iOS 4.2 bugs: iPhone music gone after the update? Here's the fix!
If you've just updated to iOS 4.2 on your iPhone only to discover all your favorite music has mysteriously gone missing, don't worry, you're not alone. Our tip line has exploded with users complaining about the very same thing. It's a scare for sure but luckily the fix is quite simple. Check it out after the break.
First take a deep breath. The songs aren't really gone from your iPhone the bug is just stopping them from being displayed properly. All you have to do is encourage your iPhone to get its act together:
- Grab your cable and plug your iPhone into iTunes on your Windows or Mac PC
- When your iPhone shows up in the sidebar, make sure you can see the content listings beneath it (click on the triangle to the left if not)
- Click on music
- Pick a song
- Play it in iTunes
- Sync your iPhone
Voila! Go back to your iPod app on your iPhone and you'll find all your precious songs just the way you left them pre-update. (Unfortunately you can't send Apple the bill for pain and suffering...)
Thanks to everyone who sent this in! Did this bug fix work for you? Let us know your results in the comments below!
Senior Editor at iMore and a practicing psychotherapist specializing in stress and anxiety. She speaks everywhere from conferences to corporations, and co-hosts of the iMore show and ZEN and TECH podcasts.
There are 69 comments. Add yours.
Wow what timing. Not five second ago I went to play music on my iPhone after updating last night, and I got the error. I immediately came here and what I do see but this as the newest story!
Just to report in as well, I did as listed above. One of the things mentioned in the bar in iTunes was "syncing Music" which took only a second. Now all is well.
It seems that there's some bug making the music app not recognize the music folder.
That happened to me randomly on 4.1. Couldn't get anything to work. Finally thought to browsed through ifile. I played a song through the ifile media player and went back into the iPod and mysteriously had visible music. Weird.
Wow thanks guys! Had this problem last night when I updated! Awesome!
I figured out last night during my 4 hour commute home in the Seattle blizzard of 2010 that I had mo music on my iPhone and I had just removed my iPod from the car as well. Man was I happy to have Pandora and Netflix!
Who are the drunk morons who beta test these releases and not find issues like this?
Used to have this problem regularly with windows but touch wood since getting a mac a few weeks ago its never happened since....
I hope this continues even tho it does seem to be a popular issue on 4.2
I didn't have my music loaded on, so I didn't experience that. However... when I went to open a picture today, I had to wait for it to update the library. I'm guessing there must have been some changes to the database structure for music and photo library for Airplay compatibility, etc.
This morning I had a look at my songs on the iPhone to almost have a heart attack.
I connected my phone to my computer, to check in iTunes if the tracks were still in my iPhone memory. Since it was listed in my disk usage, I played a song from it.
Voìla!
When I looked back for the songs in my iPhone, a screen appeared saying 'rebuilding library'. One minute later, everything was back in place.
Thank you Apple for a thrilling morning!
It is a strange bug because the Settings --> General --> About lists the correct amount of songs you have, but the iPod app can't see them.
I also noticed that in certain apps (like the App store), sometimes the keyboard gets stuck on and you can't get rid of it by tapping out. You have to either kill the App or type something random and hit search, return, etc.
I should test phones for Apple because I find every bug...
Ahh I love you.
this bug has been around since before 4.2, even before 4.0 as my iPad in 3.2 had the same issue. I began to worry if the flash storage was going bad since it only seemed to happen after I had used up 95% of its 32GB of space.
I just synced to iTunes again and it worked fine after that.
This happened to me when I upgraded to iOS 4.2 on my work iTunes (authorized computer) that does not have my music collection. It wasn't fixed until I re-sync'd my iPhone on my main iTunes home computer.
Can we do a survey on this? Windows or mac, default or custom iTunes settings, etc. People here will likely have better survey questions. Please consider.
Just had to sync to restore songs... didn't have to play one as described above.
Why are people having heart attacks when this first appears? Unless you've loaded music onto your phone and then deleted it from your computer... it's all there.
This just happened to me tonight and I have tried everything recommended but I cant get my music to re-appear
Why can't I download podcast?
Why all the work...
I did not have to play anything from my device, just a second sync after the update to 4.2.1
This happend to me in a 3.X update all I was turn off and then turned on the iPod Touch then synced it back up.
Do you really need to click on a song and play it ? Just the sync should take care oc the problem. Right ?
I had this problem on my 3GS when I updated to 4.1, but all my music reappeared after syncing a 2nd time. This time my music showed up, but all my audiobooks show up as "Unknown" in the playlist. When I open them, all the info is there and they play like normal, they just don't have titles. No big deal, but a bit of a bother.
thank you tipb!
this happened to my old iPhone3g as well as my ipad last night. i havent taken my iPhone4 to 4.2.1 to see what little bugs like this creep up... thanks tipb!
Hey... I want to know if the daylight saving time problem is fixed, because I'm at work now and I can't update my iPhone yet.
Greetings from Chile
It happened to me on my iPad. I re-synced and the songs were there. Then I went to back up and brick. A complete shut down and then it automatically restored to factory conditions and created a backup over my full backup, thus wiping out my backup! Fortunately, I had made a copy of my most recent pre-4.2.1 backup on another drive and am now restoring from that. Talk about anger management. I'm waiting for the restore and hopefully it will work properly.
@Larry
Did you have to throw your iPad away? Was it a paper weight? Perhaps, like a BRICK? No, you restored and it was ok?
Sorry, just hate when people say something's bricked when it's NOT. Being bricked means it's completely hosed and you throw it away.
@Anton Ditto!
Yea, that's not a brick. That's a crash or data corruption, something Jobs says NEVER happens to Apple devices....
But yea, that is pretty annoying to have happen and the primary reason anything I have that could be even remotely critical is kept on "cloud" backup locations rather then just in the device backup file.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one lol but it was not biggie I just synced when I got home.
This has actually been a bug for a long long time and my way of fixing it was just downloading iTunes free song of the day to my phone and all my music would basically show up.
So if try that if you're not at your PC/MAC.
@frag: you know, I thought I was having deja vu because I had to do the same thing when I updated once before...
I think the real problem is something to do with the itunes backup and restore. I've had iTunes wipe out my apps after an update, but when I downloaded them from the app store again, all the files that were contained in them were present, as if the data was actually ON the device but there were no app icons on the springboard.
I had this error with iOS 3. Pity it's still kicking around.
When I read the headline I thought it was relating to a bug I had for the first time. Listening to a podcast, SMS arrives and makes sound and then the playback volume dropped but not on the volume slider. Phone restart restored audio to the previous level.
Sorry for the misuse of the term brick. I blame it on my age (over 40. OK, over 50). But, with that said, I left my iPad restoring at home - I had to go to work to make money in case it does end up as a brick.
When I upgraded my iPhone 4 I lost my music. I did another sync and it was all fine. No big.
Another reason why I LOVE TiPB!!
I didn't even realize my music was MISSING until I read this entry.
A fix before I knew something was broken...
You guys are simply THE BEST!!!
Hi. I've just re-synced my music yet when you click on the artist--album--song the artwork doesn't show up in the left hand corner like it used to.
Anyone else experience that? Better yet - anyone know how to fix it?
Thanks!
I encountered this issue after upgrading and this fix did the trick. Thank goodness I had read about this on the web before discovering it. Otherwise, I would've been freaking out.
This bug has been around for a while now. It's been happening a lot on one of my iPhone 4's. Which is on 4.1. iTunes 10.1 seems to do this more though.
I had the same trouble of Martin (36). My iPod does not show anymore the artwork on the tracks menu after the update to iOS 4.2 Some body know how to fix it? Thanks in advance.
I had this issue, AND I had a FaceTime issue. FaceTime turned itself "off" when I updated. (I usually update while the phone is in Airplane mode. Had an issue awhile ago where someone called in the middle of an update and bogged everything up.)
Luckily, I just had to go to settings...phone...and turn it back on. Weird.
NOTE: My phone did not have that issue, HOWWEVER, IT WILL NOT FINISH THE DOWNLOADING OF iSTORE APPS. IE: IT PLACES THE APP ON THE PHONE, BUT THEY WILL NOT FILL IN THE DOWNLOAD.....JUST THE APP SHOWING, BUT NOT FINISHING DOWNLOADING!! ANYOWNE ELSE HAVING THIS SAME ISSUE?
Ls
Thank You! My music was fine but the audiobooks were missing. Resynch didn't help. Only when I followed your instructions did it get corrected.
Thank you to whomever figured this out. It saved me SO much time!
Thanks for the tip, I was having the same issue as well. As soon as I tried the tip above, it started syncing properly and everything started working the way it should.
@Frag: downloading a free song was a good idea, so I tried it, but I still have no library. Of course, I discovered my library is missing while away from the computer I sync with... for the holiday w/e.
Thanks for posting this. Just to add, I played a couple of tracks in iTunes and whilst playing, loaded up the iPod on my iPhone and all was returned. Didn't need to sync.
Thanks again!
Yeah.. thanks it works perfectly as soon as i play song it auto sync and then work... seems like need not to sync manually.
Well its a big shame on Apple its a major bug and they are not able to track it @#$*#& or was that, they purposely left it for people to find it :P:P you never know steve can come with these kind of stupid excuse hahahaha
But thanks a lot for gigs like u.. !!!!
What a shock, more bugs that Apple should have found before releasing this update.
This restored most, but not all, of my music. Several albums are still missing unfortunately, all of which are CDs I had added over a year ago. Since I still have the CDs, I can re-add them, but it is terribly annoying.
Hi when I installed the latest upgrade on my 3gs my podcasts dissapeared. do others have the same issue?
Yea, im experiencing the same thing as Martin said above. my songs are there, its just the album art in the top left corner when you look at the songs in an "Albums" tab
This really pi$$es me off! Just updated my iPhone last night at home before leaving for a week without my computer! Not to mention I'd just added a bunch of new pod casts and videos because there's no cell reception where I'm driving to stream media and you can't even get a decent radio station!
Have they (apple) been replacing their beta testers with monkeys or what? Some significantly annoying bugs lately! I'm still trying to supports apple but come on!
This really helped! Thanks!
NICE! It worked. Thanks!
Still not working. When I follow the instructions above, there is nothing in the Music. iTunes is also not "recognizing" my music on my PC now.
You have saved my sanity! It has done the same with calendar tho', any ideas on that?
Cheers, Lisa
I only got back a few of the songs I had on my ipod touch. I lost almost 400. The update and restore did not back up all of the songs I had on there.
Gee that's useful. The point of mobile devices is mobility. If the fix requires me to be chained to my desktop, why not just listen on the desktop?
But what if the music is only on your iPhone, because your dad deleted all the music from iTunes on your pc, and then upgraded iTunes.? Will the sync wipe your music files from your iPhone.
Weird one! Thanks for the fix. Got worried after updating to 4.5.3 and everything disappeared!
THen what to do, if I can't play the music in itunes ?
here s a fix...
open iFile
navigate to /var/mobile/Media
if u find two iTunesControl and a iTunescontrol2 then there lies our problem. see which folder contains the music (music lies inside F00,F01,F02 etc) rename the folder which contains the music as "iTunesControl" and respring.
Did not work for me. However, before I did the software update I 'exported' my music folder and saved it to my computer. I don't know if I can, or how to import them back into my music library. This is so frustrating...
this did not work for me. I did everything but I still can not find it on my iphone. I still get the first screen (no content). Now what do I do?
Try removing all the music from your iphone and then sync it all back on.
No, didn't work. I can see the songs on my Mac but they won't play
This did not work for me. the only songs on my iphone are the songs i have recently purchased. But when I try to sync the music from my computer to my iphone it tells me: "Itunes cannot add any songs to the Iphone "Madeline's Iphone" because it already contains all the songs in the playlist "Maddy". Yet when I open the music app on my Iphone there is stil no more music than the three songs I have recently purchased on my Iphone. I would really like my music back, any help would be greatly appreciated!! :D
Oh gosh I am so happy to see my music hasnt disappeared!! Dont have it backed up anywhere so im really happy everythings back now:D