What does the dotted circle mean?

At a guess the cause is an uncompleted sync operation which leaves the records about what has and has not been transferred in an inconsistent state. Ideally iTunes would gracefully tidy up during the next sync, but it doesn't. 😕

Try the following all-purpose steps for dealing with erratic device or sync behaviour. They assume that all of the content you want on the device is in your library ready for restoring. If it isn't see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device first. I would also recommend you copy everything out of the camera roll if you haven't already.

1. Backup device.
2. Restore as a new device.
3. Restore the backup you made earlier.

Use an encrypted backup if you want to preserve passwords, Wi-Fi settings, web history and health data where appropriate. I also suggest syncing with a selection of playlists (unless you're using iCloud Music Library) rather than manually adding content as, if nothing else, the process above is easier to do if you ever have to go through it again.

tt2

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.

This happened to me after I had to reload music to my iPhone from my iTunes library. What I did was delete each song, that won't let me play because it has that dotted circle next to it, when I look at it in my iTunes library-under my device music. Then went to my main iTunes library, and then added each song I needed to add again. It worked this time when I did it this way.

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!

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.

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 )

Can someone explain how to fix this darn thing? I've tried everything that everyone has mentioned, but I found no fix. It started happening almost a week for me with my iPod touch 5th gen. I thought maybe it's the memory because I only have about a megabyte left of memory(my iPod is 64 mb's, by the way). That should be plenty of space to download the songs though, so I don't see it being a memory problem. I updated it to 7.0.3 a few hours ago thinking that might work, but nothing. It's frustrating because I listen to music through-out my day everyday and I have about 5 new albums I wanted to put on my iPod to listen to, and I hate having to stay at the computer to listen to them. I also noticed that after I started having this problem, when I sync my iPod and it gets to 'Step 5 out of 5', it'll stay on that for almost 10 minutes or more. I hadn't done this before either. I really wish I could get this fixed.

If anyone could tell me a 'step-by-step' solution, that'd be great.

And when I check and uncheck the songs in the itunes library, the memory shown for my ipod with go down and up, so when they stay checked it makes it seem like they're on my iPod because it took off the memory needed to sync the songs, but once again nothing shows up on my iPod under the recently added.

telecam wrote:

Other problem with your reply: my problem was not with one corrupted tune, but involved 90 out of 100 with persistent dotted circle...all resolved by solution I mentioned

However, the fact that it solved your problem, verfies that my response was correct and wasn't a problem.

It didn't solve my sync issue and it won't solve solve some other people's sync problems.

Yes, it's good to note what works just because it works for some does not mean it'll solve all issues.

Apparently apples "fixers" and "updaters" have been on an extensive break, given the widespread and longlasting nature of this issue.

Keep in mind that +100 million people use iTunes, and how many different configurations of computers & devices, it may not be quite so simple to figure out what is wrong or how to fix it.

Suggestions here -> http://www.apple.com/feedback/

This only worked after I did this:

Settings app crashes when managing stored Music (iTunes Match)

This allowed me to delete the music on my phone both through iTunes sync and through the iPhones General Settings > Usage > Music setting. Without that I was unable to resolve the problem.

I talked to Apple Support, and I was able to fix this as follows:

• In iTunes (version 12.0.1.26), select iTunes>Preferences...>Store
• Check the box for "Automatic Downloads" "Music"
• Check the box for "Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases"
• Click OK

Next,

• Select View>Music
• Make sure "My Music" or "Playlists" is selected in the top row
• The next row has column names, such as "Name", "Time", "Artist". Click the cloud icon in this row so all of the songs that are in the cloud are sorted to the top of the list.
• Click on the first song that has a cloud icon.
• Shift-Click the last song that has a cloud icon. This causes all of the songs with a cloud icon to be selected.
• Control-Click one of the songs. In the menu that appears, choose "Download".

The next time I synced my iPhone, all of the songs were available in both iTunes and on my iPhone.

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!

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?