iPhone sync with multiple iTunes

Question

How can I syncronize my iPhone with 2 iTunes (one at work running on Windows, and another at home on a Mac).

I just need to sync photos, music and apps with both. Calendar comes from Google.

Answer 1

There is actually a way to sync your iPhone with multiple computers, it just takes a little work. I've used the below method multiple times - I have multiple computers I can sync with, and after a OS reinstall, so I don't have to set up iTunes to sync again.

It sounds complicated, but if you follow the guides step-by-step, it's pretty easy.

The basic idea here is that you will be editing your iTunes "Library Persistent ID" so that your iPhone/iPod thinks that it is always talking to the same computer. As far as I can tell, this doesn't affect anything else in iTunes.

First thing you will need to do identify which computer you are going to make your "primary" computer. On this computer, you will need to get iTunes' "Library Persistent ID" key from iTunes Music Library.xml. Then you'll take that value, and on the second computer, you'll replace the Persistent ID in that iTunes Music Library.xml and in iTunes Library.itl (which will require a hex editor).

Follow the How To Sync Your iPhone To Multiple Computers guide step-by-step.

Here is how to get the Library ID from your mac: How to sync an iPhone with multiple Macs.

For your Windows computer, I recommend the freeware hex editor XVI32. One special note I ran into using XVI32 the other day to do just this - when you're searching for the hex value in iTunes Library.itl, you can use the Find/Replace option in XVI32, but you'll need to put spaces between every 2 characters of the library ID, otherwise VXI32 will say it can't find the matching string.

So, if you're looking for 8B6C633F7DACB74B, type in (don't paste) 8B 6C 63 3F 7D AC B7 4B.

Answer 2

You can probably use DoubleTwist to sync your music and your photos to an iPhone. It's free and available for both Windows and Mac OS X. It's also a bit easier than using multiple instances of iTunes. Unfortunately, apps can't be synced; you'll have to still use iTunes for that.

Answer 3

It's not possible to sync 1 iPhone with more than 1 computer. This is Apple's way of preventing people to share apps and songs they didn't pay for.

At least not officially; not with iTunes. There are other software tools that can access the iPhone's data even when the iPhone is connected to another computer. Some require the iPhone to be jailbroken, some don't.

Songs:
I think Songbird and MediaMonkey can read the iPhone's music and download it to whatever computer is used, but this only gives you access to the songs. Read on.

Apps:
You must jailbreak your iPhone and install SSH or FTP on it, then you can grab anything you want from it. Careful: This is not illegal, but may void your warranties and/or Apple agreements.

Photos:
When you plug in the iPhone to a computer, isn't it recognized as a photo device? My Windows computer pops up a dialog offering to download the photos, as if it were a camera.