ITunes Sync

[rwsinky]

I have updated our phones to IPhone 12's and IPad's as well. Did the whole transfer thing and all seemed to go very well. One small glitch I have discovered is that when transfering music from Itunes the IPhones got all of ot but the IPads came up short and I do not know why. I attached them to my PC and did the whole sync thing and it made no real difference. I am not a real techie but is it possible the songs/albums that show on the PC with the ICloud symbol do not sync? If I look at songs on my IPad all have the down arrow symbol and I do not see any ICloud symbols. Anyone know what is going on here>

 

[twerppoet]

The little down arrow means the song is currently downloaded, stored on your device. There used to be a cloud icon, for when music was not local. Now it seems the arrow indicates the opposite. At leas on iOS and iPadOS. PC iTunes may still use the cloud. I don’t know.

Compare Settings > Music on your iPads and iPhones. Pay close attention to the Optimize settings, When turned on it will remove less played music local so that it only downloads on demand. How much music is kept on device depends on how much storage that device has available. A 256 GB iPhone with 150 GB free will keep considerably more music locally than a 128 GB iPad with 32 GB free.

I have Optimize turned off on my iPad Pro, and every song I’ve manually downloaded is there local. I have it turned off on the iPad Mini (way less storage) and almost nothing is stored local.

The Sync Library setting also makes a big difference. To keep the library on all devices as close as possible, make sure it is turned on for all devices.

Whether or not you have an Apple Music account can also make a difference, though it should only make a difference outside the Library tab/section in the Music app.

I can’t say much about iTunes. It has been a long time since I last used it. I don’t really know how it behaves these days, and since it is no longer used in MacOS, I can’t even play with it to see.

 

[rwsinky]

Twerppoet, Thanks for the reply. I have triedit all and have settings as directed to sync libraries, IOS at latest levels, etc. It is frustrating as the IPhones brought everything over but the IPads missed some. I can deal with that but it is aggravating. I was going to try the Optimize thing but I do not see it. If I go to settings and do a search for Music I get a left column showing items in Music and one of those is "Optimize Storeage"but I do not see in the right column anything that shows that option or a toggle. Am I losing it???

 

[giradman]

I have updated our phones to IPhone 12's and IPad's as well. Did the whole transfer thing and all seemed to go very well. One small glitch I have discovered is that when transfering music from Itunes the IPhones got all of ot but the IPads came up short and I do not know why. I attached them to my PC and did the whole sync thing and it made no real difference. I am not a real techie but is it possible the songs/albums that show on the PC with the ICloud symbol do not sync? If I look at songs on my IPad all have the down arrow symbol and I do not see any ICloud symbols. Anyone know what is going on here>

Hello - personally, I hate using iTunes and if I add music to my Mac laptops, then I would import it into the Music Library (of course, iTunes does not exist anymore on the newer MacOSs) - use to then make playlists and simply dragged them to my cabled iPad (worked fine for me).

Also there are apps that allow music transfers - I've used iMazing in the past - if interested (a free DL but a paid app eventually if you want all of the features, I suspect), goto this MacForums thread and checkout post #4, a visual demonstration by me (RadDave there) of how to transfer music from a MBPro to an iPad - now there is a PC version of this app. Also, there are other apps if you care to search the internet (just use something like 'music transfer from PC to iPad'). Good luck and let us know your results - will help others. Dave

 

[twerppoet]

You should see it under Settings > Music. Or when you do the search, as you described, tapping on Optimize Storage should take you straight to the setting.

That said, some settings are dependent on other settings or accounts. They will not appear as options if they can not be used. For Optimize Storage to work, iTunes must be syncing with an iCloud Music subscription. There used to be a setting to enable this on iOS, but that has since been rolled into the Apple Music subscriptiom; at least foe those of us who have one. Try checking your devices and iTunes settings for something called iCloud Music Library, or similar.

That is all I can think of at this time.

 

[rwsinky]

Spent some time yesterday looking at the Playlist that started this whole mess. Went down the list to dtermine which songs were on the Mosic Playlist on PC and NOT on the IPad playlist. The "missing: songs are on the IPad in the Songs Library but do not show in the playlist on the IPad. No problem, I will just move them to the playlist. When I try this it tells me the song is already there! Why does it not show in the playlist. BTW, the IPhone worked perfactly and displays all the songs in the playlist. What is going on here? I do not have a subscrition to Apple Music - do I need one?

 

[twerppoet]

Sounds like a sync glitch. It does sometimes a take a while for everything on a newly configured iPad (or iPhone) to get in sync, but as long as you’ve been waiting that seems unlikely. Try restarting the iPad, if you have not done so lately. Give it a couple days on wi-fi and see if things improve. If not, you may want to contact Apple Support. You can use the Apple Support app. This kind of thing is usually free.

 

[rwsinky]

Thank you to those who have tried to help me solve this problem. It is not critical but more like an annoyance. Thanks again.