Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
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
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.
FWIW; I had to restore my iPhone to be able to sync music. I had a dotted circle next to an "unknown file". Nothing else worked but a restore.
/$0.02
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hey,
I am having the same problem that you had!
Have you by any chance been able to rectify this situation?
Help me!!
"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"
You mean the music you did not legally obtain?
@aprezotto - Thank you very very VERY much for the suggestion, worked fine for me!!
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 🙂
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
What does the dotted circle mean?
