I’m stumped. With my iPod I simply drag and drop the music I want to take with me from my library onto the iPod on the left side of iTunes, but my Apple iPhone doesn’t allow me to do that. How the heck do I put songs on the iPhone without synchronizing my entire (massive) music library?
As with much to do with the iPhone, there’s a bit of a trick to getting this working smoothly so you can have control over your iPhone music, while keeping it as darn easy to work with as possible.
The answer? Create a custom playlist for your iPhone music library.
Let me show you how to do it – it’s pretty darn easy.
Pop into iTunes and choose File –> New Playlist. Now rename it to something logical: I use “iPhone Sync”:
At this point, you need to plug in your iPhone if you haven’t already done so. It’ll pop up the usual summary screen:
Oh, and one really nice feature of creating this playlist is that you can manage it, adding and deleting songs to your heart’s desire, even without your iPhone present. Whatever changes you make are instantly applied to your iPhone music library the very next time you synchronize the device.
Suddenly even 8GB might feel small. 🙂
Still learning about your iPhone? We have lots of iPhone help here on the site! And if you’re interested in finding a useful tool that can help you transfer music from your iPhone to your iTunes library and computer, you might also check out the Windows or Mac version of FonePaw iOS Transfer too.
Thanks, worked perfectly!
Great directions, even for a dolt like me. Thank you.
It was so helpful
thank u so much
dave, the songs in my computer are stored in windows media player. i want to transfer them to my iphone without erasing the songs that are on my iphone. when i try i get the message about erasing the music currently on my iphone. what to do? please help! thanks, James
Used your instructions for iPhone sync from iTunes. Worked like a charm on the first try.
Easy Fa-cheesy!!!
Thanks so much.
thank you sooooo f*&king much… 2 days of stress, your a star
Hi, so I recently got a new phone, but it was my brother’s, so I had to wipe it and he restored on his new iPhone. When i tried to sync this, it synced EVERYTHING.
This is really helpful — thanks! It took me awhile to get it to work. The key for me was to ensure that both of my computers were set up so that Home Sharing was on. My newer computer was able to recognize my iPhone 4, but my old laptop had too old an operating system to recognize my phone (I think). But that old laptop has all my music on it. Once I figured out how to enable Home Sharing on both the old laptop and the new iMac, I was set. Thanks again!
I just purchased an iphone 4s and want to put my iTunes on my phone. I created the playlist but, my iPhone isn’t showing up as a device. How do I move the playlist if no device is showing up? Please help. This is very confusing. This looks so straight forward. Any advise is welcome. Thanks!
I was dumb and did not create the playlist under “Playlist” in the itunes drop down. That was my issue.
If I did everything on here, will it erase my old musics from the iphone?
IPhone and iTunes sucks i have never seen nothing this complicated just to add music, i recommend not to buy an IPhone it an unnecessary headache.
I’m new in Iphone my question is To have a songs in my Iphone I must download iTunes from computer? Thanks.
thanxxxxxx
HI, I have IPhone4, i am not able to download any kind of music fro itunes. if i click on podcasts then it shows the category of games, music and entertainment etc, but if i click on any of these then it shows the list of the videos. for ex- i have clicked on ” after the fact” then it takes me to the page in which there are reviews or videos.i dont know what to do, its being 8 months when i got IPhone and i am still trying to download something. I have downloaded some applications and games from application store but i want to know about the itunes. pls help.
thank you 🙂 a BIG help
Hi Dave
Thank u so much for such a useful information… It helped me… Once Again Thank u so much.
The only problem I am having is when I do this it will erase all the other contents i had on the Ipod before… Please help me!!
Thanks a lot very very easy and helpful..
Bingooooooooo that works
Thank goodness for this site.
I have been struggling with the iTunes software for the last year and managed to load some tunes onto my phone (without understanding how it had happened). iTunes nust be one of the most cumbersome, unintuitive programs ever.
At last, I can load my phone whith the tunes that I want.
Thank yo,
IAN
Thank you! Why I got this phone I’ll never know. It’s too smart for me
I’m supposed to be pretty smart, a techie since DOS 1.0 and AppleII. After that…
I’m the original smart phone user, I mean going way back to hyper expensive tech in the 90’s.
Have owned, used and enjoyed my Iphone for most of a year. Finally getting around to moving some music onto it … was surprised by the fact that I couldn’t just figure it out.
Now that I grok the ITunes paradigm (sync folder, duh), it seems easy, but it surprised me to realize that sometimes I have to ask for help with an Apple product.
Hope somebody reads this post.
to everyone who couldnt create new playlist!! I had the same problem so when i clicked on folder e.g MUSIC then FILE system will allow you ten to create folder……
Hi Dave,
I have an iPhone 3g and I’m having troubles putting music on from any computer except my girlfriend’s laptop. I’ve authorized my other computer with iTunes but no luck. I’ve tried clicking the “manually manage music” button but when I say “apply” it asks me if I want to delete all the music and sync to the iTunes library. This doesn’t seem right seeing as how I’m telling it that I will manage it myself. Any help on this is much appreciated. (I’ve even tried de-authorizing the laptop but that didn’t help either. Not sure if that even has anything to do with the issue or not…)
Anyway, thanks for any help.
Derek
Hi Dave,
I have an iPhone 3g and I’m having troubles putting music on from any computer except my girlfriend’s laptop. I’ve authorized my other computer with iTunes but no luck. I’ve tried clicking the “manually manage music” button but when I say “apply” it asks me if I want to delete all the music and sync to the iTunes library. This doesn’t seem right seeing as how I’m telling it that I will manage it myself. Any help on this is much appreciated. (I’ve even tried de-authorizing the laptop but that didn’t help either. Not sure if that even has anything to do with the issue or not…)
Anyway, thanks for any help.
Derek
This is awesome I Hate Iphones and my wife had to buy one
Android rules
Worked great on my iPhone 4. Thanks!!!!
Thanks for your help!!!
great! worked fine! thanks a lot!
You are a legend Dave T.
I hate these new phones ….but love em. Gotta have em but the lead time into making them work for me is harder every time I buy one.
Saved again.
Neat! got done. Thank you 🙂
I cant believe this, This good man has given step by step instructions which do work and no-one seems able to follow them, you would think by default Itunes would sync stoopid software
Thanks heaps for this! Just got my new baby iPhone and linked my two apples (big and small) together. Very HaPpY 🙂
omg this is the perfect info i love it, it works perfectly fine… thank.
I have a Iphone 3G. I have created a new list of songs to copy, but when I connect my phone no summary list appears.
Only notation I see on top that sync is complete, but when I go to Ipod no such list appears
It worked the first time but now I just want to sync to that playlist to add new music to the playlist and my iphone and says I cannot – does not give me the option to only choose the playlist. Says it will delete all music and will only synch my entire playlist. Any suggestions?
Thank you so much for your step by step directions! Now I’ll be able to listen to all my favorite music on my iphone!!!
THANKS!! -Nicole
Thanks for the info but… when I get to the music page everything is grey and if I click on syn it tells me that I will loose everything which is already on my iphone. Is the iphone connected properly to my mac?
Finally….a solution. I tried everything for weeks but nothing would copy my music to my new 4S. I was so mad I was ready to throw everything out of the window. I researched and tried every work around or fix posted on forums. Nothing worked until I tried this fix by Dave Taylor. OMG what a relief. I’m no newbie or PC dunce but nothing would get my files onto that damn Iphone 4S. Thank you…..I hope people post this fix all over the net for other frustrated Iphone/Ipod/Ipad owners.
I found this very helpful. I’m new to all this I Tune and I Phone malarky and the step by step approach plus illustrations is excellent. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this step by step!!! I finally got music onto my new iphone!
When I do this procedure, at the end it says “an iphone can be synced with only one itunes library at a time. erasing and syncing replaces the contents of this iphone with the contents of this itunes library”
So if I erase and sync.. will it erase everything on my iphone.. all apps,contacts, all stuff?
Is there a way to just get the music on there without anything happening to the iphone?
Is there a way to do this without syncing? I
‘ve got music on my work iTunes which I want on my phone, but don’t want to sync my phone and lose what’s already on it. This seems a pretty backwards way of doing things if you have to have a workaround.
Store loaded ipod/itunes to iphone 4G. Now, I have no music on ipod. Tried to sync using instructions & says it is downloading the music and still no music on ipod.
MAAAAAN! You’re a genius! Thanks a lot… Really usefull!
I just wanted to say thank you, I followed your directions made a couple of mistakes but have been able to make play lists and move them on to my iphone.
Thank you again.
Hi Dave. Ive followed your instructions and ticked the “selected playlists, etc”…but my (very large) “Entire Music Library” has been wiped off my phone, including several playlists that took me hours to create:( How do I avoid this again??? As I regularly update my music collection. Cheers Mel
Lee, glad my site’s helpful. I didn’t grow up in Georgia, though I really like the parts of the state I’ve experienced!
Thank you Dave. I was getting so frustrated with trying to copy my music. The guy at Verizon had to reset my Iphone but he didn’t copy my music back on to it and for the life of me I couldnt figure out how to transfer my songs! You Rock Dave!
BTW I grew up with a David Taylor in southern Georgia, that wouldn’t happen to be you would it?
Thanks again,
Lee