I am switching from the default music player on my iPhone to using Spotify to play music. The recent updates have meant that I can't use the music player in the same as I used to and I much prefer Spotify in general.I still want to use iTunes on my Mac to organise playlists. What I need to set up is essentially a reverse smart playlist. I have 2000 songs in my iTunes library but I only want 500 of those on my phone. Is there a way to have the songs that get put into my smart playlist (that gets synced to my phone) getting automatically copied into a folder in Finder and have that as the 'Local File Source' in Spotify? Or would I just have to do this manually? Hopefully that makes sense, and any kind of help would be awesome! Thanks

I have iPhone 11 with latest OS 18.6 (as of today). now I have some voice memos on my iPhone, and I want to move them to my Windows 11, so I did the following but it did not work:- 1) Download and Install iTunes inside windows 11 2) Connect my iPhone to my laptop using USB cable. 3) Open iTunes, click on the phone icon >> under music, I select to Sync, so it says that it is performing 4 steps, then iTunes mentioned that it is waiting for changing. and nothing got moved to my laptop. I tried to create new test memos, and those did not get moved as well. So, what about this is not workable? and can i benefit from the "Phone Link" app inside windows 11?

I recently upgraded my older iMac 2015 to macOS 12. Now I noticed the Music App does not save any settings I made while using Music, i.e. if I change the width of the left column this setting is lost when closing Music, the column is the same size as at last start. Or the last selected section/playlist will be lost too, Music starts at the same point every time on open. I assume there is a settings file or database where all those settings will be saved on closing the app, but I am not able to find this file. Is there anything I can do to have Music save the settings?

New to the community so my apologies if this question has already been asked! Trying to figure out how to either have my iTunes and any music that I add to a separate external SSD hard drive, or at least my iTunes app on my desktop computer and all my music on a separate hard drive that iTunes reads from. I am on a 2019 27 inch iMac with a MacOS Sequoia 15.5.

Apple has no guidance on how to do this without GarageBand. I've seen a few slightly different tutorials, none of which worked for me. The furthest I was able to get was like this: - Open the audio file (less than 40 seconds) in Apple Music for Mac and convert it to an AAC file. - Rename it from .m4a to .m4r to convert it to a ringtone file. This works for files less than 40 seconds because .m4a and .m4r use the same file format. - Some guides told me to drag the file into the "Tones" section of Apple Music, but this section does not appear for me. Instead, I dragged it from Finder onto my iPhone. - Sync the phone, which successfully added the song to my Apple Music library on my iPhone. - [People have reported](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/431183/how-do-i-set-an-m4r-file-ringtone-i-airdropped-to-my-iphone-13) being able to select "Download All Purchased Tones" on their iPhone under Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Ringtone in order to make the file appear as an option. When I selected it, it did nothing except temporarily remove the option to download tones. Most guides suggest using a third-party tool, but I find this strange. If additional software *is* required, why do so many people claim that it isn't? I've been able to set custom ringtones through GarageBand with no issues, but it bugs me that I can't work out how to do it without. If anybody knows what GarageBand is doing under the hood when you make a ringtone, that would also be useful. If anybody has any information or tips they think are relevant, even if it doesn't solve the problem, please provide it. If it helps, I'm using iOS 18.4 and MacOS 11.7

I recently had a mishap with my music library, resulting in the untimely termination of hundreds of innocent music files. These songs were not removed from iTunes, so there are many tracks that are seemingly normal, but upon closer inspection are actually gone, never to be seen again. Is there any way I can make a smart playlist or something that'll show me only tracks whose source file can't be found?

How can I archive a my currently installed app version (particular version) of an iOS app (=export IPA file?) I am aware that apple removed the App Store from iTunes and that apps are not part of the backups any more. However I am looking for a solution with which I can draw my currently installed app version as IPA file before I upgrade. Since app authors can modify and remove functionality at will and Apple prevents people from going back to a previous version I would like to be safe, particularly when large changes happen. I have looked into iMazing but it only seems to be able to export the latest version from the AppStore to IPA (neither the currently installed version nor different version)

I have a large collection of mp3 files that I want to listen to on my iPhone. I do not have an Apple Music subscription. I have used iTunes on Windows to add a subset of my songs to its library and sync'ed it to my iPhone. I have afterwards reset my Windows box and lost my iTunes library. At this point, I have a bunch of songs on my iPhone and I'd like to re-create the library automatically. I already have code that uses the iTunes.Application com object to interact with iTunes on Windows, so that's covered. However, I need to be able to fetch the list of the songs I have on the iPhone and so far I've been unable to find a way to retrieve it (since we're talking about a few thousands of songs, I don't want to do it by hand). Is there a way of retrieving the music metadata from my iPhone? At the very least I want song metadata (track name/artist/album/duration), ideally I want file sizes too to make it easier to match back to my original collection. Note that I have both a Windows and a MacOS box so any ad-hoc solution will do, including AppleScript.

The text input autocomplete in the Music app is really intrusive. Most apps won't replace your text unless you choose to use the autocomplete suggestions, but Music replaces what you typed or simply adds in text without any additional input. This is in places like get info or editing rules for a smart playlist. It will substitute existing values in place of what you are typing. This is really annoying if you want to type something that doesn't exist yet, but partially matches. I would love to figure out how to disable this. Example of trying to type "heaters" where in one case it adds a whole bunch of text after the "h", the other where it leaves me with a capital "H" I have to go back and fix.

I have an old iPhone 4 with iOS 7.1.2 that I want to backup and sync the photos off of. I have a macOS 10.12, 10.13 and 10.15 device that I was hoping to backup to (if I have to I can try to dig up some older macbooks that might have an older version of OSX on them). For some reason when I plug the iphone 4 in to any device then the iPhone doesn't show up in Finder or iTunes (tho it does draw power from the mac), so I'm not able to make a backup or import the photos. I'm wondering why the iphone doesn't show up on any macOS device that I plug it in to, and what I need to do to make a backup and/or import the photos?

As of now, I can just copy paste raw lyrics, which won't sync with the song! Edit: I'm on Windows 10 Pro, Version 2004, Build 19541. iTunes is the iTunes64Setup.exe file install, not the Microsoft Store version, version: 12.10.3.1 I've seen other answers , and tried what they suggested, which worked, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for. See, what I could do right now is, go to a specific song in my song Library, right click it and go to Song Info, then Lyrics, and add Custom Lyrics. This works, and I'm able to view those static, unsynchronized lyrics on my iPhone. But I wanna see if I can go a step further, **adding *synchronized* lyrics**, see how in some services, Apple Music maybe, or Spotify, the lyrics will auto scroll, or slide to the next line/verse as the song goes on. Similar to how Subtitles work in movies. So is this something that could be done? Either using iTunes or any other software!

I was trying to update my iPhone X (GSM) from iOS 12.3.1 to iOS 14.0.1 **The following steps was carried:** 1- Downloading the latest firmware ipsw (size 4.61 GB) from iPhone10,3,iPhone10,6_14.0.1_18A393_Restore.ipsw from ipsw.me 2- Downloading the latest iTunes on my Windows 10 PC 3- Connecting the iPhone by an original USB cable to my PC 4- Locating my iPhone and pressing "Shift" button from my keyboard and pressing on the Update from iTunes 5- Selected the ipsw which was previously downloaded. 6- During in the middle of the update, an error came out with a code # 14. 7- My iPhone got stuck permanently on the iTunes logo 8- Tried for several times to exit the Recovery Mode by Pressing and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then, press and hold the Side button. it just keep restarting and getting back into the Recovery Mode. 9- Downloaded couple of software's "Tenorshare ReiBoot Pro" and "3uTools" to force exit Recovery Mode, no good results. The problem here is happening because I guess that I have tried to install the updates although there was no enough storage on my iPhone. If there is anyway to delete large files in order to free space of my iPhone (while it is in Recovery Mode" it would be much appreciated. Or If there is a way to update the iPhone to any iOS that has a small ipsw size would help on this issue, bare in mind downgrading or using OTA (Over the Air) firmwares to be directly installed on my iPhone by a PC. **Note:** - There is no back up file for the iPhone - All the documents on the iPhone are needed, therefore; restoring the iPhone is not an option as it would erase all the files and bring it to its original factory settings. - The above concern was similar to this case https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/388205/iphone-stuck-on-apple-logo-because-of-storage-full-any-solution-to-delete-some but there was no answer to solve the issue. **Thinking outside the box:** If there is a way to connect the iPhone to any operating system i.e. Linux and have it connected there by entering the file explorer in order to delete some large files would help, need some experiments please.

The Music app (formerly iTunes) has an option where you can set the "stop" time of a song (so for example you could skip some dead silence time at the end of a song). I think this used to work in the past, but doesn't work now for me (Ventura 13.3.1, Music 1.3.4.56) For example, I have a song whose length is 7:18 but the last 25 seconds are just crowd noise. I did "Get Options" -> "Options" and set "Stop" to 6:55, with the check mark on. When the song plays, it displays 6:55 as the end time but keeps playing past it, with the time indicator showing 6:55, for the remaining 23 seconds. Can anyone say if they also see this bug? Any suggestions? Thanks!

I'm trying to restore an iPhone 12 Pro Max backup using Finder on macOS (macOS Monterey v12.7.6), and I'm being prompted for a password. The issue is, we don't recall setting a password, and attempts to retrieve it from Keychain have failed. Here's some context: - The backup shows: - **Date Created**: 11 Feb 2023, 11:25 - **Last Backed Up**: 09 June 2025, 22:58 - I suspect this backup was originally created using **iTunes** on an older macOS (possibly pre-Catalina), before device management was moved to Finder. - I searched **Keychain Access** for iOS Backup entries and found a password labeled 226866, but it doesn't work. - I've tried common passwords and searched password managers - no luck so far. Any ideas? Finder version 12.5

On my laptop I have a backup of my older iPhone, under MobileSync/Backup/[some-string]. I want to backup my new iPhone device and don't have the space to do so. I want to move the older backup to an external hard drive, so if for some reason i'll ever need it, I could copy it back to my laptop. The backup is encrypted. Is it enough to simply cut and past the some-string folder and that's it? Or is this going to break anything? for example maybe another file contains some important meta data that will make the backup useless without it?

Before upgrading from an iPhone 12 Pro to an iPhone 13 Pro, I backed up my phone in iTunes. However, my safari tabs did not transfer over to the new phone and I lost them all (even though Safari was checked in iCloud settings). Is there a way to access my browsing history from my previous iTunes back up? Or do I have to restore the device from iTunes to get them back?

For a while now I've been importing mp3s, setting them as "Audiobook" and listening to them via iBooks, like normal. However, for some unknown reason a few weeks ago, this stopped happening: Even though they show up in "Audiobooks" on iTunes, they WILL NOT show up in iBooks anymore—they still appear in the Music app, like a regular mp3. Nothing I have tried will force it to show up in iBooks again. Edit, to clarify: The problem is that I add an MP3 audiobook to my iPhone via iTunes in the normal matter, but it shows up in "Music" and NOT "iBooks" EVEN THOUGH I set the file type as "Audiobook." iTunes—on multiple computers!—correctly shows the audiobook, but not on the phone. Furthermore, I deleted an old audiobook on the phone yet iBooks STILL shows it! This is on iOS 10.3.3, iTunes 12.7.1.14, and reconfirmed on iOS 11.2.2, iTunes 12.7.2.58.

I have a similar issue as this : https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/85695/itunes-put-a-1-at-the-end-of-many-of-my-song-and-video-titles-how-can-i-fix-t My Music app is renaming some files with the " 1" at the end, like "Highway to hell.mp3" becoming "Highway to hell 1.mp3". In my case it comes from refreshing the track on iTunes. I am using MusicBrainz Picard to tag my files. When the tagging is done, I have an AppleScript refreshing the tracks directly in iTunes. This refresh sometimes makes " 1" appear at the end of some files. Until now I have not been able to identify when it happens but by chance I found a way to clear the name back to original. My solution : in iTunes just get the info of the track which file name ends with " 1". As soon as the info window opens, the " 1" is removed from the file name. It is effective but slow because it needs to be done on the individual track. Get the info of the entire album would not work. I am glad if my experience can help others and would be interested to know if you have a better way to solve the problem. Cheers, Fabien

My dad wanted me to update his iPhone X to iOS 14, so I tried to, and iTunes in the PC gave some error about connecting to the iPhone (unfortunately I don't have the exact message error), so then I went to my Mac and updated his iPhone from there. Now I can't restore his iPhone from backup (from the PC), due to "read and write" error. I have checked the access privilege to the backups folder and discovered it was empty! iTunes says that the iPhone was backed up. I would have checked if his iPhone was backed up on my Mac, but I went back to my apartment. Any thoughts on how to restore from backup (or how to check if its a lost cause)?

itunes keeps autofill music on my iphone 7. I have "manually manage music" checked device summary page in itunes & the "prevent ipods, iphones, &ipads from syncing automatically" option check in device preferences. However when I delete songs from the iphone itunes will start automatically coping / autofilling songs to the iphone. I'd like this to stop so that I can delete a bunch of songs then manually add new ones I want. Seems like itunes isn't looking at/obeying/caring about settings. It looks like itunes wants to fill in "missing" songs on the iphone i.e. the songs with gray dotted circles in the left hand column. I'd like it NOT to do this automagically. What else do I need to do to not have it do this? I could delete them on the iphones but I'd like to see which ones are missing before I do that. Is there a solution for this?