Apple Music - How to restore old library from Time Machine Back-Up

Question

Apple Music - How to restore old library from Time Machine Back-Up

Ok, a few moving parts here. Last year I finally converted from iTunes to Apple Music (subscription), bringing a large amount of my own music across. Last week, randomly, I opened Apple Music and it had duplicated every single song from my hard-drive, even duplicating the plays, date added, etc. I bulk deleted the duplicates but what I only realised today is that doing that somehow deleted all the songs from my playlists - all my playlists are still there but empty. I am trying to restore a back-up from a month ago but have hit a few snags:

Restoring the Music Library and re-opening Music just refreshes to the current
Turning off automatic sync, restoring the Music Library then reopening, works but for some reason the playlists don't show up at all

Basically all I want to be able to do is bring back the version of Apple Music I had a month ago from a Time Machine back-up but can't seem to figure it out. Any help is much appreciated, there are 10+ years worth of playlists and they mean a lot to me.

MacBook Pro 13″

Posted on Sep 24, 2024 8:21 PM

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Answer 1

H3xag0n

Level 1

8 points

Sep 25, 2024 2:29 PM in response to matterslittle

I stumbled on your post after losing most, but not all of my playlists because of a recent country change. I contacted Apple support and they said using a backup library would work. I was sceptical at first because nothing seemed to have changed after restoring my most recent complete library file. It was only after turning on syncing that items slowly started to reappear. And now all my playlists are back.

Stupid question perhaps, but did you try to delete your current library, restart your computer, and restore your backup library?

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