Why does music stay on my iPhone/iPod even when I deselect it in iTunes?

I typically sync my music by Playlist or Artist with iTunes. When I am ready for different music I will deselect the playlist and/or artist to remove, then sync. Then I select the playlist and/or artist I want on my device and sync. I keep finding that music remains on the device even though I have deselected. I have searched all the iTunes settings and I cannot find anything to resolve this situation. So I have to spend hours tap delete all the leftover music. I have followed this article Delete music in the Apple Music app - Apple Support which at leas can be removed by album. But this still takes a very long time.


Ex: I sync a holiday playlist. After the holiday I want to remove the music so deselect the holiday playlist. After the sync, the music remains on the device.


How do I prevent this from happening?


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Posted on May 24, 2025 02:19 PM

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May 25, 2025 01:46 PM in response to ssbk10

I believe that there are multiple views of what to synchronize in Finder, and in iTunes. E.g., there's a "song" view and there is an "album" view.


Say that you had selected the album "Born to Run" and separately selected the song "Thunder Road", and then decided you didn't want "Thunder Road" on your iPhone any more. If you just removed the "Song" view selection for "Thunder Road", while leaving the album "Born To Run" selected, I believe you would still have the song on the iPhone after the next synchronization, by virtue of the fact that the whole album was still selected.


You may want to check and see if anything like that is going on – where you have inadvertently selected the song that you want to remove in two or more places, and have just forgotten to clear the selection in all of them.

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Why does music stay on my iPhone/iPod even when I deselect it in iTunes?

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