. I connect my iPad via Lightning-to-USB cable, and a Finder window shows me all the stuff that's on my iPad. But I see no way to tell the system "sync THIS movie from my Mac to the iPad."


How do I do this?


Thanks,

DM

Posted on May 24, 2021 7:28 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 24, 2021 10:31 AM

I just open two Finder windows, one showing me the files that I want to copy, the other showing the iPad (or iPhone, in this case). I then just drag from one to the other.

The iPhone or iPad, when connected, shows up in the Sidebar.

See:


3 replies

May 24, 2021 7:55 AM in response to Doctormelodious

At least I think the Finder window is showing me what's on my iPad. If it's supposed to be showing me what's on my Mac, then it's failing to find the movie in question. The movie does not show up under the Movies tab or the TV Shows tab in that Finder window.


Back when we had iTunes, you could change the media type on a file, to trick Apple's "it just works" operating system into syncing your own movies to your iThings.

May 24, 2021 12:02 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks, Luis. I called AppleCare earlier, and after quite a bit of digging, they finally figured out that I needed to first check the "Manually manage..." button under "General" to enable drag and drop. Once I had successfully copied the movie to my iPad, I unchecked that button. I remembered that this button used to be in iTunes, but in a different place.


BTW, the AppleCare rep also confirmed that the list shown in the Finder window for my iPad does indeed show media on my Mac, to be selected for syncing with my iPad, which does make more sense. This is the way it used to work in iTunes.


What remains a mystery to me are the criteria by which Catalina determines which movies, etc. on my Mac it will show in that Finder window (as selectable for syncing) and which ones it will ignore. Even after I've added this movie to my iPad and synced again, the Finder still doesn't include it in the list of syncable movies on my Mac. I wonder how media files are "blessed" by the OS for this purpose. 🤔

How do I sync movie on my Mac (Catalina) to my iPad?

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