iPod Shuffle Won't Sync Playlist (too large)

GeePhunk wrote:
I finally found out how to do this. Apparently, most Apple staff don't actually know about this and will give you unhelpful, curt answers such as "Create a smaller playlist". (Geniuses?!? I don't think so...)

You and PT are the only ones being rude and flippant. People like the both of you scare new users away and annoy older ones.

Try being helpful or don't reply.

I can't find the box that GeePhunk is talking about either, but it sounds vaguely familiar. Wasn't that on the 1G shuffles, or an older version of iTunes?

I have worked this out. I was struggling to find the 'Autofill' option in v10.3.1 too.

Here is how to autofill an iPod Shuffle from a Playlist:

- Connect the iPod Shuffle

- In iTunes, click the device name in 'Devices' in the left-hand panel and tick 'Manually manage music' in the Summary tab

- DON'T tick 'Sync Music' in the Music tab, this will untick 'Manually manage music'

- Click the little triange to the left of the device name in 'Devices' to reveal a 'Music' sub-category

- Click the 'Music' sub-category under the device name in 'Devices', then you should see the 'Autofill from:' option at the bottom of the main window. Select the playlist from the dropdown.

Hope this works for everyone else

Renshae-

Not sure if what Paul Mike or ChippyDeluxe have proposed works or not, but I figured out another way to do it also using Smart Playlists --

If you have a playlist that is larger than your iPod, and you just want your iPod to select a random selection of songs from your large playlist (as opposed to your entire iTunes library), you can do it by creating a "Smart Playlist" (as opposed to a regular playlist).

To create a "Smart Playlist", go to File - New Smart Playlist and, when setting up the rules for the Smart Playlist, just select "Playlist" "is" "(select name of your large playlist)" and then in the limit section of the rules limit the size of your Smart Playlist to whatever the size of your iPod is (I eventually had to guessimate the number of "items" (read: songs) that my 4GB iPod could generally fit -- about 690) -- and then limit the Smart Playlist to 690 items selected randomly from the original playlist. Then, when syncing my iPod, I select only the Smart Playlist I created to sync and viola - a random selection of songs from my large original playlist is synced with my iPod -- whew! 🙂

ChippyDeluxe, your solution worked for me. My iPod shuffle 4G would appear to synch but the songs were "grayed" and I couldn't get iTunes to recognize the iPod. I also went in to the Device Manager like Paul Mike recommended and had to delete the driver and then plug the iPod back in. Computer recognized the new device, installed new driver, and now it appears to work fine. Thanks all, SemperP.

ChippyDeluxe has the right (best) answer. Checking the 'Manually manage music' box is the key. Thanks very much ChippyDeluxe.

Agree with Kikta. I hate it when people like PT, who don't have an answer to a query, go and post flippant, condescending comments. If you don't know, just don't say anything.

Hey I found information that I think answer the question.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1719

Good Luck!

Chippy Deluxe has best solution to this (which has been puzzling me for a while)!

And all because I ignored that little trangle he mentioned in the devices bar!

Nice one chippy!

For latest version of iTunes (12.*.*) this solution works great for me. I have a single, basic favorites playlist that I continually add new songs to, it's about 5GB worth of music. I created a Smart Playlist following these instructions, 1800 MB in size (I'm using voiceover on my 2GB iPod shuffle which leaves about 1.9 GB of free space for music) and sync.

Works great, thanks for the tip!