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How to fix Music syncing issues between MacBook Pro and iPhone

I’ve had apple devices for two decades now and recently my music on my 2023 MacBook Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max are not fully syncing. I’ve tried manually and syncing full library. I’ve tried restarting everything. Over the air and plugged in syncing. And still only some of my music library syncs.


I’m old fashioned in that I buy CDs most of the time and then manually upload them via an external reader- which has worked great on multiple apple computers over the last 20 years - but this week it’s not. CDs I’ve previously uploaded won’t sync and some of them are not visible at all in playlists on my phone, others show as greyed out and if I click on them it says ‘not available in your region’ despite that both being false and irrelevant for manually uploaded track.


[Re-Titled by Moderator]


right now my level of frustration at not being able to take my music that I’ve been carrying around for decades out with me is very high. It feels like killing iTunes has lead to a worse product and more pain points to the point I am considering going back to a PC as if I’m going to have to manually do things to get a consistent user experience then why should I pay apple’s premium prices if their service has gotten so bad?!


has anyone found a way to fix this so phones and music sync the way they did last month?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 13.3

Posted on Apr 28, 2023 1:20 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 29, 2023 12:25 PM

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.



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7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 29, 2023 12:25 PM in response to FrustratedSV

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.



May 3, 2023 7:36 AM in response to FrustratedSV

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!


May 2, 2023 9:03 PM in response to NelsC7

I didn't get any error messages when syncing nor do those instructions help resolve the issue sadly.


It looks like those instructions are only for if you have an Apple Music subscription. If you have a computer that previously had iTunes and it updated to Music what to you do to keep your original library of uploaded CDs and iTunes purchases able to sync?

May 3, 2023 7:38 PM in response to UTBadger

Yes I can play all the original music on my Mac. And uploading all the CDs again is not an option as I've been uploading CDs for literal decades and some of the originals have been damaged so if the working mp3 files I have on multiple harddrives including my Mac can't be synced to the phone the way they were literally a month ago and I have to manually do everything again then I'm dumping apple before I put hundreds of hours into working on this.


Neither sync entire library nor manually transfering music are working right now.



Oct 25, 2023 11:31 AM in response to bbesspete

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.

Apr 6, 2024 4:39 PM in response to FrustratedSV

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.

How to fix Music syncing issues between MacBook Pro and iPhone

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