Sync music between iPhone and Mac

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Level 1

39 points

Sync music between iPhone and Mac

I have admittedly not changed the music on Music (formerly iTunes) for a long time. Since I had a lot of old and unnecessary songs, I decided to clean up the song list on MBP today. I had assumed that my iPhone would automatically and wirelessly sync but I've learned that Apple got rid of this feature some time old.

So I connected a USB cable to the two devices and did a sync. For some reason on the iPhone I now have duplicate copies of all my songs and many of the songs I deleted are still present.

Is there anyway to reinitialize the iPhone Music app without any songs and then re-sync from my MBP? Any thoughts on how to proceed?

Posted on Feb 18, 2025 6:09 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 21, 2025 7:57 PM in response to khamburger

Apple has three different mechanisms for synchronizing music:

Manual synchronization from a Mac or PC to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod. (Sync music between your Mac and iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support). This is the traditional method, where the mobile device gets a selection of songs from the Mac's or PC's music library that replaces the mobile device's contents.
Synchronization using the iTunes Match subscription service.
Synchronization using the "Sync Library" feature of the Apple Music subscription service.

I believe that you can do manual synchronization over Wi-Fi … but you must first do USB-based synchronization, and turn on a "Show this [device] when on Wi-Fi" or similar option.

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Answer 2

khamburger Author

Level 1

39 points

Feb 28, 2025 8:43 PM in response to Servant of Cats

Thanks for your reply. I'll respond to your three mechanisms in reverse order.

Sync Library feature - only works if one is subscribed to Apple Music. I am not and don't want to pay for the service just to sync my devices.
iTunes Match service - as far as I have been able to determine iTunes only exists fro audiobooks, podcasts and syncing Windows computers to ios devices. I am using a MacBook Pro. iTunes Match is also a subscription service.
Manual sync - I have trued this using a USB connection. I don't believe that wireless sync is still an operable feature. However, only some tracks are syncing. Most are not. If there was a way to "reset" the sync log, that might be helpful, but I haven't been able to find any way to do so.

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Sync music between iPhone and Mac