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Level 1

21 points

Songs Grayed Out In iTunes 12.8.0.150

Using iTunes 12.8.0.150 (as of 9/7/2018) and iPhone 8+

I've had songs in my playlists just simply become grayed out and not playable on my iPhone.

The songs play fine in iTunes on my iMac. They simply don't play in my phone. Oddly, I'll see them in my iPhone playlist, but if I click on the song to play it, it doesn't play and then disappears from my phone.

I'll include screen shots. Please don't judge my musical tastes! Lol!

Example 1:

If I look at the same playlist in iTunes, those songs are fine, and they are checked. See example 2:

I'm stumped. Why would they suddenly become grayed out.I haven't been monkeying around with my music. I back up about once a week and I sync probably every day with iTunes.

Another screen shot for info sake:

And finally, this shot:

Can anyone help me with this issue? I've read a few other suggestions in the community but they all seem to say, "Just make sure the music is checked.", or something similar. Which mine already is.

Thank you!

Posted on Sep 7, 2018 11:21 AM

Best reply

turingtest2

Level 10

273,039 points

Posted on Sep 9, 2018 10:55 AM

You could try the following all-purpose steps for dealing with erratic device or sync behaviour (including the troublesome greyed out tracks and/or dotted circles of stalled transfers). They assume that all of the content you want on the device is in your library ready for restoring. If it isn't see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device first. I would also recommend you copy everything out of the camera roll if you haven't already.

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

Use an encrypted backup (*) if you want to preserve passwords, Wi-Fi settings, web history and health data where appropriate. I also suggest syncing with a selection of playlists (unless you're using iCloud Music Library) rather than manually adding content as, if nothing else, the process above is easier to do if you ever have to go through it again.

(*) The downside with backup encryption is that if you forget the password when you need it again, which could be years later, you may need to invoke a workaround to turn off encryption as shown in Disable iOS backup encryption, which can only help if your device is in a state that can backup to iCloud, or runs iOS 11.

For added security you might also want to make an independent backup to iCloud and/or archive your current backup before you start.

FWIW I successfully used this method some time ago when Siri became unable to call contacts or play my music.

tt2

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Songs Grayed Out In iTunes 12.8.0.150

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