Syncing iOS devices to multiple Macs with same Apple ID

There was a time when it "worked" to plug an iPod into separate computers with the same Apple ID. Have you tried just plugging them in? I think the key was that you need to manually manage music and videos on the iOS device. You probably don't want the computer syncing automatically either. There is a setting for that in iTunes preferences.

Syncing iPhones with multiple computers is a big bag of hurt. I don't think that this works at all.

Hopefully iCloud works perfectly and solves all these problems for us sometime this fall.


I had the same problem as you and I solved it by putting my iTunes library on an external hard drive (auto-powered via USB or FireWire). I set up the path to the library on each of my computer and now, I can use my iTunes library on every computer as long as my hard drive is connected.

This method allows me to sync my iDevices with any of my computer without any hacks. I used it flawlessly for a year.

It even works other's computer as I just need to adjust the path to the library by pressing when launching iTunes.

The only thing is to check you have the same version of iTunes everywhere. Many iTunes updates update the library and you probably don't want to mess with your library because you used an old version of iTunes.