iOS 18 Munged Music Library

Question

Level 1

21 points

iOS 18 Munged Music Library

Update to ios 18 got pushed a few days ago. After that, songs were missing from my library, and there were duplicates that weren't there before. Basically, ios18 turned it into a #&*( mess.

I found/deleted duplicates from itunes on pc. that fixed that problem.

But the missing songs was a problem. Given a particular album, some songs were there and others not. Happened to some, but not all, albums on iphone. The albums were complete (with all songs) on PC itunes. Sync did not fix it.

Found a workaround. Rename song in itunes (put a "1" in front, eg.), sync, the renamed song appears in the correct place. Go back to itunes, rename the song to original correct name, sync again. Fixed.

But, I did not want to do this cumbersome process for every missing song in the entire library. And, it indicates there is some manner of database corruption that could cause other issues.

Uninstalled Music from iphone and itunes from PC. Reinstall. Sync. No help.

After uninstall/reinstall Music, the library is still there.

Delete itunes itl database from PC. Restart itunes. Library is empty. Sync. no change to iphone. Library is still there, still munged.

Delete some albums on iphone. Add Folder for that album in itunes. Sync. Deleted album is not restored to iphone.

I am able to completely wipe the corrupted database from my PC, but cannot find a way to do similar on iphone. Any suggestions I find on internet are based on pre-ios18 interface, those buttons/options just don't exist in ios18. I'd prefer to not go nuclear on the iphone.

Is there a way to scrub all Music data from my iphone, as I did on the PC, to start again from scratch?

Posted on Sep 27, 2024 8:50 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Oct 6, 2024 1:56 PM in response to bakerj7

I also lost a lot of songs after the update. Many of them aren’t even available to download from iTunes. How am I supposed to replace them? I would really love some support from Apple cause this is wild and disappointing.

Reply

Answer 2

bakerj7 Author

Level 1

21 points

Sep 27, 2024 3:29 PM in response to bakerj7

I made some progress. For some reason, iTunes had created duplicates in the iTunes music library on my PC. I scoured and deleted all those and that solved the duplicates problem. Do NOT add to library a song/album that's already there. For me, it created a duplicate. To fix that, delete the entire album that has duplicates (not just duplicate songs in iTunes on PC), and then re-add it back from your PC library to iTunes.

I then went through my entire music library, finding and fixing any anomalies - mostly bad meta data (not iTunes fault). Then added them, one at a time, to ITunes and made sure it worked, no duplicates, not missing entirely, not songs scattered in various places (meta data problem). If anything wasn't right, delete the entire album for iTunes and readd it.

The sync issue was caused because for some reason iPhone icon -> Music -> Sync Music was unchecked in iTunes. Pretty sure this happened with the ios18 update, because I was syncing a few days ago and it was working fine.

Now I have just one issue remaining with a few songs missing from an album, but that's a separate issue so I'll open a new thread.

Reply