Apple Music Library stuck on "Syncing Your Library..."

[SteveJobbinIt]

Upgraded from a 12PM to 14PM, generally all good without issues. My whole apple music library appears to be intact, but when i go to the Library tab it just shows "Syncing Your Library" with a gray progress bar. If i hard reboot, when i go back in, i see a pink line about 1/4 the way done, but it never progresses further and after some time goes back to just the gray progress bar.

I want to try turning sync off and on, but it says if i turn it off then it will remove everything on the device.

Anybody have a similar issue, any ideas how to solve?

 

[SteveJobbinIt]

update! plugged into my mac with USB, updated some settings and applied. Force closed apple music on phone, syncing is gone!! not sure if that gave it the kick it needed, but looking good now!

 

[brandonmartinez]

Thank you so much for the suggestion! This worked for me as well. I upgraded from the iPhone 12 Pro Max to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, restored from an iCloud backup, and everything synced well except for music (took about a day total, I have large libraries everywhere).

Things I tried that failed:

• Rebooting phone.
• Killing the music app, rebooting phone.
• Killing the music app, turning off the "sync libraries" setting in Settings ->Music, rebooting phone.

Also what's interesting is that if the sync has not finished, you cannot add anything to your library (or playlists). The sync has to finish!

I plugged my phone into my mac, changed a couple of settings, then hit sync. Afterwards I killed the music app, opened the music app again, saw the "syncing library" progress bar and it zipped right by. All is well now!!

 

[SteveJobbinIt]

Awesome!

Thank you so much for the suggestion! This worked for me as well. I upgraded from the iPhone 12 Pro Max to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, restored from an iCloud backup, and everything synced well except for music (took about a day total, I have large libraries everywhere).

Things I tried that failed:

• Rebooting phone.
• Killing the music app, rebooting phone.
• Killing the music app, turning off the "sync libraries" setting in Settings ->Music, rebooting phone.

Also what's interesting is that if the sync has not finished, you cannot add anything to your library (or playlists). The sync has to finish!

I plugged my phone into my mac, changed a couple of settings, then hit sync. Afterwards I killed the music app, opened the music app again, saw the "syncing library" progress bar and it zipped right by. All is well now!!

awesome!!! Can’t believe that helped someone else, but happy it did! Odd little glitch

 

[gank41]

Hello! I was about to create a new post for this issue, and found your post.

So far, NOTHING has helped me. I also have a very large Music Library, and have tried a number of things.
I initially tried an iPhone 12 Pro to iPhone 14 Pro Max direct phone transfer on Friday, but that whole thing failed, and I had to restore from an iCloud backup. After I was finally able to start using my phone is when I noticed this issue.

Since then I’ve tried restoring the iPhone 14 Pro Max five times! Five. Including trying iOS 16.0.1 and the two recent 16.1 betas. I’ve also tried setting the phone up as new! No change. I’ve even tried disabling syncing my Music Library in Settings and rebooting, and tried disabling syncing my Music Library in Settings and then deleted the Music app (!) and waiting to reinstall & try again until the next morning. No change.

In all cases it still loads almost all of my Library, up until maybe it’s state about 2 weeks ago or so, and then the “Syncing Your Library” progress bar box at the top disappears. After a few moments it seems to try again, rinse and repeat. If I try adding anything to my Library on my 14 Pro Max, it’s not reflected on my other devices.

Meanwhile, adding any music on my iPad Pro, M1 MBP, Intel Mac mini, my Wife’s iPhone 12 Pro, or even my Daughter’s iPad Mini 6—- everything shows up as expected and quite quickly. All these other devices are on different OS versions, too: iOS 16, iPadOS 15.7, iPadOS 16.1 b9, the latest Ventura Beta, and macos 12.6.

I’ve filed Feedback with Apple in case anyone happens to see this, but I’ve lost hope at this point until they can try addressing this thru an update.

FB11541646

 

[gank41]

Also noting that I tried your suggestion of connecting it to my Mac and making a change & then trying to sync, but I get an "The iPhone “Jeff's iPhone” cannot be synced because it cannot be found" error. Rebooting the phone & Mac has no change.

 

[gank41]

Another disparaging issue I've found is that if I DO download some of the Music in my Library on my iPhone 14 Pro Max, while it's showing Syncing like this, and then the Syncing stops/starts over, it seems that the downloaded music isn't there! When I go to Settings/General/iPhone Storage/Music, it shows the albums listed. In the Music App itself it does not.

 

[sollymin]

Having the same issue just with my 14PM, and syncing via Mac and then force restarting the app didn't work for me, so not sure at all about what's going on. Initially setting up the phone my whole library appeared no dramas, and then a couple of days ago half of it just disappeared. Other devices (thankfully) unaffected. Running 16.0.1 but was facing the issue on 16.0 as well. Submitted feedback, if anyone wants to quote it it's FB11558728.

 

[gank41]

Today I tried a Clean Install of yesterday's beta and I've tried restoring to an earlier backup. Not seeing any change at all. VERY frustrating, and looks like I'm going to have to try my chances with Apple's Support. I have zero faith in getting any kind of reply or acknowledgment from the feedback I filed with Apple, either.

 

[gank41]

I have one last option to try-

I use iMazing and can’t believe I haven’t tried using this to restore my iPhone 14 Pro Max. The only potential save here is that it’d be restoring from a different backup, even though it’d be from around the same time…

Fingers Crossed! 🤞

 

[gank41]

Whelp....

Not taking anything away from iMazing, but whenever you mention to their support that you're backing up to or restoring from an external drive, it's either super mega slow, or fails... But that's for another day as I believe there's still lacking support for the iPhones 14 and I think my Backup might have been corrupt, both locally and in iCloud. Not sure how to fix that other than to delete it and start over...

So, I bit the bullet and did an erase & Reset and set up as new and all is well accept for the PITA of setting everything up as new again and losing a lot, if not all, of my gaming progress.

I'm glad this fixed things, even though it was an extreme step. Hopefully this thread can help the next person...

 

[sollymin]

Whelp....

Not taking anything away from iMazing, but whenever you mention to their support that you're backing up to or restoring from an external drive, it's either super mega slow, or fails... But that's for another day as I believe there's still lacking support for the iPhones 14 and I think my Backup might have been corrupt, both locally and in iCloud. Not sure how to fix that other than to delete it and start over...

So, I bit the bullet and did an erase & Reset and set up as new and all is well accept for the PITA of setting everything up as new again and losing a lot, if not all, of my gaming progress.

I'm glad this fixed things, even though it was an extreme step. Hopefully this thread can help the next person...

Yeah was thinking that might work, PITA indeed but if that’s what it takes, Music is probably a top priority on my device. I guess everything is on my old phone anyway, so not too big a deal for me, but might get onto just starting from scratch tonight to get Music going again.

 

[gank41]

Yeah was thinking that might work, PITA indeed but if that’s what it takes, Music is probably a top priority on my device. I guess everything is on my old phone anyway, so not too big a deal for me, but might get onto just starting from scratch tonight to get Music going again.

I was surprised at how much stuff still carries over from just signing in with your iCloud account, and then having apps set to install just to the App Library and not my home screen, I just went down the list and installed everything again, will make my home screens more organized probably. It’s for the best I guess.

 

[sollymin]

Okay so slight update... I was 2 mins from erasing my phone and completely starting fresh just now.

Something in my head has been telling me all week to just remove all my downloaded music, that might rejig it enough to start working for whatever reason...

...and sure enough, after removing all downloaded music, Cloud Music Library is now back in full form like on other devices.

Flew home from my home town yesterday and had to use my old iPhone for music instead First world problems but oh well. What a strange bug, glad it is no longer affecting me. Hooray!