Greyed-out songs problem

Thank you so much! I realized you posted this over a year ago, but this worked for me! I had over 2,000 songs to move over, and I did not want to individually deal with any of them, so I tried this. It worked!

trp_guru:

May I ask what you did exactly? I'm having the same problem and have no idea what to do - am slowly trying all the suggestions here - nothing works so far ...

Do I have to convert everything to AAC? I have tens of playlists which have taken me more than a decade to build up and I understand that converting to AAC means I'll have to re-insert the songs into the playlist manually, one-by-one, again ...

I was having this same problem and tried almost every suggestion posted here except for uninstalling my iTunes in fear that I would lose all of my playlists

If you have the option to plug your phone into another device. My Mac Mini was giving me issues, so I plugged my phone into my Macbook and unsynched my music so there was nothing on it. When I plugged it back into my Mini I was able to load on all of my music again no problem.

Hope this helps someone!

I had this issue too and when i unchecked "sync over wifi" it went away and finally was able to finish syncing. Previously my iphone 5 would sit and the "cancelling sync" message displayed for hours.

Thank you thank you thank you . THIS solved my problem!

This might be a different problem then the mobile device greyed-out tracks issue, but I've also experienced this on a MAC that was using iTunes Match. I had random tracks and full albums that were greyed out, and the songs would only play if I clicked them, otherwise it would skip over them (like in a playlist). Made no sense. Read all the posts above about deleting everything, backing up, etc. But I found that if you right click the tracks and simply click "check selection" (again, I have no idea what that's actually doing), all the tracks suddenly appeared as normal (not greyed out) and played normally. Hope this helps those of us that were experiencing the greyed out issue on the computer...

Thanks, dapnyc!

A large proportion of the 5,000 tracks on my iMac were greyed out and only playable by individually selecting them, one by one.

After trying your suggestion of selecting a track then right-clicking and "check selection" and finding it worked, I switched to "Songs" and selected the lot, right clicked and then "check selection" and the whole lot are now no longer greyed out.

Simple solution, even if a little counter-intuitive.

if u have greyed out songs in itunes when your device is connected, turn off match on device, then delete greyed out tracks, then switch match back on.... problem solved

Hi guys, after seeing this problem on multiple Ipods, talking with multiple tech people from apple (morons), I finally found the solution on my own.

1: Right click the song

2: Click convert ID3 tags.

3: Check 'ID3 tag version'

4: Select the newest version (v.2.4)

5: Rinse and repeat.

I should now work. The idiots at apple should know how to fix this. I have seen this problem on 5-6 ipods. Converting to a new file format is the annoying way to fix this.

I have searched for months to find a solution to this problem, and the ID3 tags finally worked. All I had to do was convert the tags, then remove the song from my iPhone and resync.

Thank you Acid-Etch!!!!

you need to remove songs from device and reset sync history then resync ur music this happens because if you just unplug ur device and not eject it from itunes using the triangle at the end of its name it gives itunes mixed signals eventually leading to greyed songs and inacurate memory read

i had same problem all my songs were greyed out. I then clicked on the itunes store button in the upper right hand side and then clicked back to library. i was bored and repeated this about 2-3 times fast, then for some reason all my music wasnt greyed out anymore. weird!

For me the problem was that there were multiple copies of certain songs in my iPhone 4s. I tracked those down on my iPhone by going to my songs and scrolling down until I saw some doubles. Then I deleted those songs. It turned out that was because of this one album, and once I deleted the extra copy from my iPhone all my greyed-out songs started downloading back into my phone. It works now.

I've set my phone to not automatically sync with iTunes. This setting may or may not be important to fixing my problem.

I eventually found a very long-winded way of making it work on my iPhone 5S. Both iTunes and my iPhone are fully updated. I had to do it in two parts, though.

First -

- Locate Usage on your iPhone. Mine was Settings > General > Usage.

- Wait for Usage to load. This may take some time, so be patient.

- Select Music, Edit, and delete ALL your Music.

Second -

- Plug your phone in.

- In Summary, scroll to the bottom and uncheck 'Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected'.

- Again in Summary, check 'Manually manage music and videos'.

- Go to the On this iPhone tab.

- At the bottom of the music, make sure it says 'Autofill from: Music'.

- On the right of 'Autofill from: Music', make sure everything is unchecked except the top 'Replace all items when Autofilling'.

- On the right of 'Settings', click 'Sync'.

- Wait for your phone to sync EVERYTHING - mine deleted and re-added everything.

This worked for me, hope it helps others too!

I discovered that if my iTunes music was in MP3 format, and I transferred it to my iPhone and then did a sync, the music did not transfer and it showed up on the phone "grayed out".

I re-imported the music into iTunes in AAC format, transferred it again and synced, and it actually transferred and showed up normally.

Of course, it mystifies me why one does not get an error when transferring MP3 files. Simply having them show up gray is not very helpful Apple!!!!