Apple Music playlists

My playlists have been shortening by themselves. The last time this happened, one list of 300 songs was shortened to 45. A second list of 150 songs was shortened to 17. This is the third time in three months this has happened. It mainly affects songs I purchased through the iTunes Store and songs uploaded from my CD collection. No iOS update has been installed in the meantime. Does this happen to other users? And what could be the cause? It's very tiring to constantly restore the lists.

iPhone 15 Pro Max, iOS 26

Posted on Dec 5, 2025 1:47 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 5, 2025 5:38 AM

On your iPhone:

  1. Settings → Music → Sync Library → OFF
  2. Choose Turn Off / Delete Local Content
  3. (Don’t worry — it only removes cloud versions locally)
  4. Restart iPhone
  5. Turn Sync Library back ON
  6. Wait for full sync to complete

This forces the device to issue fresh playlist metadata, which stops iCloud from deleting songs.

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 5, 2025 5:38 AM in response to Syfic

On your iPhone:

  1. Settings → Music → Sync Library → OFF
  2. Choose Turn Off / Delete Local Content
  3. (Don’t worry — it only removes cloud versions locally)
  4. Restart iPhone
  5. Turn Sync Library back ON
  6. Wait for full sync to complete

This forces the device to issue fresh playlist metadata, which stops iCloud from deleting songs.

Apple Music playlists

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