Q: Greyed out songs on iphone after iOS 5 update

I tried all the above & no luck.  Wiped clean twice, unchecked everything & re-sync etc.  Still random and large proportion of songs / films greyed out.  I am resigned to a partly functional phone (at least it still works as a phone) until the next update.  I put up with all apple's restrictions because of simplicity and reliability, but my faith has been shaken badly.

This smells of a IOS fault with 5.0.

Does anyone have a solid solution to this yet?

I've just bought the 4s and have this problem. Beginning to get really p*ssed off!!

Tony MacG wrote:

 

I spent two hours on the phone last night with Apple, after trying each and every trick on the many threads about this problem, including Restoring my phone, but nothing worked. Every person I speak to at Apple (six so far) says they haven't heard about this problem. Do they not read these threads?

I heartily recommend that everyone posting problems on this thread post a complaint to Apple:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

None of the above or on other list works for me

Done. Easy to complain. Hope they sort it out.

Did anyone have to update to iTunes 10.5 just prior to updating your phone to iOS 5?

Had the same problem. Tried what people said: unchecked everything in the sync, then rechecked it and waited an hour for all the music to load.

Still greyed out. Then, I closed the music app (double-pressing the home button, pressing and holding the music app), synced it up, and everything was fixed.

iOS4 had that loading library screen in the music app after a sync, iOS5 doesn't. seems to me the app just needs to restart and load again.

(also, just like the others, i think this was caused by an interrupted restore after the update)

Tried this - didn't work...

Still no luck for me either. (No way am I updating my ipad until my phone works!)

All ideas welcomed.

I've just managed to fix mine! Here's what I did: (before you start, uncheck the sync Music box in itunes if you've had it checked already).

1. Close down all running programs on the Iphone (tap home button twice, then hold an icon until they wobble, then press close).

2. In Itunes, click your named device, then summary and check the box that says "manually manage music and videos".

3. Under your named device, click music, ctrl+A to select all. Right click one of the songs and deleted them all. Just make sure there's no greyed out songs showing.

4. On the Iphone, select Music. I had this running so it was actually displayed on the screen which is what I haven't done before but don't know if it made any difference.

5. In Itunes, click your device and then click the music tab and select Sync Music and apply, then Sync in the bottom right hand corner.

I think what worked for me was actually having the music app running whilst I did this which isn't what I had been doing before. Everything else was the same and as if my magic, all songs were added!

Good luck.

I have just taken the songs off to test, and found not being able to get them back on reverting back to the original problem.

I found another solution that worked for me, and that's to not select "entire music library" but just choose one genre which worked. I cancelled the sync, then selected a few more genres and that still worked. De-selected them all AND THEN went back to "entire music library" and all back on there again.

I tried just about every solution here, but finally started to pay attention to an error that a certain track could not be synced to my iPhone. I deleted that song from my iTunes library, and voila, everthing synched. Apparently that one song was hanging up the sync. I have no idea why, and it didn't do that on my other iPhone or iPod - just the 4s, but it is now fixed.

@John H, where did you see that error message?

The error would show up immediately following what you thought was a successful sync. I wish I would have grabbed a screen shot. It said something like "the song ___________ could not be copied to your iphone due to an error" So I went into iTunes and deleted the song (for some reason there were two copies of the same song in my library - so I deleted both). It was a Springsteen song. Maybe the 4s doesn't like the Boss.

As the weeks have gone on nothing has been quite as depressing in all this as the false hope some of these solutions have been giving me, since none of them have worked.

So at the risk of sending you all on another wild goose chase, this finally worked for me.

(It makes no sense, clearly this is a strange bug.)

I was trying to sync "selected playlists and artists" only and I also have "Sync only ticked songs and videos" checked as well. The sync would go so far and then cancel on one of the many songs by my favourite band I have in iTunes. The offending artist was in a smart playlist (everything by them) and I'd also checked their name in the iTunes/iPhone/Music tab. Belt and braces, I know.

So I unchecked all the songs by them in iTunes.

I also deselected their artist name in the iTunes/iPhone/Music tab, but left the smart playlist. Since I'd unchecked all their songs I saw no point in deleting it.

The phone synced OK, AND copied all the songs by this artist, despite the fact they were uncehcked and it shouldn't have copied them at all.

Hmm.

Maybe that's where the bug is, in that bit of code? iOS 5 doesn't like checks.

Anyway, suffice to say I will be listening to one artist only in the car today!