Playlists on iPhone disappeared after iOS 17 update
I updated all my apple devices to latest software (Sonoma on iMacs, Mac mini and iOS 17.0.3 on iPad Air and iPhone 14 Pro Max). When I opened Apple Music to listen to one of my playlists, they were all gone! I searched on Google and Youtube for a solution to this problem but none of the solutions were specific to my case and obviously didn't work: restarting the phone, syncing, etc. I could see my playlists on the desktop app but it wouldn't sync to my iPhone. additionally, I knew my song library was still on my iPhone - the problem was only with the playlists and not its contents.
One more thing: all my playlists were organized in folders on the desktop app. After unsuccessfully trying online solutions, I decided to experiment and found a workaround so hopefully this helps someone with a similar problem. The solution I found was to rename the playlist folder following by renaming each playlist under it (I only added a dash or a period to them, wait for the iPhone to display the playlist, and then I would delete the period or dash and the iPhone would update accordingly). All my playlists were recreated this way without any loss. I have many of them but certainly it was a better solution than building all of them from scratch, restoring from an old phone backup, or wasting time trying online solutions that didn't work.
iPhone 14 Pro Max