What does the dotted circle mean?

Hi pw74,

I have the same issue, I have never seen these circles before but I see them now and no matter what I do I cannot get rid of them. I think the upgrade to iOS7 and Itunes 11 has caused this issue possibly? as I have never seen let alone had issues with grey dotted circles up until me updating iTunes this morning before I left the house, inly to realise that I had no tracks on my iPhone, well, none of the ones I wanted to listen to.

So 'Apple' if you do read these things, please sort this out as soon as possible. post a response for everyone, I have seen no Apple responses to any of these scenarios?

Nosey,

I have iphone 5S and iTunes 11, and I have the same (dotted circle) problem. This is the first time I'ver see, or at least noticed it. I have a ringtone I created with a phone app. Emailed the M4r file to myself. File Imported it to iTunes. It is in the Tones section and plays. When I try to sync it to the phone, it shows on the phone under devices, but has the dotted circle next to it It does NOT show up on the phone.

I've tried all the solutions in this thread, including some from other sites that people have mentioned. No joy... it really shouldn't be this hard to simply add a rington to my phone.

Had this problem for the first time today but I just got a 5S

I am synching itunes 11 to iPhone 5s - all non-purchased music (but legally ripped) that I had imported into itunes on a PC. Originally clicked manually manage and sync only checked songs.....95% came over but the other 5% wouldn't (had the ring around the dots)....so this annoyed me.

so...I deauthorized and authorized, etc...then as a test I tried to play all the music in itunes that had the circles....found out I had moved one set of songs from their original folder and they wouldn't play. I restored them to original folder and reimported them into itunes.

then I only clicked manually manage, selected all songs again from the librafy , dragged over to my iPhone and ....all the missing songs came over....

not sure if it was caused by the files being moved from original PC folder....but all is working now...when it works it makes all the hours of frustration somehow worth it ...f

jack4120 wrote:

Had this problem for the first time today but I just got a 5S

I am synching itunes 11 to iPhone 5s - all non-purchased music (but legally ripped) that I had imported into itunes on a PC. Originally clicked manually manage and sync only checked songs..

If you are manually managing, ticking Sync only checked songs does nothing at all.

What do you mean by drag it over to the music on your phone..... I checked the "manually manage music and videos" button but nothing changed! I can't download any of my new songs! I just got the new Katy Perry CD and it won't download to my phone! I really want the music but it isn't working! 😠

yeah i just stumbled upon this mess this morning updating playlists...

apple is loosing touch..

after multiple syncs i came over to this forum.. had to register and all..

none of the ways above worked for me in the past half an hour.

WHAT WORKED FOR ME: i manually dragged one song from my itunes music libraty to my iphone. magically, after it synced this single song, it started pulling other songs from my mac to my iphone.

oh yeah.. i dont have manual box checked.

ffiti wrote:

Please mark this question as solved so that other people can know and find the answer if they have the same problem.

MikeKirkham cannot mark it as solved.

Only the original poster (vancouverbrit) can mark it as solved and he only posted once (this thread, last December)

what finally solved it for me- and FYI i dont like having the sync music button checked because i have to many playlist and so forth so i like to manage my music myself- anyways i checked the songs with the dotted circles in my library and then clicked the sync only checked songs box under summary tab- and BOOM finally applause transferred over- got the idea at this link http://http://appducate.com/2012/12/troubleshoot-an-ios-device-that-wont-sync-in -itunes/ hope this helps-

tiffyt wrote:

what finally solved it for me- and FYI i dont like having the sync music button checked because i have to many playlist and so forth

So why not leave it checked and simply sync selected playlists?

I know there are a few valid fixes but it all depends on what the issue is.

For me it took me a while to figure it out. Aside from the grey dotted circles in "my music", I saw all these cloud symbols with a arrow down in my iphone on random songs. iCLOUD!

I turned off iCloud back up in the summary screen in itunes when I synced my phone and everything started downloading again and went into my settings into my iphone to make sure iTunes Match was turned off including automatic downloads. iCloud is such a piece of crap!

The way I got rid of it all was to turn off itunes match (I no longer use it). When I bought that, and put new songs on my itunes, thats when I got the dotted circles. I had alot of problems with itunes match, so have gone back to the old "sync" way with itunes. Alot faster, and no more dotted circles. Wasted my money on itunes match, but oh well, the old way is alot better with no probs. Try that if you have itunes match, that could be the problem. Good luck :)

Well, with a few times actually contacting apple support, the only thing that seems to have worked is erasing all settings and content on the device, then connecting it and all the songs seem to be going on.

First: Backup your device to iCloud or your computer, unplug the device, Go into Settings/General/Rest/ and hit erase all content and settings. Set up as new iPod or iPhone etc. After that connect your device to your computer, and set up as new device. Then it should work and copy all the songs. At first I thought it didn't work, but at step 4 it started downloading them all on. Now I was told to just restore from the backup with all your pictures etc and the songs should still be on, if not, I was also told I'd have just sync all the songs back on, which I'm fine with waiting. I have over 5,000 songs, just as long as the songs work now is all that matters. Thanks Apple Support!

Depending on how many songs, etc you have, it may take awhile for them to download. I kind of wish it was how it was before the update where the songs would have to be downloaded while connected through usb, or at least that's how I used to do it and they always synced. Now the sync ends before all the songs are actually downloaded and you get the red circle with the square in it next to the songs on your device. I'm not even entirely sure if they're even downloaded cause no progress has been made. Plus it's not showing certain songs if they're in the process of downloading either. New isn't always better -_-'

Actually that solution ended up failing as well. I'm seriously starting to give up. Restoring it once again right now and hopeing that does something. Started a new discussion on it. Apple, get your act together.

So I was having the same problem as everyone here with these rings, and it looks like I've gotten them to go away. (fingers crossed it stays that way). Here's what I did.

Plug in iPhone, cancel sync.

Go into iTunes library, delete problematic songs from library.

Find files in finder, re-import them into the library.

Go to iPhone tab-music-uncheck sync music

Sync iPhone

(Now when i looked at the music again it had changed to "selected playlists" and synced like 60 songs. Don't know what happend)

Now I re-checked the sync all music

Sync iPhone

After a few seconds the gray circles on the music list in the "on this iPhone" tab began to load and dissappear one by one.

(Have no idea what of this was necessary and what wasn't so I figured I'd just put everything in.)

Hope this helps.