What does the dotted circle mean?

The dotted circle is the initial state of synchronisation (ie not yet). It will be a pie chart with the dark part showing the progress when in action.

I discovered it when a smart list, used to synchronise unread audiobooks, didn't work for some new items in list (the smart list tested for unread and marked to include).

Sorry, I cannot define the defiitive bug, but a bit of fiddling, and, OMG, the pie charts started to work!

How do you delete the songs that have not yet been downloaded? I do not want them in my Itunes anymore. They're mainly duplicates that I turned into mp3 versions.

I've figured it out!

It is when you've dragged the file say, from your Mac to your iPhone, but you don't have enough memory free on your iPhone for the song to copy accross.

Happened to me when I was copying a whole playlist across, and there were some new songs in it. Don't know if that effects it in anyway... (it might say there's no space if you just individually try to copy a song to music).

It also doesn't seem to work in a way in which iTunes copys the songs in the same order as they are in. For example, if there's only two which won't copy then it doesn't mean it'll be the last two songs in a playlist or album, it could be the third and seventh!

Anyway, I hope this helps and finally solves the mystery of the dotted circle!

It does not. How do you get them out of the itunes library?

My grey circles are songs that I got from someone elses itunes library and when I tried syncing my iPhone to my new MacBook the songs wouldn't transfer without my friends itunes password. I wasn't worried about the songs transferring so I thought by not inserting the password they would just delete.....but they didnt. So now they're sitting in my itunes library greyed out, with a dotted circle. I cannot do anything with these songs! They are very annoying and I have yet to find a way to delete them.

Hey, I had the exact same problem with my transferring a new album my friend bought on my Mac, to my iphone... It took me two days to figure it out, but it could be either of 2 things:

1. You don't have the "manually manage music and videos" box checked. If you check it, then try to click and drag it over to your music on your device, it should then sync (on iTunes 11) This was my problem, and I checked that box, and it transferred and downloaded instantly

2. You don't have enough memory space on your device to put the playlist on. This was the problem for a lot of other people, not me, but they said it worked once they cleared some space on their device.

Hopes this helps! 🙂

I'm sure if you go to your library and right-click the songs you are trying to get rid of and select "move to trash", that should do it. *Make sure you go to LIBRARY and NOT ON THIS PHONE. It won't delete if you try to delete it while under ON THIS PHONE tab.

I have the same problem with only one album. I managed to sync a few songs by manually adding them, but I have 3.67GB free and I still can't sync the one album that I want onto my phone.

So, it isn't discriminating between purchased songs and ripped songs, it's set to manually add songs, and i have 16Gb of space available still. Half of my music will not go back to my Ipad, though it says it is on there. ****. You. Apple.

t(-_-t )

I'm having this problem with ringtones. I had them on my 3gs just fine, but when I went to sync them to my 4s it's suddenly not working. I don't even have the option to play them in itunes. they're m4r files, all under 40 seconds, and I have 12 some gigs left on my device. I also have the manually manage button selected. is there any other information on this?

I'm not sure how to help with the iPad situation, because I don't own one, but with ringtones, you should watch this tutorial.. http://youtu.be/LGFr3RlgEw8

I have iTunes 11, but it was still the same method that worked for me...

Hope this helps! :)

just had this happen. I tried to drag over some songs with wifi sync got the dotted circle when I clicked on "On this phone".

Had to click on the music tab, go to the artist, click off if its checked on in any of the Automatiically Sync Artist or Album section. Click apply. Went back to on this iphone, songs were gone.

Didn't try added by wifi, as I was fed up with it so hooked up with cable and then selected songs in library and dragged, sidebar popped out and it added them.

Hello all, i've tried to do everything you guys suggested, still have the grey dotted circle on my musics when its viewed in the iphone tab, i cannot add any musics to the iphone 4S, I even tried restarting back to the original factory configuration, it still didnt work either!!

Im running a itunes 11.

This must be a bug!!

Anyone found the solution?

I managed to figure out how to fix this on my iphone 4.

I went through and deleted all of the songs with the grey dotted circle next to to the from the "on my iphone" list. you have to do that individually, by right clicking on them, clicking delete, and then hitting okay when it asks you if you want to delete them from your phone.

I then went back to my itunes library and made sure the songs were in all the playlists I have on my phone, and dragged them in if they weren't. (If you usually sync your whole library onto your phone it should be fine.)

Then I went back into the device and checked 'sync only checked songs and videos', then went and checked the playlist i wanted under the music tab (or just check 'entire music library' if thats what you want.)

Hit sync, and it should add all the grey dotted songs one by one, the circle sort of goes around like a timer.

If this doesn't work, i would try manually adding the song by dragging them from your library into the device when it appears on the side, after deleting them from the "on my iphone" list.

Hopefully this helps (:

I had the problem of the 'Dreaded ring of dots'

I looked endlessly for a solution. All I wanted to do was put music (that worked perfectly fine on my itunes) onto my phone. I tried many things unchecking boxes, rechecking boxes, connecting the phone, unconnectig the phone, making a human sacrafice to the gods of itunes. None of it worked. I happened upon a mystical peice of information contained within the catacombs of the internet.

The problem that I was having was that my phone wasn't synching to my computer. Granted it showed up on my itunes and i could interact with the various tabs but i couldn't add any music onto my device. So I followed the steps contained on this website http://www.geeksquad.co.uk/articles/Mobiles/2012/08/why_won_t_my_iphone_sync_wit h_itunes ..... low and behold.... I could transfer my songs onto my iphone.

I followed all the steps and the one that worked for me personally was the step where you rename your 'sync services' folder to 'old sync services'.

Hope this helps people as I was ready to take a hammer to both pc and phone and reverting back to a walkman.

Hello Guys,

After many trials, I figured out my problem...

First, like Zewall above, I tried everything you guys suggested, still did not work...

The problem was in my icloud sync process!

I mean, I’ve rebooted the iphone back to original factory many times, but I always synched to my icloud just afterwards to get all my contacts and apps.

After I was trying to add the music in all possible ways, no success, the damm dotted circle was there and no songs from the library was loaded to the iphone.

Just by mistake, this last time I did not logged in with icloud in the rebooting process of the iphone, and thus no apps nor contacts were synched with my icloud account, so the iphone was just like new!

I tried now to synch the songs and WORKED !!!

The songs from the library was loaded to the iphone!!!

Well, I had to add my contacts again, had to download all the apps one by one again..

But at the end solved my problem!!!