Q: Playlists won't sync to my iPhone 5!

PLEASE go to http://www.apple.com/support/ and report this problem.  They haven't fixed the problem because they haven't had many complaints.  That's what I found out during chat with Apple today.  I wanted to know why this problem hasn't been fixed yet.

Thanks!

I reported the problem to Apple in December 2013. I worked with iTunes Store Support and was given steps to follow to more or less temporarily fix the problem. I believe I posted those steps on this thread last month. I continue to experience the problem of not being able to sync new music to my iPhone 5S. Periodically, I must run through the steps that Support provided to me. And even with that, my playlists never match up completely. Tech Support needs to escalate this issue beyond their basic level so that the technicians in the backroom can work on a permanent fix and forget this temporary stuff.

I admire your patience but mine has worn thin with this type of issue. Apple employs enough people and takes in enough money to handle issues like this without forcing their users to individually jump through hoops reporting issues to email addresses which appear to just connect to black holes. This forum requires our user IDs for us to participate so we can assume that all of us are genuine users of the products we complain about. Apple moderators also monitor these forums enough to remove anything they consider to be less than squeeky clean. Surely, then, when an issue gets to 4 pages (with numerous other related issues) the developers might deal with this as an issue without us all having to waste our precious time duplicating 'chat time' and duplicating submissions through the obfuscated support channels.

And I stand corrected on my date of reporting to Apple. I contacted them in November 2013, prior to Thanksgiving, about this issue and another issue. I'm pretty frustrated. Two months of a "band-aid" approach to this problem is two months too long. Gortdromagh is right. These discussion threads are monitored by Apple moderators. They know what's going on. And this is probably not the only thread discussing this issue.

this fixed my problem...thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!

I have tried everything here - sometime it works - sometimes it doesn't  Right now it doesn't and I am beyond frustrated.

I am so frustratied by this issue.  I was told that they were issuing an itunes update that would take care of this problem.  A new update was released, but it didn't care of the problem.  I can't believe Apple hasn't taken care of this problem.  Is it because they want us to buy new iPhones?

Getting grumpier.

I have a touchsmart HP windows 8 computer.  In itunes, sometimes it would see my iphone but most of the time i couldnt get it to recognize my iphone 5s.  I tried for hours.  Then i remembered that i have an apple mac air laptop so i plugged my iphone into that laptop and it took less then 10 secs to recognize and begin synching the new iphone.  If you are having problems I would say its the windows 8 thats not compatible in some way.  I hope they fix this because it gets very frustrating!  I'm just happy that I have an apple laptop that solved my problems. I sure hope iphones AND wins 8 get their act together!!!!!

Here's a new approach to this.  I have my iPhone 5 configured to download music automatically when I purchase it on any device.  I almost never purchase music with the iPhone - usually the iPad or my Mac Mini.  Based on something I read in another group and my own sluething, I found a fairly simple (though, of course, shouldn't be necessary) procedure that got the phone to sync.   Someone in the other group suggested that iTunes be set to only sync checked songs, then uncheck the songs that won't sync, sync the iPhone using USB and disconnect it. Re-sync it with the songs checked and it would finally sync the songs.  HOWEVER, what I discovered was that songs that wouldn't sync had only partially downloaded from the Cloud to the iPhone.  They were in "download limbo" and, apparently had been in that state since I bought them with my Mac.  It was these songs that wouldn't sync. And when I finally got them to download to the iPhone properly and completely (I had to login to iTunes several times during this process to get them all on the phone - add annoyed growling sounds here) only then did the check - uncheck thing, finally work.   The take away here: make sure the songs are actually on the iPhone BEFORE you try to sync it (or maybe not on the phone at all)  and see if it syncs normally.  If you'd already tried to sync it with the partial download problem, you may still have to do the uncheck, check thing to make them sync.

Thank you!!! yukon819

Here's what worked for me.

While having itunes open (not sure if it makes a difference, but at least you can see when it recognizes your iphone) do the following.

1. Connect your iphone to computer via usb.

2. Go to into settings and click on control panel.

3. Go to printers/devices and click on device manager.

4. Go down to portable devices and click the little arrow next to it to expand and you should see the apple iphone.

5. Right click on the apple iphone and then click update apple driver.

You will see it recognize the phone (phone should light up) and within a few seconds you will see that itunes recoginizes it as well. Let it run through the update and you should be good to go.

Worked for me!

I have only had this problem since January - I must have easily synced my iTunes playlists with my iPhone a thousand times with no problems (even on the latest software updates, incl. macbook and itunes and iphone) ever since I got my iPhone 5. This problem came out of nowhere, but it did start to happen right around the time I started listening to iTunes Radio. Surely this has nothing to do with it, but I mention it just in case, as the 2 things started eerily close to one enother. Aside from just starting to use iTunes Radio, when it first started happening was when I also bought a few tracks straight out of my iTunes Radio playlist (from the Store) on the spot. Again, I can't see how this is related, but just in case some troubleshooter from Apple out there is reading this...?

I even subscribed to Match, just to see if that would fix the problem (desperation), and lo and behold the only thing that has done is complicated matters because now that stupid dotted-cloud icon haunts pretty much all of my tracks in the playlists that I am trying to sync and often times I can't even play the tracks that were already on my phone BEFORE the not-syncing problem started. I would wonder if THAT was the issue, except for the fact that many of the playlists/tracks I want to sync do NOT have the dotted-cloud (or any of the many annoying cloud icons for that matter - which never seem to go away) icon. But, I have to wonder which songs are not being synced to my iPhone because they're in "cloud purgatory" or if they are just not syncing because my iTunes-iPhone sync relationship has been clearly compromised by some glitch in the system.

I have tried all the suggestions on this thread to date, and nothing has worked except for when I am actually allowed to pull all my music OFF of the iPhone (wiping it clean of all music), update it, and then re-load it all again (4,000 tracks, taking over an hour of waiting time and NOT a sustainable solution, IMHO). But, even trying to do this is hit or miss because often I try and "Apply" a blank slate (no music whatsoever) and quickly hit "sync" but the summary just bounces right back to the exact music I was trying to wipe away. I can't seem to crack the code of which boxes to tick (manually sync/sync only checked songs/sync entire library, etc) that allows me to actually purge all the songs off without it magically reverting back even after I hit "Apply". Mind you this has only resulted in my new playlists actually updating properly, twice. Not every time. And again, that's a stupid and unreasonable solution anyway.

The only other thing that worked (once, not always) was me making a dummy playlist ON MY iPHONE, then syncing it to iTunes and updating music in reverse order - something about that, combined with whatever experimental clicking I do amongst the "Summary" and "Music" and "on this iPhone" options seemed to provoke a playlist update refresh, and I got my new playlists synced onto my phone somehow. It's worth a try if you're still struggling to get an actual playlist sync after trying everything above. LIKE I STILL AM.

I tried unsyncing, syncing, restoring...pretty much everything.  I just figured out why MY phone wasn't syncing playlists and I feel like I just won the Super Bowl (I'M GOING TO DISNEYWORLD!).

In the iTunes Store app (not the Music app) on my phone, I clicked the "More" icon at the bottom of the screen and noticed that I had a bunch of stalled downloads.  I went back to the Music app and noticed that these songs were grayed out when I tapped the Songs icon at the bottom of the screen.  I swiped them and hit the Delete button.  I started clearing out EVERYTHING whether they were grayed out or not.  I got about halfway done and the Music app shutdown on me.  I went back to the iTunes Store app and then to the More>Downloads and noticed the once-stalled downloads started downloading.  I let it go and watched the remaining downloads dwindle and eventually complete.  I went back to iTunes on my Mac, selected all of the Playlists I wanted synced, hit the Apply button and voila!  This has taken me DAYS to figure out.  It may not fix everyone's issue, but if you're so mad you're about to take a bite out of your phone, it's worth checking out.

Good luck!

Thank you, thank you, thank you tim426hemi!  I had bought 31 songs via iTunes Radio on the first day it was "switched on" here in Oz, created a playlist for them and attempted to sync to two iPhones, an iPad Mini and an iPad.  On all devices, only about half the songs appeared in the playlist.

I tried everything over a period of several hours, and finally got to the point where I was about to run a hot bath, step into it, and open a vein.  Then, this morning, I found your post.  Download errors for about 15 tracks showing.  I took the obvious corrective action and this vexed problem went away.

May I say that your blood is worth bottling!

I was so irritated with this. I was worried that I would have to restore my phone as well. What I did was when into the playlist that wasn't fully syncing, and unchecked each and every song. Then I synced the phone. I made sure that the playlist was empty in my phone. I went back and rechecked every song, synced, and it completely synced. Hope this helps someone else.