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sunrisemusic

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 18, 2010
59
3
Hi,

I just bought a new iPod Touch 5G (my 4G fell out of my bag on a rainy night and died of water damage, unfortunately).

I had to upgrade to iTunes 11 due to iOS7 - up till then I had been using iT10.
I spent yesterday setting up the Touch, but I can't figure out how to create playlists on the iPod in iTunes 11, which was super easy to do in iTunes 10.

Also, it seems like you can't manage music manually anymore - I check the option to do this, but as soon as I move something over from iTunes to the Touch, the option unchecks and changes to sync, and yes, it gives lots of sync choices, sure I can sync just a few playlists, but I'd like to be able to manually put music on the iPod like I used to and not have it tied to iTunes. In the older iTunes it was simple to create a new playlist. I can't find where this is (if it's available) in iTunes 11.

If it gets too annoying is there other software I could use - OS10.6.8.

Thanks in advance.
 

SlovakApple

macrumors 6502
Jul 4, 2010
335
0
In the heart of Europe
I do not know, if I have understood your question correctly, but playlist can be created in the following way:
- click Music in the left upper corner.
- at the top in the middle click on playlists
- click on the plus sign in the lower left corner
- select new playlist
 

sunrisemusic

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 18, 2010
59
3
Hi SlovakApple, thanks for replying.

I can do this - it creates playlists on the computer. But I want to be able to create playlists on the actual iPod itself via iTunes. If I choose/select the ipod and then the 'on this ipod' I can't see any plus sign options to do this.

Older iTunes - all iOS devices would load in the same (left hand) column as the iTunes (computer) playlists, so I could just select the iOS device and click the plus sign and it would add a new playlist on the device, and I could then drag whatever I want onto it. With iTunes 11 - iOS devices are no longer located in the same place, you seem to have to go to each device separately.

So basically - on my 4G Touch and iTunes 10 I used to always manually manage my music - so I could (in iTunes) create a playlist directly on the iPod and drag music over to it.

Now, with iTunes 11 I'm not even sure if I can put music onto the new iPod manually without the settings automatically changing from being unchecked (which I wanted) to suddenly becoming 'sync selected playlists, (etc)'. Has it become an all or nothing choice? ie - can we no longer manage our music manually unless we choose to allow nothing onto our device (helpful maybe for iPads if you don't want music on there, but not iPods!).

I've been searching online but haven't been able to figure it out yet, so any help is much appreciated.
 

sunrisemusic

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 18, 2010
59
3
Not a stupid question, thanks for replying. I appreciate anyone trying to help out.

Yes, I can do that, but then I lose manual management abilities - as I wrote above - this automatically changes the settings and has the iPod now automatically syncing any playlists that have been dragged over with iTunes.
But also - I already have a lot of playlists in iTunes on my computer, so having to add a bunch of extra ones for my iPod to a long list is going to make things confusing, plus I wanted some of the playlists to have the same name, but different stuff in it - eg my 'songs to learn' on the computer will have different stuff in there than a playlist of the same name on my iPod.

So yes, I can do these things if I have no other choice, but - my original question, which I really would love someone to answer - once again - is that we used to be able to do this pre-iTunes 11, we used to be able to make playlists in iTunes straight onto our iOS devices - is there a way to do it now, or has it disappeared with iTunes 11?

And we used to be able to manually manage our music without it automatically changing over to 'sync' in the settings the moment we drag music over onto the iDevice. Is this no longer possible?

thanks!
 

sunrisemusic

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 18, 2010
59
3
UPDATE: SOLVED!!!!

Yes, it's possible!!!

I had already looked in the prefs and in the iPod music settings (in iTunes), but didn't check the 'Summary' settings carefully enough.
Thanks to another thread I just saw here, I checked the Summary setting again and found the option I was needing to find - which says:
Manually manage music and videos.
I checked that button, and voila! - the '+' button and the button to edit/delete playlist now appears at the bottom left of the iPod playlist column, so I'm a happy camper.

Since it had been turned off as default, without me realizing, I guess that's why I couldn't find the playlist buttons in there. So glad they're back! Now I can really enjoy having things set up the way I like them, and - as an aside - I really like my new 5G iPod too!
 
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