Iphone 5 Manually Managing Music on Two PCs

I have just bought an iphone5 after years of using an ipod touch 2nd gen.
I setup my ipodtouch 2nd gen when i was still living at home on that PC there and that had room enough for all my music.
I have since left home and now have a laptop, that doesn;t have room. I have also moved in excess of 200 miles away from the "home" pc.
I set my iphone up on my laptop and synced all the "new" music i have bought - you know physical CDs etc - i really dont do downloading. Fine. No Problems. I even managed to go through the hoops to create custom ringtones.
I visited home and thought "oh while i'm here..." and hooked up. Now, i'd been forearmed and forewarend of trouble so on my laptop i have "Mnaually Manage Music" Ticked and "Automatic Sync" UNticked. I did the exact same at the home PC. Lo and behold all the laptop music and tones etc. got wiped when updating to the home PC and putting all that music on.
Fine i thought - i'll just connect up to the laptop and re-add the manually added stuff.
Nope. Got back and the "Manually add Music" box has UNTICKED ITSELF, and when i tick it and hit apply - yup you've guessed it, i lose everything from the Home PC.
This is driving me mad.
How can i get round this? I'm due another trip back home next week and want to add all the stuff on again, but i'll not be going back again for months after that, and i'll be buying new CDs that i'll want to add onto my iphone through my laptop at a later date.
I've also discovered that when the amnually add music option is selected you cant "manually add" the ringtones back in. Any suggestsions for this as well before i through this bloody iPhone through the nearest window?

Because this is how Apple chose to design the iphone.

Similar Messages

Manually manage music on two computers with iPhone 4s

For the past few months I have had not issues manually managing my ipod touch on two computers. This is a necessesity as I own a mac laptop but like to listen to audiobooks from my local library which will only download to a PC. With my iPod touch all I had to do was make sure that the manually manage music was turned on and I could put the music from my computer on the device than go and use my friend's pc to put on the audiobooks (WMA Overdrive format). Since getting the iPhone 4S it has been a nightmare to get the same result. I even went so far as to plug it into each computer completely when nothing was on the iphone and turn on manually manage music in each, than put all my music from the mac on it. Only to find that when I opened up itunes in the PC manually manage music was unchecked again. The only way to turn it back on is to sync and erase all my music, thus forcing me to carry around both an ipod and an Iphone, which is more than a little annoying.
Please help!

Unlike the iPods, including the iPod Touch, iPhones will synch with ONLY ONE iTunes library at a time. You will NOT be able to manually manage music from 2 computers with your iPhone.

HT1535 my iphone is set to "manually manage music and videos" and it still does not allow me to add music from my other computers.

I have followed the steps in order to manually manage the music on my 3GS iphone. (used the latest version of itunes and my iphone is up to date with iOS5) and it still is not allowing me to add music from another computer.
when i plug it into the second computer, it is asking me to click "manually manage music and videos" again. when i do that, it says it is going to sync with this new library and erase all music that is already there. i dont want this to happen! i only want to add a few select songs from each library. I have waaayy to much to add and erase every time.
both of the computers i am using are PCs and have my itunes id for homesharing... please help me!

Refer to this article
Using iPhone, iPad, or iPod with multiple computers
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1202
Notes:
iPod shuffle and iPhone are intended for use with a single computer. You cannot load music from multiple computers or iTunes libraries onto iPod shuffle and iPhone like you can with other devices.

Manually managing music on iPhone from multiple computers

Everything I've read 'claims' this can be but I don't think the people who tell you how to do it even bother to see what happens. This is one of the things that really frustrate me about forums. It's the complete lack of thoroughness of the people who reply to a question without knowing the outcome.
It's a simple task. I want to be able to move music from multitple computers to my iPhone. When I go into iTunes and select the device, in my case it's the iPhone, and check the box to manually manage music and videos then click 'apply' I get a warning that everything is going to be erased from the phone. WTH!?! And no one on ANY forum who suggests this is the proper way manually managing music even has a solution to be able to do this WITHOUT erasing the phone.
C'mon Apple. It's a SIMPLE drag-n-drop implementation. How hard can it be? I'm not the least interested in syncing with some music library on the computer. In fact I don't even sync my phone with the iTunes Library. It's a waste of time because I can't even selectively sync music. It's either all or nothing. STUPID. I simply want to move music on and off the phone. You know, drag into the window to add and drag off to remove. And I want to be able to do it from any computer I want that's running iTunes. I shouldn't have to copy music from a different computer, carry it home and add it from the home system. That completely defeats the concept of portability. And if my home computer happens to go south for some reason then what? Even if I have all my music backed up, I have to wipe out all my music on the phone and start all over because I'm now using a different computer. Who was the genius that came up with that ludicrous idea?
Apple you really need to take a page from Sandisk and allow iPhones to be treated as external drives so we can drag and drop our music onto them. No muss no fuss. Simple and clean with no hair pulling. It's already established the you create some very pretty devices. Now let's work on improving usability. Because the way I see it, it's a bit backwards.

Sync iPod/iPad/iPhone with two computers
Although it isn't possible to sync an Apple device with two different libraries it is possible to sync with the same logical library from multiple computers. Each library has an internal ID and when iTunes connects to your iPod/iPad/iPhone it compares the local ID with the one the device normally syncs with. If they are the same you can go ahead and sync...
I have my library cloned to a small 1Tb USB drive which I can take between home & work. At either location I use SyncToy 2.1 to update the local copy with the external drive. Mac users should be able to find similar tools. I can open either of the local libraries or the one on the external drive and update the media content of my iPhone. The slight exception is Photos which normally connects to a specific folder on a specific machine, although that can easily be remapped to the current library if you create a "Photos" folder inside the iTunes Media folder so that syncing the iTunes folders keeps this up to date as well. I periodically sweep my library for new files & orphans with iTunes Folder Watch just in case I make changes at one location but then overwrite the library with a newer copy from the other. Again Mac users should be able to find similar tools.
As long as your media is organised within an iTunes Music or Tunes Media folder, in turn held inside the main iTunes folder that has your library files (whether or not you let iTunes keep the media folder organised) each library can access items at the same relative path from the library folder so the library can be at different drives/paths on different machines. This solution ensures I always have adequate backups of my library and I can update my devices whenever I can connect to the same build of iTunes.
When working with an iPhone earlier builds of iTunes would remove any file not physically present in the local library, even if there was an entry for it, making manual management practically redundant on the iPhone. This behaviour has been changed but it will still only permit manual management with a library that has the correct internal ID. If you don't want to sync your library between machines on a regular basis just copy the iTunes Library.itl file from the current "home" machine to any other you want to use, then clean out the library entires and import the local content you have on that box.
tt2

Manually manage music option - keep what's on my iPhone already

Sorry if this has been asked and answered before but some of the reposonses here seem to contradict each other. I have tried reading the supporting documentation (other posts and links to the Apple knowledgebase) but can't see a clear response.
I have an iPhone 4S (runing O/S 5.1.1) and am using iTunes (v10.6.3.25) on a PC. When I first got my iPhone (a couple of months ago), I set it to "Manually manage music and video" before putting any content on it. All was fine until my laptop died and was replaced - now when I attach my iPhone to my new laptop (or any other device running iTunes), I see that this option is not ticked. If I try to select this option, a dialogue box is presented informing me that if I apply, all the content currently on my iPhone will be erased - obviously this is not the effect I'm trying to acheive. So I guess my questions are:
Is there any way of setting my iPhone to be able to manually manage music and video WITHOUT first erasing all the current content?
Is it possible to have another device (like my PC at work, for example) recognise that the iPhone has this setting checked when I attach it?
If anyone has the time, patience and inclination to let me know, I'd be very grateful! Thank you in advance!

millou_ wrote:
Oh - I can get the data back, that's not the real problem. It's the several hours of my life required to do it!
That's a relief...
All I really want is to be able to attach my iPhone to my laptop at home AND my PC at work where in both cases my iPhone can be manually managed so that I can add content MANUALLY from either location onto my one, lovely iPhone.
Sync iPod/iPad/iPhone with two computers
Although it isn't possible to sync an Apple device with two different libraries it is possible to sync with the same logical library from multiple computers. Each library has an internal ID and when iTunes connects to your iPod/iPad/iPhone it compares the local ID with the one the device normally syncs with. If they are the same you can go ahead and sync...
I have my library cloned to a small 1Tb USB drive which I can take between home & work. At either location I use SyncToy 2.1 to update the local copy with the external drive. Mac users should be able to find similar tools. I can open either of the local libraries or the one on the external drive and update the media content of my iPhone. The slight exception is Photos which normally connects to a specific folder on a specific machine, although that can easily be remapped to the current library if you create a "Photos" folder inside the iTunes Media folder so that syncing the iTunes folders keeps this up to date as well. I periodically sweep my library for new files & orphans with iTunes Folder Watch just in case I make changes at one location but then overwrite the library with a newer copy from the other. Again Mac users should be able to find similar tools.
As long as your media is organised within an iTunes Music or Tunes Media folder, in turn held inside the main iTunes folder that has your library files (whether or not you let iTunes keep the media folder organised) each library can access items at the same relative path from the library folder so the library can be at different drives/paths on different machines. This solution ensures I always have adequate backups of my library and I can update my devices whenever I can connect to the same build of iTunes.
When working with an iPhone earlier builds of iTunes would remove any file not physically present in the local library, even if there was an entry for it, making manual management practically redundant on the iPhone. This behaviour has been changed but it will still only permit manual management with a library that has the correct internal ID. If you don't want to sync your library between machines on a regular basis just copy the iTunes Library.itl file from the current "home" machine to any other you want to use, then clean out the library entires and import the local content you have on that box.
tt2

How do you delete songs that you purchased through iTunes but don't show up when you connect the iphone to iTunes they don't show up in music when you click on "On this phone"? I have my phone setup to manually manage music. Please help.

How do you delete songs that you purchased through iTunes but don't show up when you connect the iphone to iTunes? They don't show up in the music section when you click on "On this phone". Side Note: I have my phone setup to manually manage music. Please help.

Hi, Mrs.Frankie57.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
If you want to delete a song from your iOS device on iOS 7, tap Songs, swipe the song from right to left, then tap Delete. The song is deleted from iPhone, but not from your iTunes library on your Mac or PC, or from iCloud.
iPhone User Guide
Cheers,
Jason H.

Music appears grey with a sync symbol on iPhone 4 (iOS 6.0.1) on iTunes (newest version as of 11/20/2012) and will not play on iPhone. It is set to manually manage music.

So I got a brand new iPhone 4 from a Sprint retailer, and it came with the software that was available at the time of the release. I left it that way for a while and put music on it through iTunes (latest version as of 11/20/2012) with no problems. Then I updated the software on the iPhone to iOS6.0.1 and when i tried to put music on it through iTunes like normal the songs showed up in the library of the iPhone (still on the computer) however they were grey and they had a syncing symbol to the left as if it were still syncing the music. I waited and waited but it would not go away. then I clicked the arrow at the middle top of iTunes where it shows you what song is playing and everything else iTunes is doing, and it did not say that it was syncing the music like normal. Basically the library indicated the music was still syncing but iTunes was not putting it on. I currently have it set to manually manage music. I do not want to switch it to automatically sync or reset my iPhone because I will lose my information. Any immediate help would be greatly appreciated!

When I went to restore my phone, I may have found the cause of these problems. I never deleted all of my original synced songs before enabling iTunes Match.
When I just went to do the restore, I figured I'd delete all of my songs, then disable iTunes Match. After deleting about 3.5 GB of music and disabling iTunes Match, I ran the sync to backup my iPhone. It said there was still 2.2 GB of music. I checked my phone just in case and there was 2.2 GB there, probably the original synced songs that I never removed.
Anyway, I'm doing the restore now just in case and will respond tomorrow with how everything is working.

Can't add music my iPhone from iTunes. When I try to drag a song over to my phone, I get the circle w/ the syncing line through it, but it does not update/load. [Manually manage music and videos] is checked. And, this is the only Mac I have ever used to

Can't add music my iPhone from iTunes.
When I try to drag a song over to my phone, I get the circle w/ the syncing line through it, but it does not update/load.
[Manually manage music and videos] is checked. And, this is the only Mac I have ever used to add music to my phone.
Also, just updated the phone's software today, and iTunes' software is already up to date.

Hi Gregg,
Have you tried resetting the device (nothing will be lost): Hold down the Home and Power buttons at the same time and continue to hold them down until the Apple appears (up to 30 seconds). Once the Home screen redisplays, see if your Music app is behaving normally.
Cheers,
GB

ITunes 10.6.1.7 - Manually manage music with iPhone no longer queues selections

I couldn't decide if this was an iTunes or an iPhone related issue so I opted to place it in the iTunes discussions since it's more related to its features than the iPhone.
I just discovered that when you have your iPhone set up to "Manually manage music and videos" it no longer queues your selections as you drag and drop music or playlists. What I mean is in previous iterations of iTunes, I could drag and drop as many playlists on the iPhone in the DEVICES window of iTunes and hundreds of songs would literally queue up showing you the number XX of XXXX in the top window of the program, of which the latter number increasingly got larger the more music you dropped on your iPhone. With this latest revision, iTunes 10.6.1.7, it no longer queues that music, instead it interrupts what was previously queued with a "Preparing to update" message, stops the previously queued music, and then starts with the newer music you dropped on your iPhone device.
Is this intentional? Is everyone else experiencing this rather odd revision of this program's functionality?

iTUNES 10.6.1.7
How do I restore the original iTUNES that recognizes our music libraries and our iPODS?
Thanks for your consideration.
Message was edited by: mrtruffles

Bought a new macbook and want to manually manage music onto my iphone 4s but when i click 'manually manage' and then 'apply' i get the message saying it will erase everything already on there. Need help please!

Bought a new macbook and want to manually manage music onto my iphone 4s (as it is already full of music from old windows laptop) but when i click 'manually manage' and then 'apply' i get the message saying it will erase everything already on there. Need help please!

Before you sync your iPhone make sure that all the music that was synced to your phonereviously has been copied to your iTunes on the new MacBook Pro. Then when you connect your phone you will be able to either sync all music or select only those playlists that you want on the phone.

Unable to manually manage music and videos on iPhone 4 without erase and sync, same computer!

Ok, so I know you all have heard this before but I do believe my case is rather unique, and quite frustrating.
I purchased an iPhone 4 and synced it to the same computer I am using now - created the playlist and used it to sync with phone. Worked great for awhile; but one day I contracted some nasty malware and had to wipe my computer and reinstall my OS (Windows 7). Albeit my music library was on my external HDD which survived the onslaught. I obviously had to reinstall iTunes afterwards. The playlist was gone on reinstall.
Afterwards I still didn't see an issue with my iPhone and iTunes: When I plug it in it syncs, everything seems to be working accordingly.
But I recently transferred some new music from a CD to my iTunes and wanted to throw those songs on my iPhone, the drag and drop method I was so very used to did not work and I noticed that "manually manage music and videos" was uncheck under my devices summary.
When I attempt to check this option in iTunes it gives me a popup notification telling me I need to erase and sync in order to use this option because my 'iPhone is synced with another library". Again, I DID have to reinstall iTunes after reinstalling my OS.
I have tried all the tricks that google could supply me with with no avail; authorizing, stopping the sync from automatically starting.... yada yada - none of these cookie cutter methods have worked for me.
Here's a too long didn't read:
>iPhone 4 was working fine - used playlist to sync with.
>Had to reinstall OS (Windows 7) Playlist gone.
>Reinstall iTunes.
>iPhone still syncs with library, no error messages on connect.
>Unable to manually manage music and videos without erase and sync.
>None of the usual methods work.

Hmm, I will say after posting this and looking at the related threads it seems I can only either use manually manage or sync.
I was using sync before but since the playlist disappeared I was syncing with I simply want to add music to my phone without deleting everything. Is this possible?
If I use "manually manage music and videos" will it delete everything or just the music and videos? It doesn't specify...
Could I just create a new playlist and sync it with that? If so how?
The bottom line is it isn't that big of a deal if I need to simply rebuild my iPhone music library but losing my configuration, contacts etc is not an option. Optimally I would just like to be able to add my new music to my iPhone without having to rebuild my library.

Manually manage music and videos isn't working after iTunes update and iPhone 4 IOS5 update.

Just update my iPhone 4 to IOS5 and updated to the latest verison of iTunes also and now I can't manually put songs from my music folder into my iPhone's music section now. Normally I would just drag songs into my iPhone's music section but now it won't let me. I have Manually manage music and videos checked also. I'm also running Windows 7. Any help would be great.

I am having the exact same problem. Also with transfering PDF files. It's frustrating. ANY help would be appreciated. I also run W7. I have an iPod Touch 4.

Connect the device to your computer. Open iTunes. Select iPhone, iPad, or iPod in the Devices list. Click the Summary tab and select "Manually manage music and videos". Click Apply. but after that say's everything on my iPhone will be deleted

Connect the device to your computer.
Open iTunes.
Select iPhone, iPad, or iPod in the Devices list.
Click the Summary tab and select "Manually manage music and videos".
Click Apply.
than it says it'ss erase my iphone and sync with itunes library.
what should i do?

It wil only erase the music and videos. Nothing else.

Hi, I upgraded from iOS 5.1.1, to iOS 6, and it's ridiculously slow, I can't sync to my computer, (manually manage music), and all of my photos were gone. How can I get my photos back? It says restoring photos, but it's said that for two days now!

Hi, I upgraded from iOS 5.1.1, to iOS 6, and it's ridiculously slow, I can't sync to my computer, (manually manage music), and all of my photos were gone. How can I get my photos back? It says restoring photos, but it's said that for two days now!

It just does't sync. I connect it to itunes, but nothing happens. Where it says how much space I have, it's just on ebig bar that says other. I can play my music on itunes, but not when i unplug it.
All of my photos were gone, i took and saved them with my ipod.
The photo app is saying restoring.
What should i do?

Any reason to use "Manually manage music" over creating an iPhone playlist?

My new iPhone is my first iPod that's not big enough to hold all 319 of my albums. In fact, the limited capacity is the only reason it took me so long to buy one -- it's always seemed that the whole point of having an iPod is the ability to take it all with you.
Anyway, I just assumed that the way to choose 14GB or so worth of music was to create a playlist containing the albums I want to copy over, then sync that playlist with the new iPhone. It worked fine. But then I noticed the checkbox marked "Manually manage music and videos," and after some sleuthing it appears that it does the same thing.
Does it do anything that creating a playlist doesn't? If I switched to doing it that way, would the only upside be one fewer playlist?

Eric, if thats what you're more comfortable doing, i say, stick with it. i prefer to "manually manage" as i dont really use playlists. i'm one to just start a song and let the thing play at random. so i like it cuz when i obtain new mp3's, i can just drag and drop it into the phone. and the same the ohter way around, if theres a song i no longer want on the phone, i can delete it off the phone via itunes. all without having to set up playlists to sync.

Iphone 5 Manually Managing Music on Two PCs

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for