How to allow iPhone to sync with multiple computers?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Is there an easy way to allow managing the music library on my iPhone from multiple computers? It would be ideal if I can add and remove songs from both my laptop and desktop rather than having to be tied exclusively to my desktop. It'll also help when I reformat so I don't have to resync everything from scratch again. 

[kirashi]

34 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Is there an easy way to allow managing the music library on my iPhone from multiple computers? It would be ideal if I can add and remove songs from both my laptop and desktop rather than having to be tied exclusively to my desktop. It'll also help when I reformat so I don't have to resync everything from scratch again. 

You can't sync music to iOS devices from multiple computers by any official means. It's the dumbest thing ever, but I believe Apple put this restriction in place way back when the first iPods were released to prevent you & a group of friends from dumping each other's music libraries onto everyone's iPods.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8268505

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 hour ago, kirashi said:

You can't sync music to iOS devices from multiple computers by any official means. It's the dumbest thing ever, but I believe Apple put this restriction in place way back when the first iPods were released to prevent you & a group of friends from dumping each other's music libraries onto everyone's iPods.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8268505

Huh, I don't recall this ever being a thing with my classic iPods. I used to just plug mine into my brother's computer periodically and grab music from him as well hahahaa. So there's not even a way to log in with my Apple ID on iTunes and say, hey look, this is the same library? That's really annoying. You would think they assumed it's possible someone could own a MacBook for on the go and an iMac at home and would want to be able to mange their iPhone from both. 

 

A friend of mine said I could just copy the entire iTunes folder over from my previous computer but... that seemed to easy and sure enough it didn't fool the phone. 

[kirashi]

1 minute ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Huh, I don't recall this ever being a thing with my classic iPods. I used to just plug mine into my brother's computer periodically and grab music from him as well hahahaa. So there's not even a way to log in with my Apple ID on iTunes and say, hey look, this is the same library? That's really annoying. You would think they assumed it's possible someone could own a MacBook for on the go and an iMac at home and would want to be able to mange their iPhone from both. 

 

A friend of mine said I could just copy the entire iTunes folder over from my previous computer but... that seemed to easy and sure enough it didn't fool the phone. 

I think they might have let you check the "Let me manage my music" checkbox on some models of iPods, but am guessing this changed at some point. I can't remember cause the last time I used my iPod Classic before selling it was around 2012 ish? But yeah, the most recent updates to iOS for the iPod Touch and iPhone appear to prevent syncing music from multiple computers, if you ever could do that in the past. Not quite sure as I never had an iPhone.

 

You'd think they'd take into account those with multiple computers, but no... or rather, they have - it's easy, just sign up for iTunes Match or Apple Music and you won't have to worry about syncing music anymore!  sigh It's a great concept... if you don't mind the subscription fee, but otherwise is frustrating.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

8 minutes ago, kirashi said:

I think they might have let you check the "Let me manage my music" checkbox on some models of iPods, but am guessing this changed at some point. I can't remember cause the last time I used my iPod Classic before selling it was around 2012 ish? But yeah, the most recent updates to iOS for the iPod Touch and iPhone appear to prevent syncing music from multiple computers, if you ever could do that in the past. Not quite sure as I never had an iPhone.

 

You'd think they'd take into account those with multiple computers, but no... or rather, they have - it's easy, just sign up for iTunes Match or Apple Music and you won't have to worry about syncing music anymore!  sigh It's a great concept... if you don't mind the subscription fee, but otherwise is frustrating.

They do have the "Manually manage Music and Videos" option. I enabled it when I reformatted my computer and it proceeded to erase everything. So I thought hey, maybe this will work because what else could that option possibly mean? Yea no, plugged my phone into my laptop and the option is no longer checked. Plugged it back in my desktop and lord and behold, it's checked again. No idea what is going on with that option. 

 

If only... But I like being able to just have my music local and be able listen to it without having to spend a whack ton of my data. And of course, there's just some music that doesn't exist on streaming services because of region restrictions and what not. The concept of treating the customer like a unhinged animal continues... 

[Zodiark1593]

On 9/17/2020 at 11:39 PM, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

They do have the "Manually manage Music and Videos" option. I enabled it when I reformatted my computer and it proceeded to erase everything. So I thought hey, maybe this will work because what else could that option possibly mean? Yea no, plugged my phone into my laptop and the option is no longer checked. Plugged it back in my desktop and lord and behold, it's checked again. No idea what is going on with that option. 

 

If only... But I like being able to just have my music local and be able listen to it without having to spend a whack ton of my data. And of course, there's just some music that doesn't exist on streaming services because of region restrictions and what not. The concept of treating the customer like a unhinged animal continues... 

When I moved to iOS, I had a lot of music that wasn’t properly tagged, in different locations, and a lot that was in .FLAC which iTunes wants absolutely nothing to do with. On an Android, you can drag and drop music from wherever (doesn’t even have to be my own machine), in whatever codec it happens to be coded with, and expect it to play. With Apple, I had to go through the tedious organization, tagging and (if applicable) re-encoding to AAC or ALAC of my library before everything would nicely sync. 
 

Not the best user experience ever, *angry voice* Apple!