Large Apple Music playlists not syncing to iPhone and iPad

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Level 1

11 points

Large Apple Music playlists not syncing to iPhone and iPad

I subscribe to Apple Music. I have 3 large holiday playlists (508, 600 and 379 songs respectively) that date back to the days of CD's and iTunes. They appear on my iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2017) , but don't synch to my iPhone (iPhone 12) or iPad (iPad 10th gen). I've tried renaming them coping the songs to new playlists with different names, made sure I was signed in on my account on all devices, rebooted multiple times, unsynced and resynched and deleted and reinstalled Apple Music on the iPhone and iPad.

It appears that every other playlist I own (284 in total) synch just fine.

I'm out of ideas on how to get these three playlists to synch. Can

Posted on Dec 6, 2025 4:13 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 7, 2025 2:29 AM in response to Brickmille

Your 3 playlists are not syncing because one or more tracks inside them are ineligible or corrupted.
iCloud Music Library blocks sync for the entire playlist when 1 track fails.
Fix is to identify and remove the bad tracks, or rebuild the playlist in batches.
Turning off/on Sync Library forces re-upload.
Export-and-reimport playlist also fixes corrupted playlist IDs.

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Answer 2

Brickmille Author

Level 1

11 points

Dec 7, 2025 3:21 PM in response to azaksalmarzur28

Thank you. It worked. I sorted by “Cloud Status” first and found several songs that were listed as “duplicate.” There were some on each playlist and after I deleted them, I resorted all three in “playlist” order exported them, and then reimported them. After renaming the new playlists both old and new synched to my iPhone and iPad without issue. Thank you again.

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