I've unchecked songs on ITunes but they are still syncing. How do I change this?

I was struggling with this myself, and I think I've stumbled onto the answer. In my case, there were a bunch of songs that had been checked once-upon-a-time, but that I was pretty tired of. Even after un-checking them in iTunes, they hung around on my iPod. I've never seen an un-checked song actually get put onto the iPod, so I figure there must be some logic in the iPod & iPhone sw that only evaluates the "checked" status to decide whether it should put a song ONTO the iPod - but not whether it should keep it.

Here's what worked for me:

When your device is connected, CLEAR the "Sync only checked songs" box, then apply. (I know - this isn't what you want to do.)

Next, check that "Sync only checked songs" box again, and re-apply.

While the sync was happening, I selected "Music" for my iPod, and set a filter that would show some the songs I wanted gone. It was gratifying to see them disappear during the sync - finally!

I tried this - and every other suggestion I've found, still no resoluton.

I have a 6+. I had the same issue. An album unchecked in my musiclibrary on itunes on my laptop kept syncing to my phone, even though in the sync on the summary tab 'sync only checked songs and videos' was selected and on the music tab 'sync entire library' was checked. Those settings should have resulted in only the checked songs in my music library being put on my phone. My solution was to do a sync with 'Sync Music' unchecked on the Music tab. This removed all the music from my phone... except when I checked my phone, the one album was still on it. On impulse, I right swiped the album, a delete icon appeared, and after selecting, the album was off my phone.

I checked 'Sync Music' on the music tab and synced again. This time the sync was correct, the album was not on my phone.

There is one caution: when I look at 'Music on my Device', some songs appear checked, with big circles to the left, but greyed out. I am not sure what that means. But the album no longer is on the phone - taking the music off my phone, manually deleting the album from my phone by swiping, and syncing the music back seems to have worked.

One strange thing was that while the issue was occurring, the album appeared under the sync 'Music' tab as 'manually added songs'. I don't know what they were doing there.

A far simpler solution is to create playlists for each device and sync only those playlists.

Leave everything checked.

I was having the same issue of unchecked songs ending up on my iphone after syncing. I'm not sure how, but certain songs were manually added. These showed up at the bottom of the "Sync Music" page in iTunes under my iphone>music settings. I simply deleted these songs and they were wiped from my iphone on the next sync..

Been struggling with this for ages.

For me it turned out to be that I needed to turn of 'show online music' on the Music app.

The unchecked music was being displayed but only available online.

I had this issue again a year later. Nothing on this page worked for me even though I tried it all. And my last solution I posted on this thread was not working. What I had to do this time was on my iphone, go to My Music > Account and log out. That fixed it. Being logged in, Apple kept wanting to show me everything. Even though I had ''Only Downloaded Music' selected.

Talk about frustrating. Will changes in operating systems mean that every year I get to spend a couple hours figuring out why the combination of 'Sync only checked songs and videos' and 'Sync Music - Entire Music Library' isn't working? The only thing now that keeps me with Apple after 8 years is being grandfathered into the ATT data plan. That's it. They have gotten way too eager to sell me things I don't want and direct me places I definitely don't want to go.