How to decrease Apple Music Last Played metadata sync delay to seconds
Hi everyone,
I recently discovered something that might be useful for others as well. Usually, I listen to music onboth my iPhone and my MacBook. One of the things that bothered me was the sync delay between devices, which could take a couple of hours.
For example, if I listened to a song on my Mac, it would take a couple of hours to update the Last Played and Play Count metadata for that song. This was bothering me because I rely heavily on Last Played history for Smart Playlists on Mac and Smart Sections on Marvis Pro on iPhone. As a result, when I switched from Mac to iPhone, I would encounter the same songs I had just listened to on my Mac in the 'Not Played in Last 4 Weeks' smart section on Marvis Pro, because the Last Played metadata had not updated yet.
Today, I discovered how to decrease this sync delay to just a few seconds. I would like to show you my method, which works perfectly. On my Mac, I have just listened to these 4 songs ('Fous', ..., 'Gommapiuma').
And as you can see, the Last Played metadata for those four songs is not visible yet on the iPhone.
In order to trigger the sync of Last Played metadata from my MacBook to the iPhone, I changed the rating of the song 'Gommapiuma'.
After changing the rating of the most recent track I listened to on my Mac, it immediately triggered the sync from Mac to the iPhone, as you can see.
I have tested this method multiple times and can confirm that it works 100%. However, it only works from MacBook to iPhone. I tried a similar method from iPhone to Mac, but it did not work.
Additionally, if you listen to songs on your Mac, they will appear in the 'Recently Played' section of Marvis Pro, but not in the History section of the native Apple Music app.
That said, you do not need Marvis Pro for this trick to work, because the metadata of the songs played on your Mac will still sync to your Apple Music app in the background.
If you know of any reliable methods to trigger a sync from iPhone to Mac, please let me know, as my workaround only goes from Mac to iPhone.
Also, feel free to ask if you have any questions or comments!
EDIT:
There seems to be another way of doing this. On a Mac, you should go to File > Library and click 'Update Cloud Library'. This will also immediately sync the 'Last Played' status of the songs you have played on your Mac to your iPhone. I tried this and can confirm it works from Mac to iPhone. However, it still does not work from iPhone to Mac.
