iPhone playlists viewed in iTunes do not match what's on the phone

Question

Level 1

24 points

iPhone playlists viewed in iTunes do not match what's on the phone

Hi there,

I have an issue which is mostly just irritating

When I connect my iPhone 6s to iTunes and look at the contents of it under the 'Devices' category in the left pane, it shows playlists which do not exist on the iPhone. They used to exist but I deleted them long ago.

I suspect it's something to do with having iCloud Music Library on so that I can use Apple Music properly and maybe these playlists existed at my last music sync when I was still using the cable. Still, the playlists don't exist on the phone so I can't figure out why iTunes think they exist on the phone still.

Has anyone experienced this and know how to correct it?

Thanks.

iPhone 6s, iOS 9.1

Posted on Dec 4, 2015 8:35 PM

Reply

Answer 1

mario49

Community Specialist

Dec 6, 2015 8:27 AM in response to PerthMac

Hey PerthMac,

If I understand correctly, you are using iCloud Music Library and you have playlists in the cloud that you do not want. Are the playlists still listed in iTunes on the computer? I would recommend you read this article, it may be able to help troubleshoot the issue.

Get help with iTunes Match - Apple Support

If you have duplicate playlists on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Follow the steps below.

Make sure that your iOS device is running the latest version of iOS

Update the iOS software on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Delete duplicate playlists

Open iTunes from your computer. Make sure that you have the latest version.

In the Source List on the left side of iTunes, find the playlist that you want to delete.

Right-click or Control-click on the playlist title, then choose Delete.

Open the Music app on your iOS device. Depending on your device's Internet connection, it might take a few minutes for the changes to appear.

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a good one.

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Answer 2

PerthMac Author

Level 1

24 points

Dec 6, 2015 3:12 PM in response to mario49

Hi Mario49,

Thanks for replying but you dont understand the problem quite right. When you connect your phone to iTunes on the PC, you can look at the contents of the phone. iTunes shows playlists on my phone that do not really exist on the phone. I.e. iTunes shows that my phone has contents which it really does not have.

I hope thats more clear.

Thanks

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

278,297 points

Dec 7, 2015 6:04 AM in response to PerthMac

If syncing with iTunes isn't working as it should then as long as everything that you want to sync to the device is in the library try the following steps:

Backup device.
Restore as a new device.
Restore the backup you made earlier.

N.B. A feature introduced with iOS 9 referred to as app thinning or app slicing allows each device to download only the code and resources needed by that device, resulting in smaller downloads and better use of storage on the device. As a consequence the device no longer holds the universal version of the app that could be installed on any device so transferring apps is no longer supported. Hopefully Apple will make some changes to the way this works, but in the meantime you can download past purchases from iTunes and/or enable automatic downloads of app purchases to make sure that iTunes always has the apps that you want on your device. As long as you make sure all apps are present and updated in iTunes before attempting a restore there should be no loss of data. I can't confirm, but it seems a recent update means that all data is restored and apps that are not in the library are queued for download from the iTunes Store over Wi-Fi, in a similar fashion to the way restore from iCloud works.

tt2

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