I haven’t synced my iPhone to my Mac in a couple of years. On my iMac, I have my main music library, with about 70,000 tracks that I’ve ripped and purchased over the years (from the iTunes Store and other outlets). I don’t want to mix my carefully curated library with my Apple Music library, because there are often problems with metadata getting messed up with matched files.
But sometimes I want to sync music or videos to my iPhone to have in addition to content that’s in my Apple Music library. The new Waltr Pro is one of the best ways to do this. Connect your device, drag a file, and the app recognizes which type of file it is – music, video, ebook-, photos, etc. – and copies it to the appropriate app. If you have multiple apps that can play the file, drag the file while holding the Option key, and Waltr Pro lets you choose which app it copies to.
Waltr Pro can also convert audio and video files to formats you can play on a Mac. It can convert to a local folder on your Mac, or to your device, and you can edit metadata before converting. It supports tons of file formats too.
Waltr Pro was just released today; check it out here.
Hi Kirk,
I can relate to you wanting to keep your personal music library separate from the cloud. I would like to do the same thing. I like that you can add the files to you phone from the Waltr Pro app, but when you add them to the phone, doesn’t that then add them to your Apple Music iCloud library which is what you don’t want. Or are you syncing the files up to a 3rd party music player on your phone.
Thanks.
It doesn’t matter if they get added to the Apple Music library; I can delete them whenever I want. I just don’t want Apple Music on for my main library. I could also add the to the AM library on my laptop, but then I have to wait for them to upload.
I’m in a similar boat. I DJ weddings a few times a year, and I have a decent-sized collection of _radio edit_ tracks in my Music App that is highly organized in an ungodly number of playlists. I can’t let it sync with Apple Music because a) I don’t personally care for much of the pop music, but more importantly b) I can’t risk Apple Music befuddling what’s clean and what’s explicit. Is there a way I can have my cake and eat it? I have the full Apple One subscription, and I use Apple Music on my phone to listen to music but I can’t create playlists or download offline tracks. Does your Take Control book cover this scenario of having a separate iTunes library but still get the benefit of Apple Music?
Yes, I discuss that in my book. Both my situation – two totally separate libraries based on different devices – and the case where you create two different libraries on the same device. I tend to shy away from the latter, because I’d worry about not having the right library active in the Music app, but it works fine.
You can create playlists on your iPhone, it’s just a slightly more complex process than on the Mac.
Thanks for the clarification. Sounds like a purchase of Waltr Pro is in the works for me. I only have one Apple Music library (as opposed to you having the second test one on your laptop). Still, I’ll activate iCloud Music Library on my iPhone only and leave it off on my iMac. That way I can keep stuff separate as well and use Waltr Pro to manually sync files if needed. Thanks for the help!
Ron F.