Some users have reported that iPod Touch / iPhone would not sync with iTunes and gave this error: “…cannot be synced. An unknown error occurred (13019)”.
To try to solve this issue, try the following steps:
Please update to the latest version of iTunes. If updating to latest version of iTunes does not resolve the issue, then:
1. Select the iPhone or iPod touch in iTunes under Devices.
2. Click the Music tab and under the Sync music option, choose Selected playlists.
3. Deselect the Voice Memos playlist.
4. Click Apply and then click Sync.
If the above steps do not resolve the issue, check the device and the iTunes library for duplicate voice memos. If you find any duplicate voice memos, delete the duplicates and then sync.
If those steps do not resolve the issue, then:
1. Select the iPhone or iPod touch in iTunes under Devices.
2. Click the Music tab and deselect the Sync Music option.
3. Click Apply and then click Sync.
4. After the sync is complete, reselect the Sync Music option.
5. Click Apply and then click Sync.
If the Error 13019 occurs while syncing content other than music, then perform the same steps above but uncheck the content that stops syncing with Error 13019.
If the steps above do not resolve the issue, attempt to sync an empty iTunes music library to the device while logged in as a new admin user.
March 18, 2011 at 11:42 AM
thanks soooooooo much
March 18, 2011 at 5:36 PM
none of that’ll work! i can’t click of devices when my ipod tries to sync. heres what i do:
i plug in my ipod
itunes freezes up so when i try to click on itunes nothing happens
i unplug my ipod and the error thing appears
ipod is not synced :\
May 11, 2011 at 3:22 AM
thank you sooooo much! i have been so lost without my music an now i finally have it to take with me everywhere! legend!
August 6, 2011 at 6:50 AM
disconnect your internet connection every-time you sync your iphone… work for me
September 2, 2011 at 8:19 AM
Thank you so much! This had been very helpful to me! Was now able to sync everything!
I hope I won’t encounter that message again in the future! Thank you! You’re amazing!
September 4, 2011 at 3:57 PM
Thank you!!! It’s work for me.
October 11, 2011 at 3:44 AM
I did this and it worked a treat. Thanks so much to the person who posted the fix.
November 5, 2011 at 10:50 PM
OMG! THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!
December 22, 2011 at 7:52 PM
Wow, it desynced my ipod, now it won’t resync it. Now all of my songs are gone on my ipod. :’(
February 24, 2012 at 3:29 PM
This happened to me to! all the websites said to desync your music and now my music is all gone! every time i try to resync it the same error message appears!
July 2, 2012 at 2:16 PM
Same!!
December 22, 2011 at 8:08 PM
Nothing is working and now all of my music is deleted from my device :’(
March 10, 2012 at 5:42 AM
me too!
March 24, 2012 at 2:22 AM
thats what happened to me too :’(
December 30, 2011 at 4:17 AM
I have an Ipod nano and am getting this same error and all my music has gone from my device! I know it has nothing to do with voice nites as i do not have any!! please help someone!
January 7, 2012 at 10:10 AM
that same thing happened to me, once everything ( all your songs) are off your device, sync it again, but DO NOT UNPLUG YOU IPOD FROM YOUR COMPUTER, just click your ipod under the ‘devices’ bar. from there, go to ‘Music’ and reclick ‘Entire music library’, then Apply, it will take a few minutes, but even your new music will be synced!
January 8, 2012 at 2:04 AM
didnt work for me at all, even clicked each album manually in the music tab and then itunes froze and shut down due to an error. This has been happening for over 4 months and I am sick of it!
January 10, 2012 at 2:06 PM
This just happended to me 2 days ago and IM SO TIRED OF IT. All my games and videos snyced but my music wont i mean you buy an ipod to get MUSIC and it wont snyc ive tried all the things at the top there but it wont WORK! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP SOMEONE
January 19, 2012 at 1:21 AM
Why does apple have to be so inaccessable! very frustrating products. I have since bought a much cheaper alternative that works far better and is friendly with other software from other companies. Meanwhile my Ipod has endless isssues… dissapointing
January 20, 2012 at 7:39 PM
I’ve tried to do what’s been suggested but my choices are UNclickable. they’re written in gray and not blue. what now?
January 27, 2012 at 11:10 PM
everytime i do this it says i have to restore my i pod which means it will delete everything and i don’t want that…
February 7, 2012 at 7:16 AM
Have had the same problem. Found out that it is the file types that seems to be the problem. Normally you have .m4a files in your library and they sync nicely. But if you for some reason also have .m4p files in your library then you get the 13019 error code. Untick these files and you can sync without error. Tried it on an iPod nano.
March 4, 2012 at 8:23 PM
Getting rid of the .m4p files worked for me. I recently purchased a SONOS system which won’t play .m4a files so I upgraded all my .m4a files to .m4p files through itunes. However, the .m4a files were not deleted when I upgraded. Deleting the version of the songs in the .m4a format allowed me to sync my nano again.
March 3, 2012 at 10:41 AM
For those who have tried everything listed above with no avail, such as myself, try this:
When the error first occured, it was because I bought songs on my ipod, and transferred them to my itunes. I ended up buying the same cd’s from hmv, and imported them, giving me duplicate songs.
What worked for me was opening iTunes > file > display duplicates
I just deleted the duplicates and tried transferring again.
I also chose to reset all warnings on my ipod (right click on your device name > reset warnings. By doing this, when I went to transfer again, I got the warning that some of my songs on my ipod were no longer in my iTunes.
After asking me if I wanted to transfer them into my library, I chose “No.” This stops iTunes from confusing itself over duplicate songs, which cannot be sorted because they have the same everything (name, artist, album, etc…).
March 9, 2012 at 4:46 PM
Dustin,
Thank you SOOO much! I have tried everything others have suggested, even to the point that I restored the software on my iPod, but was still getting the unknown error 13019 message. I followed your advice and removed the duplicates and now I am able to sync my music again.
April 29, 2012 at 1:38 AM
I like all of you lost most of my music due to this stupid error 13019.
i had over 900 songs now i have like 10.apple should give us 500 dollars worth of gift cards to make up for all the music we lost.each person here i bet has spent hundreds of dollars downloading songs.i wont be paying for music nomore so they lost my money.thanks Apple!
May 9, 2012 at 5:07 AM
This error message now appears when I my I pod is plugged into I tunes. One question, where or how do I get to the screen “across?” that reads summary, ikfo, ring tones, music? Re error: 13019?
I seem to have difficulty with i-tunes in this context oftent. Thank you
May 21, 2012 at 6:37 PM
Perfect! Tried loads of other suggested remedies and this one did the trick. Thank you for being so thorough!
June 2, 2012 at 4:34 AM
Re: error 13019 – I followed the guidance provided and lost 90% of my songs which I’ve collected over a very long time, very frustrating, how can I fix this?
June 16, 2012 at 11:46 AM
Dustin’s advice did it for me. It was all about deleting duplicates which I had inadvertently added by burning a CD which also contained tracks which I had downloaded earlier. Cheers Dustin!
June 19, 2012 at 4:11 AM
My contacts are not synching. I tried the above procedure. Nothing happened.
Error 13019 is reappearing. Tried the i tunes new version also. Now tired.
June 27, 2012 at 11:46 AM
Thanks so much! These tips really help!
August 3, 2012 at 1:49 PM
It worked!!!!!!!!!!!!! i was afraid all my music and apps would disappear but they didn’t! Thank You!!!!!!!!!!!Im sooooooooo happy!!!
October 13, 2012 at 6:30 AM
Hi everyone, I had the same error code – finally deleted all my playlists and resynced and it worked. I can always rebuild the playlists as I need them. Try this first – it might save you a lot of headaches.
Larry
April 2, 2013 at 2:26 PM
I give up. Have the same error. I´ve bought my last Apple device now.