User profile for user: MikezZ1
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iPhone 17 album artwork wrong but is correct in iTunes on PC or Mac

iPhone 17 album artwork wrong but is correct in iTunes on PC or Mac

New phone had successfully transferred most of my apps and all the music that was on my SE 1st gen. Most of that music had come from iTunes 12.xx on my old iMac and many of those albums were ripped into iTunes from CDs I own with some band camp, pledge music and other paid downloads. Only 2 songs ever purchase from apple music.

I do not let the phones sync as I don't want my entire music library on my phones. On the PC I had just a small library of songs and decided to use the iPhone 17 with the PC since newer OS and newer iTunes 12.9.3. Adding just 2 songs from the PC to the new phone wiped out the library on the phone and left those songs along with the only 2 Apple purchases. It turns out that 'Prevent iPhones from Automatically syncing' had become unchecked so I checked it.

I figured it was not a problem since I want to take the raw music files on the iMac and put them on the PC itunes since the iMac not used much. I added a couple of albums from the PC onto the iPhone 17 to start putting it back to matching my old phone by selecting all the songs in an album in iTunes and right clicking, add to Device, iPhone 17 and it transferred the albums but put the wrong album cover pictures on those which happened to be band camp purchases. The album art is correct in iTunes on the PC so the iPhone music app must be messing it up. The the album covers that it incorrectly used on 3 albums is not in my PC iTunes library though at least one of them is in my iMac iTunes library. I do not have anything synced on iCloud, all music and photos backed up on computers.

ITunes PC seems to work fine and I had just updated to ios26.2 with no problems. I prefer to use a hard wired connection for backups and updates. It did fix the no internet connection on 4g problem.

Not sure how to correct the iPhone 17 music when it's fine in the iTunes library.


Any thoughts on how to fix this? I wondered about the Apple Music app but that can't do ios updates and I want to manually control what songs go to the phone.

iPhone 17, iOS 26

Posted on Dec 20, 2025 6:08 PM

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User profile for user: MikezZ1
MikezZ1 Author
User level: Level 1
12 points

Posted on Jan 12, 2026 6:41 AM

I did recently figure out the manually adding the jpg or png cover art that comes with bandcamp and other downloads to the itunes album by right clicking, album info, artwork, get artwork works better for the problem albums than right clicking, get album artwork does.


On the albums that persist to be a problem on the iPhone 17, manually add the artwork to the phone. iTunes, Music, Devices, Music, sort Album by Artist, select all the songs in the album, right click get info, edit items, artwork tab, add artwork. At the present time all music on the phone has the correct artwork.


One thing I found that can cause artwork to be associated with the wrong songs is when you add songs that are not part of an album, i.e. single releases, home recordings, etc. I made the mistake of shift selecting 4 or 5 individual songs and adding them to iTunes at the same time and then added artwork to only one of them. They all had the same artwork and until I changed the jpg name and made separate generic art files for the others as iTunes remembered the wrong artwork.


I will be updating to Windows 11 later this month not by choice (you can stay on Windows 10 with security updates for free for at least a year if you have a Microsoft Account even if you don't use it to log in) because 1 program will not run Windows 10 this year. We will see if Windows 11 makes the problem resurface.

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User profile for user: MikezZ1
MikezZ1 Author
User level: Level 1
12 points

Jan 12, 2026 6:41 AM in response to Jeffny01

I did recently figure out the manually adding the jpg or png cover art that comes with bandcamp and other downloads to the itunes album by right clicking, album info, artwork, get artwork works better for the problem albums than right clicking, get album artwork does.


On the albums that persist to be a problem on the iPhone 17, manually add the artwork to the phone. iTunes, Music, Devices, Music, sort Album by Artist, select all the songs in the album, right click get info, edit items, artwork tab, add artwork. At the present time all music on the phone has the correct artwork.


One thing I found that can cause artwork to be associated with the wrong songs is when you add songs that are not part of an album, i.e. single releases, home recordings, etc. I made the mistake of shift selecting 4 or 5 individual songs and adding them to iTunes at the same time and then added artwork to only one of them. They all had the same artwork and until I changed the jpg name and made separate generic art files for the others as iTunes remembered the wrong artwork.


I will be updating to Windows 11 later this month not by choice (you can stay on Windows 10 with security updates for free for at least a year if you have a Microsoft Account even if you don't use it to log in) because 1 program will not run Windows 10 this year. We will see if Windows 11 makes the problem resurface.

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User profile for user: MikezZ1
MikezZ1 Author
User level: Level 1
12 points

Feb 19, 2026 3:03 PM in response to vguaglione

Was the checkbox for Prevent iPhones from Automatically syncing unchecked before connecting? That's what happened to me. It had been previously checked as outlined in my original post. Yesterday I decided to check iTunes on a PC laptop that had not been used or updated since 2021. It was checked, then I had it check for updates and it went up to 12.13.9, quit and launched again and it went to 12.13.9.1. Checked Device preferences again and the update unchecked it. Now I check that preference each time before adding any music to the iphone.


For the artwork problem try the solution in the Jan 12 post. For a few problem albums that the artwork showing in iTunes did not make it to the phone, while plugged in I selected the phone icon at the top, then On My Device, Music sorted by album, selected all the tracks in 1 problem album at a time and get info, add artwork and that finally fixed everything. I am using only .png or .jpg image files.

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User profile for user: Jeffny01
Jeffny01
User level: Level 1
12 points

Jan 12, 2026 5:54 AM in response to MikezZ1

Having the same problem, also on the iPhone 17 and iTunes on Windows 11. Everything worked fine a couple months ago when I synced my library to my new phone. Then last night when I synced a new album, the album art was wrong. I uninstalled/reinstalled iTunes twice. Deleted and recreated the entire library. Uninstalled/reinstalled the music app on my phone. So I started on a completely fresh slate. Still, the album art changes when it gets to the phone. WTH, Apple? What's the solution?

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User profile for user: vguaglione
vguaglione
User level: Level 1
9 points

Feb 19, 2026 11:27 AM in response to MikezZ1

I've tried a bunch of different options to get this working but nothing thus far. The problem happened after transferring all my data from my old Xr to my iPhone 17. All music was there but when I plugged the phone into my mac for the first time and brought up Music, the library on the phone got wiped out. So I figured I'd add all my music back from my music library. I can add everything but the album artwork is wrong on each album I add. Random artwork from my existing library show up on the albums I add, not the actual album artwork. That random art repeats to a bunch of albums, then a different random artwork file from another album in my library shows up on new albums I add. Note that all my music is on a local drive and all ID3 plus artwork files in my library are correct.


This only happened while attempting to transfer albums back to the phone after my library got wiped out upon connecting to Music on my macbook for the first time after the new phone was set up.


I've deleted the app from the phone, rebuilt my local music cache on my mac, synched to an empty library, etc. The only thing I haven't done is a reset to factory settings then restore, but I've not wanted to take that step just yet. Anything else I can try?

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User profile for user: vguaglione
vguaglione
User level: Level 1
9 points

Feb 19, 2026 3:24 PM in response to MikezZ1

I actually don't have that option to prevent phones from syncing on my mac. The files are on a network share and the library only contains pointers to the actual files because they are not local.


I tried your solution for the artwork issue but no luck there because I don't have any options to manipulate the files via the On My Device setting. The only option I do have is to delete the files.


Side note, in Music, I don't have the arrow to expand the files on the phone since I'm running on Catalina, and that option is no longer available with that OS (I checked that a few times to be sure I was reading it right).


I'm resigning myself to having to do the backup/restore.

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iPhone 17 album artwork wrong but is correct in iTunes on PC or Mac

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