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iTunes won't sync my music, movies, ringtones... Anything!

My iTunes pretends like it finished syncing successfully. However, none of my media (songs, videos, ringtones, books) ends up on my iPhone.


When I click on my iPhone (in iTunes) or shows all of the files that are supposed to be there. However, they are all greyed out and have a little icon with arrows going in a circle next to them.


What's worse is that my iTunes treats my iPhone as if that data space is already full, and shows me that my phone is nearly full even it is actually quite empty.


HELP!

iPhone 4, iOS 6

Posted on Oct 16, 2012 11:10 AM

Reply
81 replies

Jan 29, 2014 8:57 PM in response to JohnnyL.

I had this problem too. Had me stressed for days. What it would do was say it was syncing and "determing what tracks to sync" and would just stop and finish up but nothing new was on my phone. I went to my iPhone and in the music tab unclicked the check and synced again so all my music was removed off my phone. After that I went back in and clicked the sync all again and it worked. Hopefully this can help some!

Feb 27, 2014 4:27 PM in response to YoshiCookie

I followed what someone else poster to do today and it worked. It took me several hours of messing around and then I followed this. I can't believe it was such an issue, but glad I found the answer. Thank you!


GUYS I DID IT!!!


I had exactly the same problem as all of you - I had about six songs that I had just added to the library and wouldn't sync, no matter what I did.


I tried everything people recommeded, like downloading the latest version of iTunes and iOS 6, ticking/unticking all the songs, etc.


I got so frustrated and it took me about three hours to work it out, but here's how you do it (it worked for me anyway):


  1. Click on your device (should say iPod/iPhone etc) in top right corner
  2. Click on the 'music' tab
  3. Tick the box that says 'sync music' (next to the header)
  4. At this point it warns you that it will delete all the music off your iPod/iPhone, SO BACK ALL YOUR FILES UP ONTO A MEMORY STICK OR YOUR COMPUTER OR YOU'LL LOSE THEM
  5. Go ahead with the sync - it will delete all the stuff that's not in the library off of your iPod but you can put this back later as long as you backed it up
  6. It should now sync everything in your library. Then you can go back and add all the files you had to back up, and sync again.


I hope this helps! 🙂

Mar 6, 2014 3:20 PM in response to Passion In Education

I usually find a solution here so I never post. I tried updating iTunes (now 11.1.5.5) and iOS to 7.0.6, phone restored, would sync music, everything came back, but still can't sync videos. Put video into iTunes library, checked it, checked under movies, saw it sync, still no dice. It didn't make sense, I saw it COPY to the iPhone, but it never showed up on anything, music, photo app, nowhere.


But, the simple most dumbest thing I've ever seen, is that under the Photos tab, you can just click "Sync Photos from" where you can choose any folder to add to it. I moved my videos to a new folder, chose the folder from the drop down, checked "Include videos" and bam, it added a new folder to my camera roll or photo app and it showed up like it should have 6 hours ago.


Apple, you don't make and sense. Add movies to sync and you dont sync. Add movies to Photos and it syncs.

Apr 28, 2014 7:39 PM in response to Melichades

Thank you partyrock123


"Make sure you don't have "Manually Manage Music and Videos" checked. Unchecking that worked for me."


This. This finally got my phone to sync. I had "Sync only checked songs and videos" checked on the 'Summary' tab, and then on the 'Music' tab I had "Sync Music" checked, as well as "Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres"


Manually managed or not, I was unable to sync. I tried factory reset. I tried forcing everything to 128Kb. I tried deleting all music off the phone in "settings-> general ->usage -> music" and reverting the shpone... many other useful suggestions but this one finally did it. I unchecked "Sync only checked songs and videos" on the 'Summary' tab and presto. Synced all the selections on the 'Music' tab like a champ.

May 2, 2014 9:17 PM in response to YoshiCookie

This worked for me with an iPhone 5 with ios 7.06 and hopefully works with all versions.



In the Apple music player app (my device is an iPhone 5)

Go to playlists.

Touch the + button to add a New Playlist

Type in exactly as shown, the name you see under Devices (left side in the iTunes listing) for your iPhone (mine was "Bob's iPhone").

Touch Save.


Hopefully when you open your music, all your music will show up, like it did on my iPhone



Bob

Nov 10, 2014 7:24 PM in response to YoshiCookie

This problem has arisen for me lately.

iPhone 5

iOs 8.1

iMac 10.6.8

iTunes 11.4

I can't add anything to the iPhone via iTunes. I can't sync, I can't drag and drop.


I've tried EVERY suggestion on this thread. I've checked and unchecked Auto Sync..., Manually Manage..., Sync Music, Restored from backup, restarted iTunes, restarted my Mac, restarted the iPhone. I even tried a different cable! The only result is even less content on my phone. *** Apple!

Its hard to believe I'm the only one with this problem

iTunes won't sync my music, movies, ringtones... Anything!

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