Manually managing Music to device not possible in Catalina Finder at moment?

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Manually managing Music to device not possible in Catalina Finder at moment?

With the install to Catalina came the new Music application and devices regulated to the finder for syncing, backups, etc.

I have always preferred to leave my phones, pads and pods set to a manually managed setting for loading music as my library far outstripped the storage available on any given device. My method was a simple drag and drop of the album to the device icon in the iTunes sidebar and all the enclosed tracks were loaded, over cable or WiFi, typically without a hitch.

I expected only a slightly more cumbersome experience post iTunes: opening a Finder window as well as the jukebox, to drag and drop between.

After installing, the Music Tour seemed to focus heavily on auto sync instructions and I was afraid that the option to manage may have been removed. It has not:

While Music was struggling to download the album art it trashed during the update and Catalina was generally "optimizing" itself I quickly plugged in a nearby iPad and dropped an EP onto the finder device and got a sync. Relieved I left the Mac to itself, satisfied that the great "unbloating" of iTunes was behind us.

After an overnight and a reboot, I have never been able to perform a manual sync since. In fact, attempting to drag to the finder will sometimes uncheck the manual option box altogether.

I jumped on here this morning and find a couple of manually managing Catalina threads with many views so I wanted to add another, draw attention to the fact this seems to be broken, and see if anyone has found the juice to make this work again.

Syncing by checking a bunch of artist, album, genre boxes may be the preferred method for many but I like the granular ability to select 2 discs of a 5 disc box set and dumping on my device instead of adding the entire collection at any given time.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 12, 2019 3:31 PM

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Answer 1

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Javamunki Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 17, 2019 10:19 PM in response to Javamunki

Forgot about this thread... for those that were attempting to work from the finder, overthinking it. All devices still appear in the Music application sidebar. Manually drag and drop to that icon as before to export to your phone. I figured out that a drop on the finder window with the device selected, not the icon, would allow for syncing but it would drop songs, randomly break the album list order or remove the art. Then I decided to drag to the Music sidebar and found that was still the solution all along. Thank God.

Makes the divorce from the application all the more frustrating as to manually delete tracks one must go to a finder window, highlight the device, then Music, click Manage Storage, choose Songs and scroll through a list of all the contents without the artist or album info to make a search easy.

Probably just delete from the phone itself when needed than hurdle this hedge row. At least I'm comfortable manual sync still simple.

Help this helps.

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

210,615 points

Oct 12, 2019 3:53 PM in response to Javamunki

What do you get when you click on the Music button in the window you posted a screenshot of?

This is what I get and usually since a few playlists. Most of the iPhone is taken jus with audiobooks.

But you can synsc selected Albums also. This is essentially how I did it in iTunes.

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Answer 3

Javamunki Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 13, 2019 1:23 AM in response to Old Toad

Thank you for the reply!

It is true that I can sync while choosing, "Selected artists, albums, genres," as you have with playlist above:

But say I want to download the back half of the late Chris Cornell's 4 disc retrospective and save the MBs for other files. I can't get there with a sync of album or artist, only by making a Chris playlist would I have that flexibility. Those of us who manually manage their devices could simply cherrypick those tracks and drag the partial album over.

Neither way is wrong, and I appreciate the solution, but if Apple hasn't mistakenly abandoned that option from the software (yet) I'm hoping to shed a little light that a problem exists. It's possible too that I'm 'holding it wrong' and someone can direct me how to make it work. In either case, thank you for your assistance :)

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Manually managing Music to device not possible in Catalina Finder at moment?

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