I have a disabled family member who used to use iPod Shuffles to play music which I synced with my iMac using iTunes. That no longer works, at least since Sequoia. Has anyone come up with a workaround or a good non-Apple alternative that is not very expensive? I don’t want to buy an (expensive) iPhone just to get a basic music player. In various online forums, some people suggest hacking an old iPod, something way beyond my abilities, or buying a very expensive music player. Other music players seem to be Windows only. Obviously I need something that would work with my iMac. Apologies if this topic has been dealt with here previously, but I could not find anything.
Hmm, my wife has a special waterproofed iPod shuffle that she uses when she swims and she hasn’t mentioned this (obviously and unfortunately we won’t be able to replace it when the battery wears out). Then again, she doesn’t often change the mix on the iPod. I’ll check later and see if I can replicate the issue with Sequoia installed.
Can you expand? Using Music app or Finder? How does it fail?
I believe you, of course. The thread would be richer with the missing info.
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I found the same thing with my iPod Classics, Shuffles and Nano. The move to Sequoia broke the previous sync interface in Finder. My solution was to resurrect an older Intel MacBook Air, install Ventura and sync from there.
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I realize that the iPod Shuffle is not the same as iPod Touch – but my Touch running iOS 3 still shows up in both Finder and Music in Sequoia.
On the other hand, my iPhone 5s (iOS 12.5.7) does not show up in Sequoia.
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According to this Reddit post iTunes for Windows still supports managing music on iPods:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ipod/comments/1b0itil/how_to_manage_music_on_ipod_in_2024/?rdt=42752
You could run Windows on a Mac virtual machine or even buy a cheap Windows PC to run iTunes.
It is irritating how macOS updates tend to stop working with older equipment.
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Or run an older MacOS version in a virtual machine? Quick and easy to do with UTM on an Apple Silicon Mac, or use VirtualBox on an Intel one.
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Another choice which is free is VMware Fusion 13 which does require Monterey or higher:
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I appreciate the replies and ideas. To answer Matt’s question, the iPod Shuffle running 1.03 shows up in the Finder but not in Music where the relevant playlist is located. Oddly, I was able to drag and drop the playlist’s contents from Music to the Shuffle in Finder, but the actual songs on the Shuffle did not change. I have an old Mac mini somewhere. Maybe I will try to get that up and running again. It seems nobody here has found a non-Apple player that works with Music. If anyone has other ideas, feel free to suggest them.
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If the iPod is showing up in the Finder, can’t you click on it in the sidebar and from there select what music to sync to it? That is how it now works for even the newest iPhones – to select the music to sync you select it in the Finder’s sidebar.
Since Catalina you manage syncing from Finder, not the Music app.
See Use the Finder to sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with your Mac - Apple Support, which is pseudo-helpful (it mentions iPod touch but not traditional iPods).
I’ve decided not to mess with my wife’s iPod shuffle because I remember we have it set to sync a random set of tunes to the iPod each time it’s plugged in to the Mac and I definitely don’t want to upset the apple cart. We used to have a couple of iPod nano around; if I can find them, I’ll try syncing on Sequoia 15.3. That said: it really should work.
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When the iPod shows up in the Finder, can you double click on it and get to the Music sync tab? If you can, do you see the options for syncing some/all of your music? (See the support pages below for step-by-step suppport.)
Looking at some older threads on other sites, it looks like sometimes people have been trying to sync to their iPod’s hard drives instead of to their iPod playlists. (Sometimes two icons will show up in the Finder’s location sidebar: one for the iPod’s content management, and one that looks like a regular hard drive. You can only sync to the one with an icon that looks like an iPod.)
In case it helps, here are the support pages from Apple:
PS. FWIW, I am able to sync from an M1 MacBook Air running Sequoia 15.3 to a 5th Generation Classic iPod (with the wheel) and to an iPhone 5s.
Edited to add: I don’t think it matters for the topic of this thread, but, for completeness, I removed the SIM from the iPhone 5s. I use the iPhone 5s as an iPod Touch to listen to podcasts while on the run because it has a wired audio jack. Also, I sometimes connect it to a Mac to use it as a webcam via Camo Camera for Zoom calls.
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I still use a Sierra machine to sync the Shuffles.
I use Waltr to drag music to the iPhone since that no longer likes Sierra.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when my Shuffles stop working, I love them
Diane
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A few months ago, I tried connecting a first generation Shuffle that hadn’t been used for a very long time, possibly over a year, to a Mac running Ventura. As I recall, the Shuffle wouldn’t update or sync until I did a reset from the Finder window that shows the Shuffle’s files and controls.
I have an iPod Nano 5th that sinks via the Finder on Sequoia.
There is a healthy after market for repaired and refurbed iPods.
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I’m still using a last-generation iPod Classic. It spends most of its time docked to the clock-radio in my bedroom. I prefer it over Apple’s iOS-based devices because it has a “shuffle by album” feature, which Apple has been completely unwilling to port to iOS (I’ve requested this feature many times over the years).
I’ll have to remember to perform one last sync before I upgrade my Mac to Sequoia, if upgrading is going to make it impossible to sync with Music.
Longplay has this feature as well as being a generally great way to play music in an album-centred way. Well worth the small cost.
I don’t think this has been established. There seems a good possibility that the issue is @blakesc didn’t realise that the location of selecting and syncing tracks has changed in recent MacOS versions from the Music app to the Finder. Especially as @medievalist is successfully syncing an iPod nano in Sequoia.
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David and others, thanks again for all the suggestions. I did use Finder rather than Music to sync before Sequoia. Now “iPOD” shows up in Finder and there is a list of tracks that are supposedly on the IPOD, but when I try to listen to it over headphones, a voice says “please use iTunes to restore this iPod.” In the last week or so I did several restores trying to fix this, but I may have finally gone too far and wiped the iPod. Unlike in the past, there now is no “restore” button showing that I can click. So my current “solution” is to do what Lisa mentions – getting a refurbished Nano. Hopefully that will solve my problem, at least until the next Apply OS update!
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My understanding with the iPods, in all guises, is that when Apple announced that they were not being supported anymore, that’s when things broke. For me, it was syncing my iPod classic through Finder to update the music on the iPod - what happened was that it wiped all my music off my iPod, which is what I used as my music input to my hifi (so now using my old iPhone SE Gen 2 for that purpose). I have another iPod which is in my car, so now I cannot update it. There’s this replacement: Silver iPod Classic 7th Gen upgraded SDXC Personalised Media Player – playermods, and then there are workarounds, but they are clumsy (in my estimation) like Rockbox ( which is software you can instal on your iPod that can emulate lots of other digital players, including Apple iPods. Hope that helps.
TBH, I don’t remember Apple actually announcing that iPods were no longer supported. That being said, I am running older generations of MacOS on my systems, and haven’t had compatibility issues yet. I have a stable full of various models of iPods I’d like to keep alive since buying them refurbished with new batteries.
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