How to fix Music syncing issues between MacBook Pro and iPhone

Hi FrustratedSV,

Thanks for reaching out to the community. Are you receiving any error messages when syncing?Take a look at the steps and information in this article to get your music syncing back as expected.

If songs are missing from your music library after you turn on Sync Library - Apple Support

Let us know if that helps.

Hey FrustratedSV,

Thanks for confirming those details. If tracks are greyed out then this indicates they’re not able to see the original file location. Are you able to play the music that’s not syncing to your iPhone from your Mac?

More than likely if you’re unable to sync your songs to your iPhone successfully, you might need to reimport the CDs associated with the songs that are not syncing. Once imported again successfully, you can attempt to sync them to your device again using these steps: Sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod using your computer - Apple Support

We hope this helps out, but if not, you might also have “Sync Library” enabled which syncs an Apple Music library across your devices. Make sure this isn’t enabled under Music > Settings > General to ensure that it only manually syncs music as you choose to do so. For more info: Use Sync Library to access your music library across your devices - Apple Support

Take care!

As I believe is the case with the original author on this thread, I do not subscribe to Apple Music but have been synchronizing my library from originally iTunes and now the music app on my MacBook Pro with my iPhone. Suggestions to check Synch Library settings are not helpful since they only apply to Apple Music subscribers. Up until the most recent system updates (on both the laptop and the iPhone) I would synchronize every couple of days successfully. Now it's quite common for just a track or two off of random albums will not show up on my phone. I don't know what has changed, but I agree with the frustration expressed that I can no longer count on having full albums to listen to on my phone. Before you ask, everything works fine on the laptop (in excess of 40,000 songs are all there); it's just the albums that have checked to synchronize with my phone may or may not actually do so in their entirety. I would love to hear about a fix for this.

In total agreement with Frustrated SV. Have had this same problem and have had numerous conversations with Apple Support. No one can solve this issue. Totally unacceptable. I can no longer access all of my music on my phone. It's on my Mac, but hundreds of songs are greyed out and inaccessible on my phone. This is 100% Apple's fault and they are either unwilling or unable to solve it. I would consider switching to a PC, but I'm pretty sure trying to migrate my music to a PC (26 k songs) would be a nighmare. If anyone knows of a solution to this problem, would love to hear it.

Thanks for the update, FrustratedSV.

If you haven't already, we recommend reaching out to Apple Support directly for a closer look. You can reach them here: Get Support

Cheers.