In song list – select file
From the Song MENU – select “Add to device”
Select your iPod Touch

This worked in ALL of my greyed files.

If ONLY I had tried this first!

Most of my songs in my created playlists were MIA when viewed on my iPhone.

But when I connected my iPhone to my PC, they were there but grayed out.

Re-syncing did not work. I tried some of the suggestions up top. So annoying!

Thankfully there was a simple solution for me.

It’s really simple and easy. Turning off my iPhone, then turning it back on, fixed things. Everything is fine now.

Interestingly, none of the songs I purchased from iTunes were greyed out.

I was NOT going to buy all that music again and spent MANY frustrating hours trying to fix this problem, Check Selection seems to have worked!

iTunes used to work extremely well, but it seems every upgrade brings a downgrade in its ability to do its basic job.

I joined Apple Music a couple of years ago and spent ages trying various fixes nothing worked.

I spent a few hours on the phone with Apple trying to fix it, I ended up canceling my subscription and wouldn’t you know it as soon as the subscription expired my music was back the way it should be.

I recently got a HomePod and thought what the hell maybe AppleMusic will have fixed these problems so I subscribed again.

Turns out that the problems are still there and I can’t be bothered investing more time in this stupid annoying problem so I have canceled again and am awaiting the return of my music.

I guess my solution is to keep my iTunes the way it is and subscribe to another streaming service to keep the two separate.

I am so disappointed as I am an Apple fan but this music thing is really substandard.

I tried a ton of fixes and nothing worked.

However this morning I tried again and simply plugged the iPhone back in, let them talk to each other, went to iPhone controls on iTunes app on mac while plugged in, checked “manually sync” then unchecked the same.

Then unplugged the USB cord then plugged back in and synced – and it worked.

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for pointing this verbiage out. It can get confusing, especially if terms are changed or different. We’ll update the article to add in both check/uncheck AND tick/untick, just to cover the bases.

Cheers,

Liz

I went to Songs, selected all, right clicked, chose Tick and this fixed my issues – all the songs were black again and albums would be played out correctly.

So I guess at some point Apple changed the terminology from “Check/Uncheck” to “Tick/Untick”. Or maybe it’s because I’m in Australia.