Computers, Laptops & Tablets › Apple How to Sync Movies to Your iPad Copy them to your iPad with or without iTunes Share Pin Email Print Apple iPad Macs By Sam Costello Writer 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. our editorial process Facebook Twitter Sam Costello Updated February 04, 2020 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. Attach your iPad to your computer. Open your iPad from within iTunes by clicking the icon at the top of the program, just below the menu items. Select Movies from the left pane of iTunes. 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. To select all of your movies at once, and any you add in the future, click the box next to "Automatically include." Use the menu next to the "Automatically Include" option to filter which movies iTunes will sync to your iPad. 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. Open the TV Shows area of iTunes. Check the box next to Sync TV Shows. 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. 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.