Manage content manually
Manage content manually
If you sync your iPhone with your computer, you can’t just connect the smartphone to another computer. You will then be notified that all content will be deleted. Of course you don’t want that. With the steps in this tip you can still sync music, videos and other content from two or more computers to your iPhone.
If you use iCloud, you don’t need this tip. In that case you are not dependent on a computer, because all your data is stored in the cloud. By the way, iCloud is the best option for most people anyway because of its convenience.
- Manually manage iPhone with Mac
- Manually add material
There are two ways to sync content from two or more computers to your iPhone:
- With third-party apps*, such as iMazing.
- By manually managing the content on your iPhone.
*Other alternatives are AnyTrans, Dr.Fone Phone Manager or iMyFone iOS Manager. We have not extensively tested these alternatives and can therefore not recommend one. It is true that there is a lot of advertising for such apps on the internet.
Manually manage iPhone with Mac
The best way to connect your iPhone to more than one Mac is to manually control your content. You can then manually add music and other content from multiple computers.
The first time, all media will be erased from your iPhone once you enable manual management. Then you can drag and drop the multimedia from multiple Macs to your iPhone without getting any notifications.
- Connect the iPhone to the first computer.
- Open the Finder or iTunes, depending on your macOS version.
- Choose the iPhone from the sidebar on the left.
- On the General tab, check Manually manage music, movies, and TV shows.
- Click Apply.
Manually add material
You can now manually move content to your iPhone using drag & drop. You can do this in the Music app on your Mac, or in iTunes if you have an older version of macOS that still supports iTunes.
There may be restrictions depending on your macOS version. For example, Apple warns in this support article that you can only add music or videos from a single iTunes library to an iPhone (assuming macOS Mojave or later). If you’re using an iPad or iPod, you can add music from multiple iTunes libraries, but videos from only a single iTunes library, according to Apple.
