Is there any way for the Icloud Music Library to only sync checked songs?

mgfx1975 wrote:

... If I do turn all the iCloud Music Library on my iPhone, all 7,000 songs is uploaded to the phone (which is incredibly stupid) and take up space.

Not quite. All 7,000 songs get listed. You can choose which are downloaded to the device and available for offline use. Those you don't download don't take up any room, but can be streamed should you want to listen to them. One approach to this is to make a separate library for Apple Music/iCloud Music Library which only has the content that you want available to the device, and switch between libraries to access your other content.

tt2

I'm also having this issue and there doesn't seem to be any reasonable soloution from what I can tell.

My issue is swapping in and out seasonal music, I don't want to be listening to Christmas music this early for example.

I think my only option is to make many Smart Playlists and just play the contents of that. Not elegant and definitely doesn't "just work" but it's something.

Have you tried using the Skip when shuffling option?

tt2

I have the 7 Plus and iCloud still plays all the unchecked songs. I have over 4,000 songs in my library which includes holiday music which I uncheck. When I use my iPhone to shuffle all songs I hear Christmas music on the beach. All the upgrades and they can't seem to fix this? I don't want to download the music on the phone, I just want to be able to manage it.

I want to have ONLY selected playlists and songs in my iPhone!

I have 7000+ songs that include about 300 I bought from Apple Music. If I don't turn on iCloud Music Library on my iPhone 8, the Apple Music songs I bought will not be sync into the iPhone. If I do turn all the iCloud Music Library on my iPhone, all 7,000 songs is uploaded to the phone (which is incredibly stupid) and take up space. We want to choose for ourselves what gets uploaded and what NOT get uploaded into iCloud. Its a dead if I don't and dead (trying hard not to use words that are not so nice) if I do situation.

Very very tempted to just cancel Apple Music and move to another songs download. If I really can't solve this... they let me have control at better price but just only not on a single platform. Will just need to take the trouble to switch between the two but at least I won't clog up my storage.

Apologies for the duplicate replies. The forum was acting up earlier and saying they weren't sent. 😮😕😊

tt2

I'll second that. You completely didn't answer his question (which is my question too).

We don't want to manually move media files around devices. We understand what Apple Music and the iCloud Music Library are and do.

The issue is the whole "iCloud Music Library enables you to stream you're entire music library on any of your devices anywhere!" feature. It's great, until you realize you don't necessarily, say, want your spoken-word album tracks popping up while you're driving listening to your all-song-shuffle. This functionality-- unchecking songs to prevent them from playing on shuffle-- still works fine on desktop iTunes-- how do we get it to work on our iPhones?

There is a specific option, Skip when shuffling that can be enabled for any iTunes track. Setting this would help with the unwanted shuffle plays, but won't help with media that you don't want synced at all. A possible workaround for that would be to change the media kind, to say podcast or audiobook, for items that you want to exclude from sharing to the iCloud Music Library.

tt2

Hello there, Yourboyblue9c1.

It sounds like you want to know if you can manage the music synced via iCloud Music Library. The following Knowledge Base article proves a good reference for how iCloud Music Library functions:

iCloud Music Library: Understanding differences between Apple Music and iTunes Match

In particular to iCloud Music Library:

Using Apple Music

Your Apple Music membership includes an iCloud Music Library, which allows you to enjoy your entire music library from all of your devices.

When you first join, Apple Music checks your music collection to see which of your songs are also in the Apple Music catalog. It does this by matching against your song’s details (such as name, artist, album). If we have your songs in our catalog, we make them available to access on all of your devices.

When Apple Music adds these matched songs to your iCloud Music Library, Apple Music doesn’t change or alter your original music files that reside in iTunes for Mac or PC or on your iOS devices from which they were added. We make these matched songs available to your other computers or devices in high quality 256 Kbps AAC, and they can be played on them only while your Apple Music membership is active.

In addition, iTunes will upload to your iCloud Music Library those songs that we can’t find in our catalog, to make them available to you on all of your other devices.

Learn more about Apple Music membership.

If you'd like to be able to manage the music available on your iPhone, the following article will provide the instructions for doing that:

Move content from iTunes on your computer to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

By default, iTunes manages the content of your iTunes library (including your music, TV shows, movies, and more) manually, which gives you control over the content you want to take with you on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. This is useful if your iTunes library contains more items than can fit on your device.

If you're a member of Apple Music or have an iTunes Match subscription, you have iCloud Music Library turned on. When you have iCloud Music Library turned on, you can't manually manage music. You can still manage videos using the steps below.

Manually add items to your device

1. Connect your device to your computer.
2. Open iTunes. Make sure that you have the latest version.
3. Choose the content that you want to add to your device from your iTunes library.
4. Drag the content to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod. A panel should appear. Locate your device.

If you're using an iPhone, you can only add music or video from a single iTunes Library.

If you're using an iPad or iPod, you can add music from multiple iTunes Libraries, but video from only one iTunes Library.

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.

Kind Regards.

This did not answer the question! How do you stop iCloud music from syncing unchecked songs?