How to sync music from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad in macOS Catalina — Apple Support

If you've got music on your Mac that you want to sync to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can use the Finder starting in macOS Catalina. Here's how.

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[jamesguyton]

I would like to say that this has been by far the most cumbersome update that I have ever dealt with in my life. I came over to the Mac system 6 years ago because I loved Apple products and the ease of use of Apple products. Now you all have taken a system that was already full proof and fluid, and have completely complicated things. I am not happy that I can no longer just plug in my iPhone/iPad and sync music and content with ease. I have literally been waiting for the finder window to compute now for HOURS. As the old saying goes, if it's not broken, don't fix it. DO BETTER APPLE.

[gregoryhess]

This seems like such a complicated process for something as simple as moving music to your phone. If you’re using a mac, apple really needs to make a way to drag and drop files to your phone. There’s no excuse at this point.

[blackbirdrx]

You've managed to take a great, reliable, user-friendly program and turn it into the worst cheap garbage that anybody has ever seen. Congratulations.

[smithereens]

If you have a large music library, including songs from CDs, records, etc., then DO NOT USE iTunes Match or Apple Music - you'll pay for a service that will destroy (and lock via DRM) your entire library. There are untold numbers of complaints out there - do your research before paying Apple to ruin what rightfully belongs to you. Seek a music or data synching app to keep your music library from being ruined or held hostage.

[cyberhawkx]

I think the previous iTunes was much user friendly and simple.
I lost all my audio files on my iphone in an attempt to sync with my new macbook + macos catalina.
How do i recover all my lost music files?
How do i sync my iphone music library and playlists to catalina?

[Amandanumnum]

this is driving me insane i just want to drag and drop individual songs

edit: ok so I found out that if you make a playlist, put songs in there that you want on you iphone, then you can drag and drop all of those songs to your phone

[hakimrabhi]

when i click the check box to sync it says that existing music on ur devise will be removed and synced with this lybrary but i dont want to remove music from my device, this sucks really sucks

[nhojrem]

i added individual songs by downloading them onto my MAC then plugging in my IPAD Touch, then going to Music in finder then clicking on recently added. from recently added I simply dragged and dropped music from recently added to my IPAD listed lower on the page. SIMPLE!

[mafik]

The fact that I have to look it up how to do this defeats the whole idea of Apple being simple and easy to use. This company has slowly learned to ruin everything into stupid unnecessary steps.

[paulomusic]

It never works for me. I've been trying to sync music since I purchased my iMac.

[Jordan-vros]

For Apple Music users, you can't merge your Mac's music with Apple Music with paying an extra $25/year with iTunes Match which is complete BS. There needs to be a way for me to still add downloaded music on Mac to my iPhone even if I am currently using Apple Music as well. Since Apple Music does lack some songs/artists, I have to be able to add it to my phone from another source.

[leritamelia]

thank you so much now I don't have to waste a lot of my gigs on other music apps :)

[ThatBlackPiano]

Apple needs to creat a playlist just to show ALL features and management options of iTunes/Music such as adding custom settings like: artwork, sorting options, edit track timing and classification, different rules/functions within a smart playlist, troubleshooting when device is not seen iniTunes on Mac &PC, etc.

[jascam]

Clear and concise, but Itunes drag and drop was the way to go. My 2013 MBP and Iphone 13 are still playing nice to each other.

[Asteve]

Thanks a lot. Apple Music makes this unbelievably difficult to do.

[miravales]

Sadly, this option doesn't work for me anymore. I have older Mac from perhaps 2014 and new iPhone. These two don't seem to communicate very well with each other :/

[keithschuler]

I'm glad we're still all using Catalina

[MrTankera]

AWESOME! Very straightforward...Piece of chocolate cake...I am starting to understand how Apple's method of madness of splitting iTunes the way they did. You have to understand how they've blended Apple Music as a separate App into the the Finder; especially when it comes to TRUST of the respective device and th Synchronization process. In effect, It's easy to seperate music and reading materials to separate devices. I can have my iBook collection, user manuals, etc... where ithey are supposed to be which is on my iPad instead of having everything clumped into iTunes...Pretty Cool!

[vimalalwaysrocks]

Urggg.... moving things in & out of my phone ... one thing I will never get used to!

[bxxxt]

The only recommendation I have: DO NOT UPGRADE!! Catalina is an absolute nightmare and after 6 months no major bug fixes yet!