Problem syncing / how to delete library on mac
Hi I have various issues with Apple Music (splitting albums and randomly changing the album artist on some albums); so, yesterday I spent a few hours going through my library on my phone, deleting problem albums and re downloading them from Apple Music. This seems to fix the problem at least temporarily. I also took the opportunity to delete a load of stuff I no longer listen to.
Having got my library fixed on my iPhone, about 24 hours later I opened up my MacBook Air expecting the changes to sync. The Mac downloaded all the new stuff, but didn't delete any of the things I'd deleted. So now my Mac library has lots of duplicated albums, and a load of stuff I no longer want.
As the library on my phone is "correct" I don't want to risk doing anything to sync bad data back up to the cloud. I would like to completely wipe the library from my Mac, start again with a fresh library and then download the "correct" data from the cloud. I am unable to do this. I've tried:
- turning sync off and on
- signing out of Apple Music, then deleting the contents of the music folder and emptying the trash
- while signed out of Apple Music, holding down option while opening music, selecting "create a new library" and "replace old library"
- starting in safe mode.
None of these work. Every time I open music, the old library is still in there.
Please help me to get rid of the corrupt data on my Mac and download a good copy from the cloud. Is there some kind of cache in the library folder I can delete? I've located some files but don't know what they do. Apple Music has got to be apple's worst product. It's been terrible at syncing since the early days of iTunes Match. :(
Thank you.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.0