You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Transfer music to iPhone without Sync and Delete

I haven't transfered any music to my iPhone since getting a new MacBook Pro and iTunes being replaced by the Music app. I already have a lot of music on my iPhone but cannot work out how to add some new tracks from Music on the MacBook. It doesn't seem possible to do it in the Music app (?)


When I go to Finder and the iPhone > Music tab and select "Sync music onto ..." I am faced with the warning


Are you sure you want to remove existing music, movies, TV shows and books from this iPhone and sync with this library?

Music, movies, TV shows and books synced to “Mark XS” from other libraries will be removed and items will be synced from this library.


I do not want to delete everything that is already on the phone in order to add a few new tracks and albums. Durely there is some other way around this ?


Thanks in advance for any advice !

MacBook Pro (2020 and later)

Posted on May 16, 2022 5:18 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 16, 2022 10:24 AM

Thanks for your reply, but I don’t want to match the same selection of tracks and audio files on my iPhone and Mac. There are tracks on the phone that are no longer on my Mac and I don’t want / shouldn’t have to go through the process of copying / erasing / reconstructing my library on each device, which would be very time consuming.


Surely there is another way. Why would Apple make it so that we have to erase our libraries just to add a few tracks ?


(This is all audio that I own or have the rights to.)

Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 16, 2022 10:24 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for your reply, but I don’t want to match the same selection of tracks and audio files on my iPhone and Mac. There are tracks on the phone that are no longer on my Mac and I don’t want / shouldn’t have to go through the process of copying / erasing / reconstructing my library on each device, which would be very time consuming.


Surely there is another way. Why would Apple make it so that we have to erase our libraries just to add a few tracks ?


(This is all audio that I own or have the rights to.)

May 16, 2022 10:40 AM in response to markwebstar

This is a user to user support forum. I can tell you how things are, not how you or I would wish them to be. Back in the past Apple made it such that copying content from a device back to a computer was hard. Presumably this helped get content providers who were fed up with home taping on board with the digital music revolution. When iPhone was introduced they added (for reasons that baffle me) another limitation that means even a manually managed iPhone can only be managed with a single library/computer. If you backup and migrate your library properly then all will be fine, but if something changes, and the library on the computer appears to be novel from the perspective of the iPhone, then you will get an erase and sync warning. Pay heed. It means what it says. There are many many threads on these forums from people who went ahead and tried to sync a full device with an empty library and ended up with nothing. Take my advice, reclaim the content from your device and add it to your library. Deduplicate as necessary, then make a selection of what you want to copy to the iPhone. You can try third party software, paid or free, or a short subscription to Apple Music, but one way or another you need the music on your computer, not just the iPhone, or you'll end up having to go back to the original sources, or losing things.


tt2

Transfer music to iPhone without Sync and Delete

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.