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Come on Apple, people keep asking this and you don't answer! What does the dotted circle beside certain music showing on iTunes mean? The music is meant to be on my iPhone, and shows as downloaded, but skips over - and in iTunes, it shows with a grey dotted circle beside it. iTunes is the only application that I've ever dealt with that uses symbols with no indication of what those symbols mean - get your act together guys!
Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
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.
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
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!!!
go to the song on your phone (not in itunes) and swipe with your finger and delete the song. If you are having problems with a whole album go to albums and swipe and delete the whole album. Then sync your phone with itunes and the cirlces will disappear as they sync to your phone. I think it is a glitch with sync but it worked for me. I had them on my phone but couldnt play them and they were greyed out with a dotted circle in itunes. Once i did the above, everyhting worked fine.
Hey all, I have been messing with this for the better part of the day, after attempting to isolate all devices and connection types, i.e iphone, ipad, mac, macbook air. I believe this to be a wifi-sync issue. Nothing in the posts worked until I physically connected (USB) to my MBP. ALL issues went away, (the dotted rings, grayed out songs, missing songs) etc. So I am pointing the finger at "sync over wifi"
Lee
"sync over wifi" was my problem.
Just sync using your cable and uncheck "sync with this phone over wifi" - The option is available under the summary tab when your phone is connected.
Cheers Lee as my phone and/or laptop was about to be dispatched out of the window.
Worked for me as well. Plug phone in via USB. Switch off "sync with this phone over wifi". Also I have "manually manage music on this iphone" checked... so I can click on the phone then "add to" then drag music onto the phone.
Andrew Pulford wrote:
Worked for me as well. Plug phone in via USB. Switch off "sync with this phone over wifi". Also I have "manually manage music on this iphone" checked... so I can click on the phone then "add to" then drag music onto the phone.
You don't need tohave Manually manage music on this iOPhone checked to drag songs to the iPhone.
I just had this problem and I turned WIFI off on my phone, tried the copy process again and it worked no problem.
I was frustrated and tried every other solution. None of them worked except turning off WiFi.
I found a site that has a lot of different ways to fixing the grey dot issue. Also it has a lot of other tips for syncing issues. Here's the link: http://appducate.com/2012/12/troubleshoot-an-ios-device-that-wont-sync-in-itunes /
Hello, just as 'brandondsp' above, the only - and easiest - soultuion I found that worked was turning off Wifi on my iPhone, connecting via cable, then trying to sync again - and low and behold it worked!!! The circles filled 🙂. I can only assume that it's a problem with sync over Wifi, that Apple needs to address. Obviously you need to ensure that you have enough space on your iPhone before you try to sync, as always.
***!! someone please help me. I have read all of you posts and still cannot figure it out. I have an ipod touch and i manage the music manually becuase i have music from other people itunes on there so i cannot sync or restore it or i will lose over half of all my music. Randomly last night it started doing the gray dotted circle thing. i have tried everything. i have plently of room left on my device, and i drag all the songs into my ipod and when i go into the 😮n this ipod" button they show up grey with a dotted circle. so then i click "sync" and the bottom of the page, and it goes through the 4 steps, "waiting to start sync" "preparing to start sync" determining apps to sync" and finally "waiting for changes to be applied" but it never applies them! and then i get a pop up that says "sync session did not work because sync failed to start" and i have no clue why its doing this. i even went and bought a new usb cable and it did not fix the problem. help please!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This worked for me because when I clicked on manually manage music and videos in the Summary of my iphone, it told me that I was syncing to an old Library from another computer. (I had just put a new hard drive in my computer.... so new Library. I said okay and it all works like a charm... thank you.
I got the same problem with the dotted circles in my iPad 4. I tried all updates, checked and unchecked boxes, I still have 5gb free memory, I turned on/off my laptop and my ipad. I was able to transfer books manually on my ipad but when I transfer music and videos on my ipad, that dotted circles appeared.
What seems to be the problem here?
I have gone and bought itunes Match. Seems to be more difficult than I thought. Last night I ripped a CD to my itunes library. It is in my itunes library, and I can play it. It is even still as a playlist when on itunes on my laptop. But now that I bought itunes Match, my playlists have gone from my iphone, there is only Genius. Anyway, back to the dotted circle. They are appearing next to the songs of the album of the CD that I ripped. I can't sync it from my library to my iphone. The songs have the dotted circle, and the whole line (song, artist etc) is all faded, and wont play (I can only play it on my laptop through itunes library). I tried disconnecting wifi, only using the usb cable, re-matching/updating, syncing. None of what people have suggested would work. I'd appreciate any help 🙂
What does the dotted circle mean?
