What does the dotted circle mean?

What I had to do was go to the iTunes store and select purchased and then I clicked on the songs that it did not download properly. It started downloading them but out of order so I input the info myself

What ended up ultimately working for me is logging out of itunes on my iphone (settings > Itunes & app store), and then re-logging in. I then told Itunes to synch and everything started copying over. I manually manage my music and don't like setting it to synch only certain playlists.

This solved not only the problem of the dotted circle and music not transferring, but also not being able to copy playlists over and playlists disappearing after an IOS upgrade - For me.

I hope this helps other people as something to try that doesn't require nuking the music lists.

I HAVE FIXED IT. i think.

Open itunes and plug in your device.

Make sure you stop your device from syncing by clicking the little x where the music player is.

Go to your device and go to the summary tab.

Scroll down and make sure the "Automatically sync when this Iphone is connected" is uncheck.

Click apply.

Now, close itunes.

Re-open itunes and make sure you keep your device is plugged in.

Go to your device and go to music under my device.

Take the songs you want on your phone and either drag and drop, or copy and paste them in.

That worked for me, I hope this resolves any problems :O

When I downgraded to 8.2 from 8.3 on my iPhone 5s (in order to fix the issue of 8.3 not connecting consistently to my car stereo when physically connecting [Bluetooth worked ok]), I had the problem that my music disappeared and I could no longer sync (dotted circle). I tried every solution I read on the web and in the Apple forums. Despairing not being able to listen to my podcasts on my long drive from Houston to Dallas, I refreshed my old iPod Touch and iTunes synced perfectly. Because some of the solutions presumed that something was wrong with iTunes and I had just moved my music to a new MacBook Pro, the sync to the iPod Touch proved that the problem was not inside my recently-moved iTunes Libraries. I even tried to restore from backup with no luck.

My solution was to use iFunBox for the Mac to delete the iTunes files inside the raw filesystem. When I reconnected to iTunes, it invited me to restore from backup or treat the phone as new. I restored from (recent) backup and music synced without issue. I can only assume that in the downgrade process, some data/files inside the secret Apple non-public iOS file system had become corrupted and deleting/restoring fixed it.

As with all things in life, YMMV.

This is what worked for me too, none of the other solutions presented made any difference. My itunes library was also acting strangely, I had recently moved to a new computer and I think that is where the issue was. Clearly some corrupted database entries, once I deleted the files in the iTunes folder on my phone and resynced, it worked.

I was having the same problem and had no idea what to do, so i went online to look for a solution and after countless hours of looking for what to do i finally fixed it by turning off my phone, and my mac; then i turned them both back on and as soon as i went to sync them it started to work again by itself.

I use "Manually manage music and videos" check box setting under OPTIONS and was able to correct the problem by clicking the iPhone icon, SUMMARY and then the SYNC button at the bottom.

I was also "converting higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps ACC" to help reduce the track size to fit more on my 16GB iPhone 5s. For some reason there were a few tracks that it wouldn't let me reduce (perhaps purchased tracks?) so I unchecked that under OPTIONS and clicked SYNC again and it worked!

All this worked after I restored my iPhone to factory defaults, copied some music just to make sure it worked, then restored from a backup I made just prior to using the RESTORE iPHONE button.

Thanks This was the issue for me, I bought the songs but did not have enough space to store or sync them when I connected to ITunes. I transferred the purchases to iTunes and could play them there but not on the iPhone. After reading this post I decided to turn of Sync All Audiobooks and unchecked everything including the (Purchased) box at the bottom window titled Include Audiobooks from Playlists. Once that completed I reloaded just what I wanted and everything works fine.

Thanks Waterlilly101!

I had this problem too. After lots of attempted fixes, it's now working again. One of these things - I think probably the second one - fixed it:

1. I used the Battery Doctor app on my iPod Touch to clean up cache and boost memory.

2. I ejected my iPod Touch from iTunes and then reconnected it.

One of the things that I also noticed while I was having the dotted circle problem was that when I selected my device in iTunes, the horizontal graph showing the breakdown of memory usage categorized everything as 'other' or 'free'. After I did the two things above, the graph went back to showing all the relevant categories ('audio', 'photos', 'apps', 'documents and data', 'other', 'free'), and music syncing worked again.

This worked well for me. Thanks for your posting. After backing up my iPod to both iCloud, and iTunes, I proceeded with the reset. It took awhile to complete the backup, but I believe I now have a rejuvenated device. Not only are all my songs now properly loaded, but the iPod now has a much quicker response. I actually believe this may be a good approach to consider, when dealing with a slow responding device, especially an older device, weighted down by the many iOS updates.

I had this problem just this morning. iTunes would not import folders or files.

I fixed it by going to: Edit > Preferences > Advanced then ticked the box that says "Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library".

I have to say I much preferred iTunes BEFORE this "update"

Interesting that some have said that it's to do with lack of storage, but I'm actually getting the dreaded "dotted circles" with my new iPhone 7+, and I have ample storage (103.95 GB to be exact), so I'm actually unsure if that this is the case. I'm at odds as to what to do, as the music just will not copy onto my iPhone and it's constantly trying to sync.

Any help regarding this, or if anyone has actually find out the cause, I'd be very grateful.

None of those things are true for me. I do have enough room on my device and I do have manually manage videos and music checked off and I STILL have dotted circles next to tones that will not sync with my iphone from my mac. Very frustrating.

Hey, I tried doing all the things other people were saying and nothing seemed to work and then I went on my Mac and noticed that when i clicked the phone icon on my Itunes dashboard it brought me to a page where I can see my storage space, and next to that was a "sync" button. I took a gamble and pressed it and too my surprise it got rid of all the dotted circles simultaneously and just downloaded them all. You can try doing that or manually connecting you Iphone to your computer with its charger so it has a direct route. It was a quick-fix for me and I hope it will help you out too.

I found a 3rd meaning for the gray dotted circle icon that appears on my iPhone when viewed through iTunes on my Macbook:

3. It can mean that the song isn't checked (that column in iTunes with the "black checkmark").

To address this, go to the view in iTunes that shows the iPhone's contents ("On My Device" appears above the list of media types and playlists), click on Music, notice that the song in question lacks a checkmark, and check it.