Q: Near Duplicate Playlist is Created when Syncing with IPhone

I am appalled at the level of problems I see being described here.  I too, am suffering through the duplicated playlist issue and have reached the limit of my tolerance. 

APPLE - WHAT THE  #@!%  IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? 

How can you let a problem this annoying continue to exist for so long without even acknowledging the difficulties you have created for your customers?

At least let us know you are aware of the issues and that you are working on it.

I should not have to call support to accomplish a simple task like synching my phone properly. 

I have been buying Apple products for over 20 years.  I have spent well into 5 figures between personal and professional purchases.

And this is what I get -  having to spend over an hour of my day every time I need to synch, getting your lousy software to accomplish the simple task of updating my phone.  I don't use iCloud music.  I manually select what I want synched, and still I end up with this buggy, bloated abortion of a piece of software that you should be totally ashamed of. 

You have become as bad as Microsoft was at the time of my switch - greedy, incompetent, unresponsive and arrogant.  Funny how things come full circle with "success."

Well, I guess it's time to vote with my feet.  This is the last iPhone for me - my time is simply too valuable to deal with your b*****it customer support.

Adios.

Very well stated Rosebud ltd.   They truly have come full circle.  This is my 3rd iphone.  I'm so glad I spent the cash for a 128 gig phone for my music this time, and now the itunes portion just completely s ucks.   Playlists deleting off my phone.   Playlists deleting off my computer.  Playlists duplicating.  Shuffle issues.  Songs repeating issues.  Album covers not showing up on my phone.   The list goes on and on.   This was never a problem before. 

WHAT THE F IS APPLE'S PROBLEM?

Has anyone come up with a solution to this problem?  I have been having the same issues for several months now.  I have upgraded to an iPhone 6s from a 5s, have updated ios9 software on it, and now have a new PC with Windows 10 on it (previously was syncing to Windows 7 PC).  It is actually worse now with the Windows 10.  The workaround (deleted extra playlists off of iTunes as well as the phone) is not even working now.  And to make it worse, it is now creating 2 duplicates of every playlist!

Help!!

Fix Duplicate Playlist Solved

April 2016

iTunes 12.3.3

iOS 9.3.1

1) Delete duplicate playlist in iTunes.

2a) Delete duplicate playlist on iPhone/iPod/iPad before sync.

2b) *Warning* Do not delete playlist you want to keep or else during the sync process playlist will disappear from iTunes.

3) Go back to iTunes and sync device.

4) Duplicate playlist should disappear from iTunes and iOS device.

Hope this works for everyone

I am having the same issue and this is really annoying.  I just bought an iPad Pro 9.7 128 Gb with the idea to manage my music from there.  I don't like this.  Apple really needs to get a grip on these updates and stop introducing annoying services we are not asking for.

Thanks for that fix, but why the hec doesn't the Almighty Apple fix problem?

Based on my tests, if I edit the list on the phone it updates the one on the computer upon syncing. If I edit the list on the compute then sync it creates a duplicate/backup of what was on the phone upon syncing. So, iTunes assumes th you wouldn't want to lose anything that resides on the phone but not the other way around.

Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library - Apple Support

I just got off with Apple support, and used the directions in that link. Even if you find a duplicate that isn't in the playlist, delete it, then re-sync your iPod/ iPhone. It should remove the duplicate playlists.

I cleared my entire iPhone's music library with setting and manually deleting everything in Music

1. Delete the duplicate playlists in iTunes on your computer and mobile device

2. Go into Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage (not icloud) then find Music and delete the Data

3. Then go into the Music App and delete everything in My Music and Playlists

4. Sync again

It worked for me, I even deleted everything again and tried to sync. The duplicates were gone.

I have a iPhone 6s+ and iTunes ver 12.

I never had this problem before with my old 4s.  It was recently stolen and I went the cheap route and bought a new 5s today and I was having this duplicate playlist issue.  The play list was exactly the same number of songs and from what I could tell the content was the same.  Deleting the "playlist-1" on the phone and iTunes seemed to work for my last sync.

I'm wondering what was causing the additional playlist to occur, and on a phone that hasn't even been used yet!

Issue still persisting a year later. No fix has been found. Between this, auto rating, and the poor changes that are continually being implemented I'm looking for alternatives to anything apple related. Anyone know of any good music platform software tied to a good mp3 device alternative? Seems like there would be a good market for it at this point.

I find that the duplicate playlists actually have fewer songs than the original. It looks like the issue is in iTunes, not in iOS.

Here's how I resolved it:

1. Delete the duplicate playlists in iTunes on my Mac. (You may not have to do this, because of step 7, but I haven't had this problem again yet to see if I can avoid this step.)
2. Delete the duplicate playlists on my iPod. (I am assuming this will work on iPhones as well.)
3. Connect my iPod to my computer and view it in iTunes on my Mac. Note that iTunes still sees those duplicate playlists.
4. Set iTunes to manually manage my music.
5. Delete the duplicate playlists on my iPod from iTunes.
6. Sync the iPod.
   
7. Uncheck the "Manually manage my music" checkbox again. iTunes will warn you that it will resync everything. Accept this, and let it do its thing.
8. Once it's done syncing, you should have a clean set of playlists again.

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing there's something wrong with the iTunes backup mechanism, that any time you change a playlist, it creates a backup copy of the old list in the backup, but somehow that copy becomes visible as "Playlist 1" etc.

3 years and counting.  The same old bug and Apple has nothing to contribute.  Lazy programmers and even lazier support personnel. All they're interested in is pushing the iCloud crap on everyone.

This worked perfectly for me. I had an awful list of playlist duplicates.

Thanks.

iPhone 6s+ iTunes 12.4 OS X 10.11.6

This didn't work for me, exactly, but it did help me to isolate at least one aspect of the bug.

I followed explicitbunny's directions. I cleared all the music on my phone through Settings as well as from the Music app. When I synced with my desktop, I ended up losing all my playlists on both devices because Apple software is a hot mess. Infuriating. Then I tried an experiment, based on the observation noted here that the duplicate playlist has fewer songs, and is in fact the previous version of the playlist you've added songs to. So I created a small playlist. Synced my phone. Added a few songs to the playlist and synced again -- another duplicate playlist. Darn!

BUT... I also noticed that an album (that I had bought through iTunes/Apple music) magically reappeared in the Music app on my phone, even though I had not selected it from my desktop. Weird. I deleted this from my phone and tried the experiment again. Still no success. Then I went ahead and deleted that album from iTunes on my *desktop* (figuring I could re-download it from the cloud at another time). BINGO!

Now, I'd had this duplication problem before I'd purchased this particular album, and found the only solution was to restore my phone, though even that "fix" was temporary. I'm reluctant to suggest that anyone go ahead and risk losing all their carefully collected playlists to corroborate my findings, but I am curious if anyone else has had a similar experience. In any case, the fact that iTunes wanted to put some "unselected" album in the Music on my iPhone seems to suggest that the root of the problem lies in iTunes rather than the iOS.

iPhone 6S+  // i Mac // OSX 10.11.6 // iTunes 12.4.3.1