Cannot sync iphone with mac, complaining on "not enough space" (which is not correct)

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Cannot sync iphone with mac, complaining on "not enough space" (which is not correct)

I try to sync my iphone with my mac, and I get the following error message :

the information is clearly wrong: I have 1,6TB free space on my machine.

I run MacOS 12.3.1 on a Mac Book Pro, and IOS 15.4.1 on an iPhone 11 Pro. Connected by USB-C cable, and the only thing I checked for sync is my Music Library. The iPhone and the Mac "trust" each other and the sync does start

I hope there is, somewhere, a corrupted file (I had the same problem with an earlier mac book, and I gave up on this back then) that I could remove and make a complete sync from scratch. But I have no idea where that may be.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 12.3

Posted on Apr 11, 2022 6:32 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Todd0213

Community Specialist

Apr 12, 2022 9:08 AM in response to ivan_herman

Hello ivan_herman,

Apple Support Communities is a great place for help with syncing your iPhone with your Mac. With the error you're seeing it's likely related to not having enough available space on your iPhone. If there's not enough available space on the iPhone, the following article provides helpful tips on managing your iPhone storage. Specifically, the section titled "Use recommendations to optimize storage" of the following article.

How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

In addition to the details outlined there, have you adjusted the amount of content you're wanting to sync to the iPhone? For example, if you're attempt to sync your entire music library, have you tried syncing only specific songs, albums or playlists to help decrease the amount of content being synced? If not, this can be a helpful step in allowing the sync to complete.

Use the Finder to sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod with your computer

Take care!

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Answer 2

mario49

Community Specialist

Apr 12, 2022 9:34 AM in response to ivan_herman

Hey ivan_herman,

One option would be to try and sync the Music Library using iCloud instead of syncing using the Mac. Let's get a little more information to help narrow this down.

Were you able to use the steps in the article provided to optimize storage on the iPhone?

Are you using Apple Music?

Do you have Sync Library enabled on the iPhone?

"On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Go to Settings > Music.
Turn on Sync Library. If you don't subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match, you won’t see an option to turn on Sync Library."

Turn on Sync Library with Apple Music - Apple Support

Set up iCloud on all your devices - Apple Support

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities. Have a good one.

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Answer 3

ivan_herman Author

Level 1

12 points

Apr 12, 2022 9:25 AM in response to Todd0213

Hi Todd0213,

Thanks, but this does not sound right.

The error message explicitly refers to "your Mac" and the fact that it cannot store all the items on it. This seems to contradict with what you are saying
Regardless, and let us suppose that the error message itself is erroneous. However, my iPhone storage info says that I use 189,5GB out of 256. I.e., I have 67GB left on the iPhone, which is more than the double of the amount appearing on the error message

I am always happy to look for things I can throw out to spare memory, but I do not think this is the reason for this issue...

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Answer 4

ivan_herman Author

Level 1

12 points

Apr 12, 2022 11:45 PM in response to mario49

Thanks mario49.

I am neither a subscriber of Apple Music nor of iTunes Match, ie, I cannot use that approach right now. What you propose to do is to subscribe to a (paid) service because the service that should be working out of the box does not. It is not a question of the sums involved (afaik iTunes Match costs around 2€ a month) it is the principle that I have a problem with.

There is a bug in the system which, I think, was not created by me. I would prefer to find the bug rather than bypass it.

Note that the bug affects more than just music (although that is what I am interested in right now). If I wanted to download videos from my Mac, or sync any kind of other data, I would hit the same problem.

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Cannot sync iphone with mac, complaining on "not enough space" (which is not correct)

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