How to Sync Movies to Your iPad

Copy them to your iPad with or without iTunes

Young kid watching a movie on an iPad

Thanasis Zovoilis / Getty Images

by Sam Costello
Sam Costello has been writing about tech since 2000. His writing has appeared in publications such as CNN.com, PC World, InfoWord, and many others.
Updated July 27, 2019

If you have movies spread between iTunes and your iPad, it's best to keep them in sync. When you sync your iPad with your computer, movies from your iTunes library will copy to your iPad, and videos on your iPad will be backed up to iTunes.

Along with being a music player, ebook reader, and gaming device, the iPad's big screen also makes it handy for watching movies and videos.

These instructions apply to iTunes 11 and later.

How to Sync iPad Movies

To copy movies and TV shows to your iPad, enable the Sync Movies option in iTunes.

  1. Attach your iPad to your computer.

  2. Open your iPad from within iTunes by clicking the icon at the top of the program, just below the menu items.

    Download music to iPad

  3. Select Movies from the left pane of iTunes.

    Sync movies to iPad

  4. Click the box next to Sync Movies. To copy specific videos from iTunes to your iPad, select them manually by clicking the boxes next to them.

    If you don't see any movies on this screen, you don't have any downloaded to your computer. Select "Movies" on the left side of the main screen of iTunes to download movies you've purchased.

    Sync movies to iPad

  5. To select all of your movies at once, and any you add in the future, click the box next to "Automatically include."

    Sync movies to iPad

  6. Use the menu next to the "Automatically Include" option to filter which movies iTunes will sync to your iPad.

    Sync movies to iPad

  7. Click the Apply button in iTunes to update and sync movies to your iPad.

How to Sync TV Shows to iPad

You can make similar changes to the TV Shows section of iTunes to sync shows. The process is almost identical to syncing movies, but you use a different section of iTunes. Here's how to keep up to date to the programs you've downloaded.

  1. Open the TV Shows area of iTunes.

    Sync movies to iPad

  2. Check the box next to Sync TV Shows.

    Sync movies to iPad

  3. Pick which shows and seasons to sync to your iPad, or use the checkbox at the top of that screen to sync all of them.

    Sync movies to iPad

  4. Click the Apply button at the bottom of iTunes.

Sync Without iTunes

You can also use a third-party program like Syncios. It's free and lets you manually copy over specific movies and other videos that you want to store on your iPad.

Movies and TV shows you sync with Syncios will go on your iPad in much the same way they copy over when using iTunes, but you don't have to open iTunes to use this program.