Cover Art Not Assigned Correctly on iPhone after syncing from Mac

Question

Cover Art Not Assigned Correctly on iPhone after syncing from Mac

I am an iTunes Match subscriber and have been for many years. I have all of my own music. I am on MacOS 26.2 and iOS 26.2 I prefer to sync my music from my Mac to my iPhone because my playlists are curated for play counts and Last Played, as well as other criteria, and the iTunes Match and Apple Music cloud features don't support those very well. Recently, when syncing my music, the album art on my iPhone is getting scrambled. The art in the Apple Music app on my Mac is correct, but then the music gets synced and randomly assigns art to the wrong albums.

Even after I remove all music and then resync, it randomly assigns cover art to the wrong albums. It's not even consistent. It's a random assignment each time the music gets removed and readded to my phone.

This screenshot is from my Mac. You can see that the art is correct

This is from my iPhone. Both screenshots are from the Artist tab in the respective apps.

iPhone 16 Pro, iOS 26

Posted on Jan 8, 2026 8:03 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 14, 2026 8:32 PM in response to cpatterson1177

Like you, I have recently upgraded to iOS 26.2 and re-synced my ITunes library (from my Windows based PC) to my IPhone and it completely and randomly assigned the wrong album/song artwork to the songs on my IPhone. This is a new phenomenon for me. The previous version of iOS 17 which I had been running had the album artwork correct.

I have been unable to fix this issue (at least trying to do so one song at a time ..... ie delete the song from my IPhone and then re-sync to my ITunes library - the song comes back fine and the artwork has been changed to yet another incorrect image). How incredibly frustrating.

Have spent years and years using ITunes. Spent literally thousands of $'s buying and downloading songs from the Apple store. Meticulously have kept the artwork correct (from the Apple Store, from my collection of converted CD's and from various dowloaded songs from other sources) and boom - in one iOS upgrade - that work has been destroyed (at least in trying to use and enjoy listening to music on my IPhone).

Have you had any success in fixing this issue??

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Answer 2

SweetLu

Level 1

8 points

Feb 5, 2026 9:03 AM in response to TalihinaSky

I recently read another article on this problem and it suggested that I delete the music app on my iPhone and then sync with my Mac. I just finished with this process and it seems to have worked for the time being. If anything changes, I’ll report back here.

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Answer 3

Jan 18, 2026 12:50 PM in response to TalihinaSky

I contacted support and even had a call scheduled with them. They walked through some steps in the Preferences in the Apple Music app on my Mac and the instructions they gave me did not match the interface. None of the things they recommended worked, and I've been trying to schedule another call with no success. After the initial call, I actually lost confidence in the tech support based on the things they were having me do and the difficulty of using the Support portal. I hate, cause I love my Mac products, but Support was just not very helpful in this situation.

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Answer 4

Jan 18, 2026 4:20 PM in response to cpatterson1177

Thank you for posting your update on the issue regarding the "problem" caused by IOS 26.2 as it relates to syncing your ITunes library to your IPhone and the "random" allocation of the Album artwork to your IPhone. Sadly, I am not surprised at all that you had no success with an Apple Support Tech. IMHO - the problem is very much in the "code" for IOS 26.2 and no amount of time on the phone with Apple is going to be able to correct the issue. We can only hope that the next version of IOS includes a fix (although I am not hopeful). As best as I can tell, Apple has been subtly trying to drive all of their ITune users to buy Apple Music. Even though you may have already purchased all of your music from the ITunes (ie Apple ) store. Again, sadly, instead of making new products to attract users, Apple's new business model is trying to get their current customers to "Pay Again" for the same services that they had previously purchased. Can you imagine what would happen if your FORD F-150 just stopped working one day (for no reason), and when you called Ford, they told you that they no longer supported your old F-150 (even though it was in perfect working order) and you had to buy a new one. I will wait and hope!!

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