iTunes 12.2 keeps duplicating playlists. How do I make it stop?

I have the same problem every now and then. I am not in the cloud and do not use apple music. I have all my own music stored on a external hard drive to which I update, change and sync music via iTunes. Out of what seems like nowhere, I have all my playlists duplicated, even without syncing. This has been happening for quit some time now, like more than a year (today is 23 July 2016). I just delete the dups and move on so as not to make myself crazy with Apple's faults that never seem to get addresses by Apple. Do they even care, really? It would seem the answer to that is no as they only want me to sign up to their cloud services which do not interest me....like any other corporate looking to increase market share and revenue.

Did you, or anyone, ever get an answer to this issue? I have the same setup, no cloud, no apple music. All I see here are the problems and no helpful responses.

I have the same issue, but with my iPad ONLY, and NOT my iPod so have tried the following:

Delete the duplicate playlists on iPad, and iTunes separately (ones with suffix 1) then re-sync. DID NOT WORK - more duplications on BOTH iPad and iMac - repeat all of the above steps, over and over - very very annoying.

Delete ALL music and playlists on iPad and then the DUPLICATE playlists ONLY on iTunes, so leaving only the ones I want to keep, then re-sync. DID NOT WORK. EVEN WORSE, it DELETED ALL of the Playlists on iTunes, so now I've LOST ALL my Playlists. Even more irritating. Why?

Seriously, Apple, what is going on? Syncing, basically does not work. I now dare not sync my iPod any more because all the Playlists are gone. So disappointed - more so with the lack of actual response from Apple themselves.

I think I may have found a solution.

Under 'General' in 'Preferences' I unticked the 'Show Apple Music' box under my 'Library Name' and it seems to have worked for me

Dont know how to make it stop itsvery annoying I have three duplicate list of mt main library!! I just press and hold and the choose delete but I'm sure, like Arnie they will be back!!

I have found that if I edit a playlist in iTunes that's already on my iPhone, iTunes will create another version of the playlist. I think iTunes is seeing that the playlist on my iPhone is different than the playlist in iTunes and therefore creates a duplicate of what's on my iPhone instead of altering the playlist instead. Weird.

Yes, I think that you're correct. Brilliant, isn't it?

What chuckp8 says might indeed be sufficient to cause a duplicated playlist, but I don't think it is necessarily the core problem. I have gotten duplicated playlists even though I never (not even once) edited them on my iPod. Duplication of playlists has not happened to me recently, so I wonder if the latest version of iTunes corrects the issue, whatever it might have been.

I have the same issue. It's extremely annoying. I don't think Apple care. I just delete the duplicate ones from iTunes and start again. With iTunes 12.5.1 another new annoying bug appeared. Since they launched their music service, now purchased songs do not transfer. You must download them from your iPhone. This is great when you prepare a Playlist for a flight and find out your beloved tunes are not available offline. Thanks Apple. Keep listening. Also, for years we've been trying to get a way to stop iTunes from copying our voice memos. I found the solution. Do Not Use Voice Recorder. Full stop. There is no end to it.

I'm still dealing with this annoying issue in 2016 (Nov)! ***! >:(

But at least you have time travel. 😉😝

tt2

With billions of dollars in the bank, Apple please spend a few ten thousand to fix this issue...in fact, rewrite iTunes and bring the multiple document interface (MDI) back...I have two giant monitors and room for many child windows that we could use to edit playlists and drag and drop between...remember like it used to be? I digress - fix the duplicate playlist issue - you have a reproducible use case from the user above.

This is exactly what's happening to me as well. Apple needs to fix this. Every time I add or remove a song from a play list in iTunes, then sync my phone, it adds a duplicate playlist with the same name followed by a "1". I've just been deleting the playlist with the "1". The next time I sync the phone it doesn't come back. It's VERY annoying!

Why isn't that fixed yet?

Have the same problem and obviously it is already existing for almost 18 months...

Forget that post, it didn't work.