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Some Apple Music Subscribers Experiencing Library Syncing Issue Across the iPhone and Mac

This is NOW just making the news? I bought a 2005 iPod Mini four years ago and modded it with a 256GB flash card because I was fed up with waiting for Apple to fix the sync issues that had already been present for years AT THAT POINT.

Apple Music is a freaking disaster. Anyone who doubts that old reliable Apple is long gone just needs to experience an ancient iPod Mini vs this new dumpster fire "service." Said old iPod Mini really does "just work" and it's amazing.
 
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klasma said:
It’s not just Apple Music, a lot of stuff syncing over iCloud is flaky, and has been since the beginning.
Click to expand...

I generally find that iCloud syncs pretty well, given the amount of data involved and the number of users.

I do miss seeing that satisfying animation and fun UI from iSync though!

The one thing that consistently syncs badly for me is Safari bookmarks – change anything in Safari's Bookmarks Editor and a minute later it switches back to the pre-edited state… Frustrating, and seemingly taxing for the system. Probably an overlooked framework or something that needs a little attention.
 
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SkippyThorson said:
A fun issue exists with the iPhone not syncing after the Preparing To Sync step.

It’s related to the MDCrashReporter, which can be found in macOS under Activity Monitor. Quit it (or force quit it) and the iPhone sync resumes immediately.

It happens and is replicable every single time on the latest iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma.

Furthermore I purged my Mac at the beginning of the year and completed ripping my entire CD library in lossless just because it’s been potato quality for two decades - and sounds way better in the car now!

Why do I tell you that? Well, nuking your library and furthermore your entire Mac isn’t enough to solve this issue. So don’t waste your time.

The problem doesn’t exist with the same library on that same Mac when syncing to an iPad on the latest iPadOS 17.
Click to expand...
There is a slightly faster way to quit MDCrashReporter

After the sync starts and gets stuck at Preparing To Sync run this in Terminal:

Code: 
pkill -9 "MDCrashReportTool"

The sync will resume
 
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orbital~debris said:
The one thing that consistently syncs badly for me is Safari bookmarks – change anything in Safari's Bookmarks Editor and a minute later it switches back to the pre-edited state… Frustrating, and seemingly taxing for the system. Probably an overlooked framework or something that needs a little attention.
Click to expand...
Just as bad, when jumping around the browsing history, Safari often starts associating the wrong URLs wih the website titles in the history (or vice versa).

Another thing, I have a “frequently visited” site (that I maybe visited frequently three years ago) that keeps popping up immediately after I delete it, and when I delete it often enough, the “frequently visited” list is suddenly completely removed until I close and restart Safari again (and that site pops up again).

There are a lot of bugs like that, I don’t know what they are doing.
 
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What pisses me off the most about Apple Music is the constant, opinionated removal of downloaded music. If I want to download and fill up my phone to the point it's unusable, let me. Annoys me to no end when I get on a long haul flight and 90% of my downloaded music is gone and I never deleted it. Pisses. Me. Off.
 
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I noticed I lost a bunch of music randomly from one particular artist last week. I was able to get it all back by re-adding, but I lost one super rare track I had uploaded to iCloud. Unfortunately, I cannot get it back because the original file is on an old PC that died.

I also hate when Apple randomly changes tracks that you added from the original artist's album to a copy on a random compilation CD. Not sure if this is true, but someone mentioned before these other copies cost Apple less money than when you play the song off the artist's actual album.

As a paid service, Apple Music can be quite disappointing at times but I still prefer it over Spotify.
 
roar08 said:
What pisses me off the most about Apple Music is the constant, opinionated removal of downloaded music. If I want to download and fill up my phone to the point it's unusable, let me. Annoys me to no end when I get on a long haul flight and 90% of my downloaded music is gone and I never deleted it. Pisses. Me. Off.
Click to expand...
This used to drive me nuts as well. The workaround is to create a smart playlist with all your music using the settings below. Then on your phone set that new smart playlist to be downloaded. Once you set this up, any new music will automatically be added to the playlist and then downloaded onto your phone.

Smart Playlist Settings:
Screenshot 2024-01-04 154209.png


I have 40GB of music downloaded to my phone using this method.
 
I've been having plenty of Music problems. From songs cutting out after 10 seconds, to songs not showing up on my playlists, to Music crashing altogether. What's going on?
 
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roar08 said:
What pisses me off the most about Apple Music is the constant, opinionated removal of downloaded music. If I want to download and fill up my phone to the point it's unusable, let me. Annoys me to no end when I get on a long haul flight and 90% of my downloaded music is gone and I never deleted it. Pisses. Me. Off.
Click to expand...
Go to Settings > Music > Optimise storage - turn it off. That way the iPhone won't automatically remove music to make space for other things. Or you can set a minimum limit of your choice.

This feature is off by default by the way, so probably you'd turned it on yourself at some point, and forgot that it existed once you started having problems.
 
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Not sure if it's related to Music itself, but I can not get Home Sharing to work. I used to load my Music Library from my Mac and have it show up and allow me to play on my IPhone 11. Not working on IPhone 15 Pro. Anyone else have Home sharing issues????
 
I report that after the release of this article Apple fixed the issue. Cloud music library seems to work again. Thank you for raising the attention.
the issue on my devices dated a month ago,
 
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They just fixed it!
Mac OS too!!
Thanks macrumors!
 

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Yes, The Music app just gets worse and worse
Recently added used to show everything from the past year, now it only shows recently added
If i import 80 tracks i downloaded from Beatport, they just disappear, not even in recently added?

These are the hoops i have to jump through to find them,

Drag folder of 80 tracks from desktop into music
Create a new playlist in music
Go back to the folder on desktop with the 80 tracks
Select a track, right click, open with "Music app"
in the music app select the 3 dots in red next to the track name
Then show album in library
Drag the track into your new playlist folder

Still unable to sync my iPhone 14 Pro Max iOS 17.2.1 to my iMac 27" 2019 macOS 14.2.1 to import my updated playlists?

It gets to Syncing (Step 3 of 5) - Preparing to sync and that's it, it does nothing?
 
arkitect said:
Exactly this.

I was burned by Apple Music in the transition from iTunes to Apple Music — my carefully curated music library literally — yes, literally — destroyed.

An 800GB+ music library that had been carefully sorted in albums and playlists. Mangled.
partial albums uploaded. Lossless files replaced by lossy.
Cover artwork? Pffft. Mixed and matched… missing.
Artists mixed up and ignored.

Broke my heart.

Unless there is a major rebuild from the foundations up, I will never be tempted to again.

Why other services could achieve it and the giant Apple cannot is a mystery.

And yet, how often do we hear that Apple really cares about music. "It is in our DNA" they say… yeah sure.
Click to expand...
Wow, that really sucks! I still have iTunes library I keep maintaining and adding to. I will be sure NOT to subscribe to Apple Music or use iTunes Match then.
 
I am so glad to have this surfaced! Genius hasn't worked since 2015 or so, and would really love to have this fixed as I loved this feature.

Also iTunes Match works really, really well for me. My favorite Apple service.
 
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I tried Apple Music twice and both times it messed with my music (ripped and bought from iTunes) and I got tired of it and gave up. There was one song that I owned that for whatever reason kept being flagged as an Apple Music download and would not play since I ended my subscription, now this song I owned, it was brought from iTunes. I didn't have it in me to deal with Apple Support so I just bought the song again. You got an extra $1.99 from me Apple :mad::mad::mad:

To fix my Library I had to restore the iTunes Library folder and actual music files from backup. I will never use the service again.

I have used Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music and they have all been fine. If I end up really liking a song I just buy it. I am currently using YouTube Music because I have a month free trial of YouTube Premium.

So I am someone who still syncs their music from their Mac to their iPhone with a cable.
 
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Over the years, I've been on-again, off-again frustrated with various sync issues across Apple's products.

I've experienced --
- iCloud tab sync issues -- tabs not syncing across devices as intended
- iCloud drive sync issues -- never experienced problems on Apple devices, but definitely with iCloud on Windows
- currently iPhone sync issues with Mac (Has something to do with the MSCrash reporter, or something like that, that needs to be force quit to finalize the sync process)

This is nutty.
 
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