What does the dotted circle mean?

Had this problem too - songs showed up in iTunes, but even after a sync would not show up on my phone despite the fact I have "sync entire music library" selected in my settings. Tried a lot of the suggestions on this discussion thread with no success.

Then I tried unchecking the "sync music" box, did a sync that alleged it would remove all the music off my phone (it didn't), then re-checked the "sync music" box, synced again and the songs appeared on my phone.

Well, I experienced the same problem. When I tried to sync my music via iTunes, there was this dotted circle and it was impossible to transfer my music, while I could sync perfectly my pictures.

When I bought my iPhone I used iCloud to set it up and sync my files from my iPad. And aparrently there was some kind of problem with this, because when I restored my iPhone and used iTunes this time to set it up and sync my files, the dotted circle dissapeared.

I hope this is helpful.

Morning all...

I'm pretty rubbish when it comes to technology and phones... I had this same problem when trying to put 2 new CDs onto my phone... I recalled that when I downloaded the latest version of iTunes that they asked if I allowed iTunes to have access to my account to see what was in my library and all that... I clicked No...

I uninstalled iTunes from my laptop and reinstalled this time clicking 'Yes'... It works fine now...

I'm sure this is just chance but if it helps anyone then it was worth the 5 hours off fury I went through...

Hey, this was an issue for me this week too...

I managed to fix it by un-selecting the 'Sync Music' button, then syncing the iPhone. This wipes all the music off unfortunately, but it works. Once it's synced re-select the 'Sync Music' button and pick and choose what music you want on your iPhone as you would normally.

Time consuming but it worked for me!

I have had my share of maddening frustration in syncing my iPod and am still far from satisified with it's unpredictability. But after reading through a lot of this and another thread here I have been able to get rid of the dreaded "ring of dots" and have been able directly sync audio files from my PC to my (brand new) iPad mini (and am a complete newbie to it). Here is what I did which worked:

1. I authorized my PC for use with my iPad mini

2. Then selected all the files with the "ring of dots" (RODs)

3. As soon as this was done all the files with the RODs started syncing with my iPad

Hope this solution continues to work for me and any others who try it.

I too rid myself of the "RODs" by syncing my phone. I read through 2 different forum topics on this and tried several fixes to no avail. I finally tried the tip on this topic about syncing your phone and thought it would be too simple to actually fix my problem... I clicked the sync box in the lower right hand corner and all my grey dots disappeared and my grey titles turned black. Not sure if it was a fluke, act of god, or just a lack of foresight in auto syncing songs that we try to force to our iDevices with out manually hitting the button.

I agree with andyhollins - I had some podcasts that wouldn't sync over either and they did so when I unchecked the sync music button. I am in the middle of syncing now and can confirm it works (at least for most of the songs) and I must say I'm getting annoyed with iTunes - especially the difficulties with syncing.

Plug in your iphone, then click on your iphone in itunes. Then click on this phone and on the bottom right there is a box that says settings and a box that says autofill. Click settings and click "replace all items when autofilling" Then click the autofill box and then click sync. This worked for me

I've just worked out a solution. Re sync your device with no music synched. Some songs will still appear on your 'on this device' menu. But resync and all songs will recopy individually to your device.

I had this problem where after syncing my Iphone, several songs would not appear in the library but, with the phone still connected to itunes, the missing songs would be greyed out with the dotted circle.

Don't know if this will fix all but the solution I found with mine was that on my phone, select music - (more) shared, there are 2 options. My Iphone or my Library. My iphone was selected so I selected my library instead, a red download circle appeared and once complete, all my copied songs were on my phone. This also worked on my ipad without having to resync anything.

Had this problem, tried many solutions on these boards without success. Until finally I found one (wish I could give proper credit) that worked instantly: sign out of istore account on both computer and device (iphone for me). Before my eyes, without another click, the syncing began and all dotted circle tunes moved to my phone. Hope this is a general solution.

And by the way, why aren't apple techs monitoring these boards and putting known solutions up instantly?

telecam wrote:

And by the way, why aren't apple techs monitoring these boards and putting known solutions up instantly?

Because these are user-to-user forums and the fix you used does not always work.

I have found that the sync gets messed up on a song for some reason.

Delete the song from iTunes and and it back and it works fine.

Apple will fix iTunes and update it to work, not post a bunch of different solutions that may/may not work.

Apparently apples "fixers" and "updaters" have been on an extensive break, given the widespread and longlasting nature of this issue. 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 (and for which I take no credit!).

I also had the dreaded ring of dots (almost as bad as the dreaded rainbow wheel of doom)

I was close to throwing my Mac across the room because I could drag the songs from my iTunes to my iPhone and the would appear on my phone but would not actually transfer. Turns out iTunes was due a software update and would not let me do anything until it was fully installed. May be worth checking for software updates.

Not sure which fix has worked for different people but I seem to have solved it by installing the new update, clicking on the music tab under ipod and unclicking "Synch Music" allowing that to process and then clicking Synch music again. It restored everything.