Near Duplicate Playlist is Created when Syncing with IPhone

I compare the duplicate playlist to the original by creating a smart playlist:

If the duplicate has no songs that are not in the original, I delete the duplicate playlist. I've found that for some original-duplicate pairs, the duplicate has a few additional songs. Usually that's because I got tired of them and deleted them on the original; but I may drag them to the original. For other pairs, the duplicate has no songs that are not in the original. Conclusion; iTunes creates a duplicate during syncing whether or not it will include different songs. (I don't check for an original that has songs that aren't in the duplicate, because I buy my music on my Mac; so that will always be the case.)

I think the underlying issue is that iTunes was originally designed to treat the iPod/iPhone/iPad as a dumb appendage of the Mac. But now the system is evolving into a peer-to-peer relationship, and a playlist can be modified both on the computer and on the phone. So, during syncing, the software may be challenged to merge the Mac and iPhone playlist versions. One might propose various rules; generate a new playlist that has all the songs from the other two playlists; or take the playlist with the most songs as the master, or the one most recently changed, or the one that resides on the Mac. One might offer a choice of playlist syncing rules in Settings or Preferences and let us decide. Apple seems to have declined to face the issue, and instead preserves both playlist versions with no examination of them, saying basically that you're on your own. Which may reflect another underlying issue; Apple has become more interested in renting music than in selling it.

Another interesting wrinkle I've noticed in this business is that, after I delete the duplicate playlist, its entry in the smart playlist's rules turns blank. If I keep the smart playlist and sync again, and a duplicate playlist is again created, the smart playlist's rules don't show the duplicate playlist's name until I navigate to it, despite Live Updating. This suggests that playlists have system-generated internal identifiers. So, each successive duplicate of the same original gets a unique identifier even though its displayed name is the same as that of a previous duplicate. I'm guessing that Apple may simply be comparing playlist internal identifiers during syncing and not their visible names or contents. If the internal IDs match, you get a duplicate and it's your problem, not ours. Welcome to Apple Music!

I've given up with this one, to be honest.

I change and re-sync my Playlists at least once a week.

What I do is:

1. Change the playlists.
2. Sync the iPhone..
3. Wait for the inevitable duplicates to appear.
4. Go back to the playlists on iTunes
5. Delete duplicates..i.e. those with a "1" after them.
6. Re-sync the iPhone and voila everything has been successfully synced! 😉

It's a total pain in the you know where, to be honest..and it's downright shoddy IMO that this issue can't be solved with a simple update, we shouldn't have to go through this total polava ever single time.

I'm pretty sure that the bods at Apple are aware of this issue and it's high time they did something about it! 😠😉

djscottie wrote:

Hey Apple, I abandoned everything I knew and loved (including my FAR superior HTC One M9) for the SOLE purpose of making my music syncing easier.

This has been going on for several months now, and, based on your lack of a response, there is no end in site.

Might I suggest un-f*cking this problem relatively soon? I've already given up on the new Macbook. Let's not have my iPhone go the same way, eh?

I'm starting to get tired of overpriced and lackluster mac products, which phone and computer did you end up with?

....Oh I see the htc for the phone.

I have the same issue, it just started for me and I don't know why...

I've had this iPhone for over 6 months......

It doesn't happen for all of my playlists ... only a few...

Fully patched current version of Windows 10

itunes 12.5.1.21

current iOS V10.2.1

for me at least it can't be a free space issue on the phone ... I have 70Gb+ of free space

Sigh... I had this same issue 5 years ago with an iPhone 3Gs :-/

I also have the same issue.

I don't know if it has been mentioned before, but the duplicated playlist seems to be created not only when you add a new song to one of your iPhone's playlist, but also when the slightest change has happened to your iPhone playlist, even regarding the plays # of the songs.

So even if I do not add any more song(s) to my playlist on the iPhone (or iTunes on the PC), If I actually listen to one of my playlists on the phone, then when I connect the phone to iTunes on the Windows PC (Windows 10) and try to sync, the said playlist is duplicated.

I can only guess that iTunes should actually merge everything (every change, every new detail) from the iPhone's playlist with the one it has on the Windows iTunes database. It seems that instead of merging the two playlists it also creates a backup of the old playlist, so we end up with two of them.

Same thing happens when I sync my iPod Classic.

I can't believe that Apple has not fixed this yet !

I can confirm what IoannisGR points out on the Mac as well with the latest versions of iTunes and iOS, meaning it is a design flaw or something on the phone side, and not limited to just iTunes on Windows.

I am having this problem with my brand-new (6 gen) ipod touch. My problem is even more frustrating because the duplicate playlists are invisible! When I got into itunes, I don't see them, but when I disconnect and then just go under the "Music" of my ipod, suddenly, the duplicates are there! 😠

Also, I have my playlists neatly organized into playlists folders. In itunes, everything looks fine. Disconnected and under Music, some of the playlists are playlists folders, and some are NOT. What is going on? It's very frustrating!!! I do already have itunes set NOT to sync, as I use it from several different computers.

Here is a fix that so far seems to work in my case.

1. Take a backup of your library / iTunes folder (this step is optional)

2. Uninstall the following from Control Panel - at this exact order (you may not find "Apple Application Support", but it's ok, just proceed with the next one).

Apple Application Support

Apple Mobile Device Support

Apple Software Update

Bonjour

iTunes

3. Reboot Windows.

4. You might get some error prompts / messages regarding iCloud or Airport Utility or something else. Ignore / close them.

5. Download and install iTunes again.

6. Reboot Windows.

7. Run Apple Software Update and update anything that might show up (optional).

After I did the above steps. a few days ago, I have synced my iPhone 4-5 times and I had no duplicate playlists created so far.

I don't know if and how long this solution / fix will last, but for the time being it seems to work.

I am having this issue with iTunes on my Mac. I use the library to update iCloud and iTunes Match. I get a duplicate set of playlists when I sync with the iCloud. I only use Apple TV 3rd gen for the iCloud music library.

Hi. I get the same corruption of my playlists, some deleted and replaced with several clones with 1, 2 or 3 added (depending on no. of clones). I have given up connecting my iphone to iTunes, other updates achieved by bluetooth connection. I have fallen back on my ipod 160gb classic for all my music, use a bluetooth adapter with it to play on an Echo and avoid getting really frustrated. Maybe the way forward is for apple to create a modern bluetooth ipod (with 512gb - Ha). Any ideas?

This worked for me. I was having the same issues with multiple duplication's of playlists. I had three different playlists that duplicated 3 and 4 times. I deleted them from my phone as well as the music in them, deleted duplicates from my computer and only kept the one playlist that had the most songs. Synced again and it was fine UNTIL I did a sync a couple of days later. It started all over again.

I created new playlists for each, selected all from the old list and dragged the songs onto the new playlist with a slightly different name. Deleted the old playlists from the computer and phone. Went into music settings in itunes under my phone menu and ensured that the duplicate old and newly created play lists were not checked. Did a sync. At this time all of the problem playlists and the new play lists were not sent to my phone. I wanted a clean removal before adding the new corrected list. Went back and selected the new playlists and did another sync. Seems to have worked. We will see what happens in a couple of days.

Hey so I don't know if you have this problem still, but I found a simple way to stop it from messing up everything. Before you sync your playlist to your phone, change the name a bit. For example, my playlist is called "My Jam." Whenever I go to sync, I change it to "My Jams." I found that this prevents everything bad from happening like losing a random number of songs or having duplicate playlists. When I go to sync again, I'll change it from "My Jams" to my "My Jam."

If this helps, spread the word 🙂

I have a similar problem except it seems as though my iPod Touch Gen 5 is controlling the sync - so the newly created playlist in iTunes is the version that was on the iPod. The updated version in iTunes doesn't sync to the iPod. I reset my iPod completely last week so that it was factory clean and the problem still persists.

Getting very annoyed and frustrated!

Anyone got any new ideas? I have tried all the options suggested below in this thread.

Thanks

Vivien

Thank you. did that but it didn't work for me.

- I DON'T see the duplicate playlists in my iTunes main library

- I DON'T see the duplicate playlists in my phone

- I SEE the duplicate playlists in my iTunes when I click on the phone symbol and show the iPhone parameters

So I finally sorted this by:

Uninstalling iTunes

Installing an old version 12.1.3.6

Reconstituting my entire library and playlists

Erasing all data off my iPod and booting it as a new iPod

Syncing with iTunes

The whole process has taken nearly two weeks and I am not amused! I will not be updating iTunes again for a long time. Hope you're reading this Apple - Grrrrr!