Cannot sync Music library from Mac to iPhone - files do not copy

The last time I went to sync music over USB/Lightning to my iPhone from the Finder, the process stalled on step 3 of 4, "Determining tracks to sync." I had a single playlist selected to sync, which contained only about 100-200 tracks. In the past the whole process would take less than a minute from when I clicked "Sync."


I let it run with the Mac awake overnight, and it was still stuck on that step in the morning.


This is a Mac Studio M1 Ultra and an iPhone 13 Pro. At the start of this I was running macOS 12.7.1 and iOS 17.1.1 (21B91).


Following the advice of other articles, I tried:


Shutting down and restarting both devices

Turning Cloud Music Library sync on and off on both devices (I prefer to have it off)

Deleting the Music app with its data from the iPhone and re-downloading it from the App store

Restoring my iPhone

Upgrading the Mac to macOS 13.6.1 (22G313)


I tried a sync again after all of these steps and nothing has fixed the problem.


Interestingly, after the upgrade to Ventura, the problem changed. The Sync process no longer gets stuck on "Determining tracks to sync" but instead completes in a split second without copying any files. The Music library on my iPhone remains empty, while the sync window in Finder shows the process as complete and doesn't throw up an error.


I will not be upgrading to Sonoma, as I use this machine to run third-party software that is not yet qualified for it.

Mac Studio, macOS 14.4

Posted on Nov 20, 2023 9:22 AM

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Posted on Jan 13, 2024 2:32 PM

No replies, but I'm posting this in case it helps anyone else in the future.


I tried syncing my playlists from the Music app onto my iPod Touch (7th generation), which runs iOS 15.8, at the time of this writing, the most recent version supported by that device. It's 19H370.


And it worked! So I don't think it's a macOS bug, it's an iOS 17 bug.


I just updated my iPhone 13 Pro to the new iOS 17.2.1 21C66, and the bug is fixed. Hooray! I believe this bug was happening in all versions of iOS 17 prior to this one.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 13, 2024 2:32 PM in response to eamsoundartist

No replies, but I'm posting this in case it helps anyone else in the future.


I tried syncing my playlists from the Music app onto my iPod Touch (7th generation), which runs iOS 15.8, at the time of this writing, the most recent version supported by that device. It's 19H370.


And it worked! So I don't think it's a macOS bug, it's an iOS 17 bug.


I just updated my iPhone 13 Pro to the new iOS 17.2.1 21C66, and the bug is fixed. Hooray! I believe this bug was happening in all versions of iOS 17 prior to this one.

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Cannot sync Music library from Mac to iPhone - files do not copy

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