Files are greyed out after syncing iTunes Library to iPhone

I am sorry, are you saying that people like myself who do not use Apple Music and avoid DRMed music and only have offline music that they own, can no longer use the Music app to play that music on their phone?

I have been trying to accept Apple's increasing limitations to the music app, and this is certainly a step too far.

I am not interested in sharing my music with Apple so this is certainly not an option.

It is really sad to see that we are at the end of an era. I understand I am an edge case of an edge case but still sad that the couple of terabytes of CD's and records I have can no longer be managed by Apple Music.

Bmode, the sync issues have been persisting for people for many years. I've had occasional problems going back to 2021. You can sync (with a cable) between iTunes (or Apple Music with Apple Devices) to your phone, it just doesn't work right all the time, for reasons that Apple is not interested in getting squared away.

There seems to be an occasional bug where a sync operation doesn't complete properly leaving greyed out tracks on the device when viewed in iTunes which either aren't displayed on the device, or won't play, and don't get replaced during a subsequent sync.

Try removing all music from the phone (Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Music > Edit > Delete All Songs) then try syncing again. If that still doesn't work try the comprehensive approach in this post on erratic syncing.

tt2

That fact that you said you can sync music without an Apple Music subscription is not 100% true. Ever since the removal of iTunes and the using of the finder to sync our devices, problems have ensued. I currently can’t manually sync my music from desktop to iPhone, it’s a nightmare. 😡

Once hypha subscribe to Apple Music, you should not have to manually "hard-wire" sync your music library to your iPhone. You should be able to access your music library, including your playlists, on any device that has the Apple Music app and signed in with the same Apple ID that you use with your Apple Music subscription. Make sure you have Sync Library enabled on all your devices:

Use Sync Library to access your music library across your devices - Apple Support

Perhaps this article will help:

If songs are missing from your music library after you turn on Sync Library - Apple Support

Thank you Turingtest2, I tried that and everything seems to have populated, the songs in the playlist are no longer "ghosting". It took a while but it's worth it as I have 5800 songs in Music. Let's see how long it lasts before it goes corrupt again, but thank for your time, you too Jimz. It's hard to relay sentiment in these threads but my intention was purely upset at apple, I appreciate anyones time in the community, even if Apple is dense to these glitches. Be well all.

Try modifying the tracks that won't copy in some way, e.g. by adding a Comment, then try again. It seems that if a transfer is set up and doesn't complete properly iTunes/Music/Finder don't seem to be able to work out that the tracks are missing/incomplete, but updating them may trigger a proper sync on the next attempt.

tt2

Hi,

You don’t need an Apple Music subscription to use the music app on your computer or iOS device. You can play your own music on your computer and sync it to your iPhone. See Sync your device using your computer – Apple Support (UK)

Jim

I am having issues uploading music to my IPhone XR. About 25% - 30% of my music library is 'greyed out' on my ITunes phone data, and there is a circle against the tracks (highlighted in yellow below).

I have tried to sync my music many times and nothing seems to want to move over to my 'phone, even though I have 11.88GB of space available. Most of my music is 'ripped' CDs, rather than stuff which has been bought from ITunes.

I have tried deleting albums and then reloading them to ITunes. Also, my phone does not seem to do anything if I try to sync it to my Itumes on my Windows laptop.

Does anyone have any ideas about this ???.

The same behavior started recently for me. I have iTunes ver 12.13.1.3 on Windows. iPhone iOS is ver 17.3.1. I do not use Apple Music. I have no idea how to get that working again. It worked for correctly for year.

I'm having a similar problem, I don't subscribe to Apple Music, I don't even have my iPhone logged into my Apple account, (the phone has no SIM, I'm using it as an iPod for my offline music library).

I manually copy each album from iTunes to my iPhone after each purchase, either a digital purchase through iTunes or a rip of a CD. Sometimes the copy doesn't work, the tracks appear on iPhone but greyed out, the actual files have not been copied.

Usually trying again after deleting the greyed out tracks, restarting iTunes and restarting my iPhone - works. However, with my latest album, nothing I do can get it to copy.

It's my music - that I purchased from Apple, it's my iPhone - that I should be able to use as I want, yet some bug is preventing me from listening to music that I've paid for.

[Edited by Moderator]

I was able to correct this using a different cable (as indicated in other posts I found). Sync did work as expected afterwards.

I wish that were a true statement.

Hi,

Why is it not true?

Jim

See my two previous posts to this thread.

tt2