I have over 47 GB of free space on my iPhone 6 but iTunes won't sync - says it needs 235 MB of more space to hold all my iTunes Library.
How can that be? Just starting doing this recently, perhaps after an iPhone software update.
Help - thanks,
iPhone 6, iOS 12
How can that be?
Quite simple; because you're trying to Sync 47GB + the over bit + 235MB of media to the device.
When you connect your phone to iTunes, you should be able to see what is using the space on it, by looking at the bottom of the Device pages, so click on the Device icon:
and then look at the bottom of the Summary pane:
You may need to hover your mouse over each of the coloured segments in order to see what they are. Is there a lot of Other in the bar (last section on the right)?
Another thing to consider is the music files. Which format are your songs in? It makes a difference.
Additional space. Note the word "additional".
The message is explaining to you that you are trying to sync a total of 48.26GB of media to your device, but it only has 47.61GB free. To be precise, 47.61+0.657=48.267GB. Therefore, an "additional" 65.7MB is required.
I'll admit, it's not a particularly "accurate"* message. In fact, since it's not possible to add memory to an iPod, the message is actually misleading.
So, all of a sudden you are trying to sync 48GB more to your iPod than you used to do. That's a lot, so ask yourself what you have done recently? Have you added a lot more music to your iTunes Library, added a lot more photos to the folder you use for syncing photos (or have you simply specified a different folder, with far more photos in it)?
I asked you which format your music is in and mentioned that it might be relevant. Have you changed the format of music that you're importing from CDs? Ah!, how about this; have you turned off the option to add music to your iPod at a lower bit rate? When that option is used, iTunes takes (for example)* a 256 kilobits per second (Kbps) file and puts it on the iPod at 128Kbps. The file in the Library is not changed. If you turn the option off, iTunes will now be putting larger files onto the iPod. If there isn't enough space, the message you're seeing would appear.
So, what else has changed, apart from the software update?
* some minor changes made to wording (after initial posting), for clarity
Thank you for your reply, good information. However, I have done just as you describe several times.
Again, the error dialogue box says I need 65 MB of additional space to sync when i have 47 GB of free space. I have a screen shot of the situation here:
itunes won't sync - not enough free space
