How to Transfer Music from an iPhone, iPad or iPod to iTunes

You may spend thousands of dollars and hours building an awesome music library on your iOS device – iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or an older iPod. Some music resource is even difficult to be found in recent days.  In this case, to better collect and manage your favorite songs, you may want to know how to move music from your iPhone to iTunes for free.

If you want to make a smart backup of your iPhone music to iTunes, or just want to get your Apple music back to your iTunes library, follow this guide to see how to transfer music from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod to iTunes with three simple methods.

Further Reading:

How to Find  and Change iTunes Library Location on Mac/PC >
5Best Free Offline Music Apps for iPhone >

Transfer Purchased Music from iPhone to iTunes

You can also import music from iPhone to iTunes using the traditional way –  iTunes. But only the purchased music files from the iTunes store can be transferred with this method. Those non-purchased songs are not included. Here’s how to transfer music from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod to iTunes:

Authorize This Computer

1. Download and install the latest version of iTunes on your computer.
2. Choose “Account” > “Authorizations” > Click on “Authorize This Computer”.
3. Click “Authorize” to ensure the computer is authorized to play iTunes Store purchases.

Add Music from iPhone to iTunes

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer via USB cable.
2. Click “Transfer Purchases” in the window that appears.
3. Or choose “File” > “Devices” > “Transfer Purchases From [your iPhone name]”.
4. Click “Recently Added” in the left panel of iTunes to check the newly imported songs.
5. If you want to save them to computer, choose the music and hit “Download”.

Transfer Purchased & Non-purchased Music from iPhone to iTunes

Note that your iOS device is not a storage/backup device, and syncing iPhone iPad iPod with iTunes is one-way access – iTunes to iPhone. So you need an iPhone to iTunes transfer software to add music to iTunes. AnyTrans, a professional iPhone to iTunes music transfer tool can be a good choice. It supports all kinds of iPhone, iPad and iPod models: including the latest iPhone 14/14 Plus/14 Pro/14 Pro Max, from iOS 5 to the newest iOS 16. You can use it to transfer music from iPhone to iTunes free.

Here are the steps to transfer music from iPhone, iPad or iPod to iTunes:

Step 1. download and install AnyTrans on your computer (Mac/PC). Launch it and connect your iPhone to Mac or PC with a USB cable.

Step 2. Choose Content to iTunes mode on the main interface.

Step 3. Select the music you want to export > You can select all items by clicking the Select All option or tick single item > Click on the Next button to transfer the selected music files from your iPhone to iTunes Library.

Actually, these steps can also be used to import music from your computer to your iTunes. If you want to get music from the computer to iTunes in the iTunes library, you can go to the first step and achieve that under the iTunes library.

Here we have prepared a video to demonstrate how to transfer your iPhone music to iTunes or computer with AnyTrans:

Sync Music from iTunes to iPhone

There may be times when you want to transfer music from your iTunes music library or computer to your iPhone. And here we would like to share you the ways to sync music from iTunes to iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Here’re steps how you can sync songs to iPhone with iTunes:

1. Make sure that you have the latest version on your computer.
2. Open iTunes on your computer.
3. Connect your iPhone to your computer via matched USB cable.
4. Tap “Trust” on your iPhone to continue.
5. Click “Options” under the “Summary” tab.
6. Cancel “Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected”.
7. Then, check “Manually manage music and videos”.
8. Don’t forget to click “Done” when it’s done.
9. Import music into iTunes library from computer by clicking “File”.
10. Then “Add File to Library”.
11. Once transferred successfully, you can select the music icon on top to see all the songs.
12. Click “Music” under the “Settings” tab.
13. Choose “Sync Music”. You can either sync the entire music library or selected playlists as you like.
14. Then click the “Done” button at the bottom.

Sync Music from iPhone to Finder

With macOS Catalina, iTunes is replaced by Finder. It becomes where you can manage and sync content on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. With Finder, you can back up, update, or restore your data on your iPhone, such as albums, songs, playlists, movies, TV shows, podcasts, books, photos, videos, contacts, and calendars. Now, just follow the steps below to sync your iPhone to Finder:

1. Open Finder and connect your iPhone to your mac computer using a USB cable.
2. Then you can see your iPhone’s icon appears in the sidebar of the Finder window > Click the device to select it.
3. Next, please choose to trust your device.
4. Select the type of content that you want to sync to Finder as the picture shows.
5. Click the Apply button > Click on Sync to start.

If you prefer other ways to do the task or need to transfer music from your computer to iPhone, then refer to this guide: How to Transfer Music from Computer to iPhone. It offers you all possible ways to transfer music to iPhone, even without iTunes.

The Bottom Line

Hopefully, this brief tutorial will successfully help you transfer music from iPhone to iTunes library on your computer. If you found this solution works well, please feel free to share it or join the conversation by leaving a comment.