iTunes 11: Empty playlists and syncing to iOS devices

Dec 24, '12 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: kirkmc

If you choose to sync music by selecting specific playlists, you select your iOS device, then click the Music tab to check the playlists you want. I do this for my iPhone and iPod touch. I have found, however, that with iTunes 11, any playlist that is empty gets unchecked.

Here's why this is a problem for me. I have a few playlists that I use for listening to new music or podcasts. I manually place tracks in these playlists, when I have something to put in them. However, there are times when I sync my iOS devices that they are empty. In the past, this didn't matter; the next time I added something to the playlists, they would sync. But in iTunes 11, they become unchecked in the Music tab, and I have to manually go back and sync them again.

My solution is to add a very short silent track to the beginning of each of these playlists.Some time ago, I made these silent tracks to be able to use them as pauses in playlists, and posted them on my blog. The shortest one is .1 second, which I created for this hint. Just put the silent track anywhere in the playlist, but remember not to delete it, so the playlist never becomes empty.

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Mac OS X Hints
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