iPhone Music app missing album artwork

So like others, I had the issue that since the 26.4 update, random albums were not displaying their art. I tried various suggestions listed on here, restarting just the Music app on my phone, force restart the whole phone, resynching via iTunes and none worked. I have over 12,000 songs on my iPhone, some downloaded directly from Apple, some from other places, some ripped from CDs, and from various other places, and the missing artwork seemed randomly among all of them. I manually manage my iTunes and what goes on my phone, it's not simply the entire collection, so with the phone plugged in, I click on the device button, then music, and almost always add/remove using the albums option, something I've done going back to the early iPhones which had much more limited memory so I had to do this regularly back in the day.

Anyway, I tried a variation of what IEFNH8Zombies suggested, and eventually, after 3 hours of working around and trial and error, I finally fixed it. I had to do things a bit differently, so in case this may help others, here's what I did to the best of my recollection:

1. On my phone in Music, I went through the "Albums" list to see which ones were missing art. You can do this other ways, but as this lists everything, I felt it was the most direct. I made a note with a list of everything missing art.
2. Plugged the phone in, and after it sync'd and backed up and everything like usual.
3. From the device/music/albums section, I manually unchecked every album that was missing art to remove it from my phone, sync'd, then went back and checked them all again to add them back. There were about 50 albums that were missing art on my iPhone (I didn't do an exact count), all of which have it on iTunes (In some cases, have had it for over 15 years!), and this restored more than half, leaving 18 that still were not showing it on my phone.

For these remaining 18 albums that were still not displaying their art on my phone, after trial and error, here's what I had to do:

1. As before, plug your phone in, sync, remove every album that is missing art, and sync again. Make sure to leave the phone plugged in, as you'll be syncing more.
2. Go back to the main iTunes music page where you can edit the albums that are missing art.
3. For each album, first click on the album to display the track listing (Important!), go to the Album Info and then go to the artwork. Copy the art, then delete it from the album (After copying, I'd just press backspace). The album art should now be grayed out in the full listing of albums, but may still be displaying next to the tracking listings, as shown below:
4. If this is happening, go back to the device tab, sync, then go back to the main music listing for the album, and now both should be grayed out. Paste the art back in the album info.
5. Go to the next album and repeat the process of copying the art, deleting it from the album, syncing, and pasting the art back in.
6. Once the art for all albums has been repasted, go back to the device tab and add all the albums back to the phone, apply and sync changes. This should restore all the art on the phone in all views.

I tried the previously suggested option of pasting the art on the desktop, but as I was essentially syncing after every album, it felt easier to just do this.

As mentioned, simply removing the albums, syncing, then adding them back and a second sync did restore more than half. If you still have albums that this doesn't fix, try the remove art/sync sequence described above before adding them back to your phone. For those 18 albums, it took me about 30~ minutes to complete that process.

Hope this helps. It's insane that this update can somehow break album art out of nowhere...

Fix: I did a iPhone Reset All then synced my music again with the MacBook. At first look the album covers were still missing so I deleted and reinstalled the music app without restarting the phone and peaked again and all album art returned.😊

Finally fixed this issue. In the music app on my MacBook, I went to each song in an album that had missing artwork. Usually, the first listed song shows a visible album cover when played, but the rest of the songs don't show art in the "now playing " section. When I click the involved songs with the shift key and then get info, it shows artwork. I then go to edit and delete the album cover using the cut command. Then click ok, go to the library, get album artwork, and then retest. Usually it is fixed. Occasionally, Apple AI picks a random album cover that is obviously wrong or different from the first song on the album, which was correct. So then I had to click the group of songs, edit and cut the wrong art, go to the proper artwork, copy, and then paste it into the group. This was time-consuming: going through the entire song Library, checking Now Playing for missing artwork. I had about a third of my songs missing artwork. I can say it is fixed, and my BP is lower now!

If you use the manually manage your music option on Mac (I assume we're talking about managing Local Files, right?), use CMD + A to select all albums in your library, then drag the selected albums onto your phone in the sidebar. I just had the issue where for some reason, autofilling was refusing to transfer the album artwork onto my phone. But, when I dragged my albums in (either one by one, or all of them selected at once like I mentioned earlier), it worked properly.

I was able to fix it without doing a complete wipe or reset. I turned off Sync Library under the Music preferences menu on my iMac. It took a few minutes for it to unsync and it deleted the Genius cache. Then I turned it back on and waited while Genius resynced. On my iPhone, I turned off Sync Library, closed the app, turned Sync back on. When I opened the Music app, all the album covers were back.

Interesting: I had the same problem and I notice that I had the checkbox " convert higher bit rate songs to <128>" on. After I switched it off and synched all my cover art came back.....

So I was having this issue too. The process I've found that works for me is as follows.

1 open the song info/album info and go to the album art tab at the top of that window for the song were adding art too or the art is not showing correctly.

2 drag your photo from this window to the desktop or download whatever photo you're trying to use to the desktop.

3 in the album art tab of the song info/album info screen delete every pictures that might be in this window now and hit ok.

4 iTunes will flash like you've made a change. Now open the song info/album info window for this song back up and go back to the album art tab. This tab should be empty if not delete the photo gain.

5 Now this has been the important part for mine to work. You drag and drop the picture from your desktop into the album art tab and drop it in there then hit ok again. Do not use the upload photo button that shows in the album art tab you must drag and drop the song photo into iTunes for this to work.

This works for me on every song I have weather I've DL from apple or rip a song off YouTube and put my own picture to the song it seems to work great for me. Art usually populates for me in a minute or two.

Great advice, i will try that next time! Yes i eventually fixed it by using the 1 month free Apple Music trial to sync everything that way and disable it afterwards, not the best solution but it worked nonetheless!

Adding another comment for visibility. Same issue as most since 26.4.

Songs still have their covers if they are played. Only if iTunes albums are being scrolled, select ones are not showing up. I cannot make out a pattern as to which ones show up and which ones don’t. It also seems to change over time.

I have a library of around 3000 songs, I am not doing what mcred23 suggested.

The cover art is obviously still embedded in the tracks because it shows up once the song is played. The Music app just messes it up somehow in album view. I expect there to be an update for this soon. This is not acceptable.

...and now, to add insult to injury, the artwork shows just fine when selecting "Get Info" on an album but the artwork does not show in the main Music app window.......

So then I clicked on the artwork in the "Get Info" tab and basically copied it onto itself (Ctlr C -> Ctrl V), press ok, and then the artwork showed up in the main window again.

Anybody @ Apple expecting me to do this for thousands of albums, one by one.......?

And who knows what'll happen once I start trying to sync to iOS again.

What an absolute total cr*p of software this Apple Music is.

Me too. Only songs that were purchased in iTunes have album art all others don't get transferred to my phone as of yesterday. While syncing the progress bar shows that album art work is syncing but it never shows up even after deleting music app on the phone and reinstalling and syncing. I think we have to wait for a fix.

Thanks for sharing mcred23, good to know this worked for you.

For my part - I eventually tried Doug's script "Re-Embed artwork", and after a full 3 days (!) of selecting over 4000 albums and running said scripts now at least Apple Music (Mac OS) artwork is showing up again - but still having one or two few sync issues for album artwork on iOS, so may eventually try your option.

Again, 1. to note I do not subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match, and 2. my library is curated independently with the help of established third-party apps. Both these facts may or may not relate to these artwork issues (but I'm really tired of trying to eventually find out!)

The nuclear option is to roll the dice and after new backup to iCloud do a full erase all content and settings on the iPhone and hope the album covers sync again. I refuse to do this yet.

I have just had the same issue.

My iphone was wiped for a screen/battery replacement (was on beta software) and after reinstalling everything again I connected to my mac to transfer all my music (38gig) and all album art was missing.

A week later it was still like this so I deleted the music app on iOS, deleted all music on the phone, reinstalled the app and re-synced all music (with proper album art on the mac btw) but again nothing. Except for 3 songs I once gave a <3, and the iTunes purchased songs, I have no album art.

I downloaded another couple of music player apps ( Doppi was the best one ) and here I get a hand full of albums with artwork on some of the songs, mostly albums I have once uploaded the artwork myself I believe.

So weird...

iPhone 13 mini on iOS 26.2 (no longer bèta)