What does the gray dotted circle in iTunes mean?

I'm using an IPhone but next time I get the problem, I'll try your approach. If it works for me I guess it'll come down to the question of which workaround is the easiest.

Ed

I was unable to transfer songs from itunes 11 to an old ipod touch. Finally I deleted the dreaded gray out songs with their circle icon form the ipod, signed out of my itunes account at the itunes store, and dragged the album again to the ipod and voila, the songs were transferred. I hope this helps. Thanks all for the other suggestions, without which I would still be struggling.

MCS

I had this probably too & found, I think, that it was down to not enough memory to sync any new or additional songs across, even though the my Ipod Touch & Itunes was stating that there was still memory left.

Anyhow after trying some of the suggestions out on here & then still being frustrated as the problem didn't seem to resolve itself, I came across an option listed under the 'Ipod Summary' section in Itunes. In here I ticked the box listed under the 'Options' that states "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC' .

Itunes then readjusted the amount of memory left so there was more & then when I re-synced the Ipod to Itunes, all the songs 'greyed out with a broken dotted circle' started to reload right before my eyes lol!!! There was approximately, 2,400 of these songs so I left my Ipod syncing overnight & in the morning all the 'greyed out' tracks had been synced to Ipod fully & I have all my music as I wanted it... Not sure why this action did the trick but it worked & I'm now a happy little Ipod bunny.

Hope this works for you 🙂

5 hours later... this one worked. It seems to be different for everyone. Keep trying.

Thanks! After trying many of the other suggestions without success, I followed your instructions and all songs now synced. No more gray dotted circles!

So finally I found the solution! Go to ITunes and go to your phone summary, you have to check mark the box that says "Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs" click apply. Then next to you GB line click "sync". the songs should transfer!

Is there an easy way to do this? Some say do this and some say do that but nothing is working. Can some one give me the descriptive details of how to do this please.

Hey Chapess ... Thank you for sharing!

As soon as I "unchecked" the gray dotted tracks they started downloading! Wonderful! I didn't even have to do any of the other steps. It only worked on newly transferred audiobooks... but no problem, I just deleted the older ones (I had been trying to get them the day before) and re-transferred them from Overdrive.... then unchecked them and they downloaded no problem.

This has been making me crazy for months!!! I am so happy so have a solution! Thanks again 🙂

This worked for me. As soon as I un-checked and re-checked the songs, they began to sync immediately! Thanks.

The problem I'm having is that I can't delete songs from my iPhone 6+ completely. I highlight and delete the songs, then when I sync again the "ghosts" of the deleted songs reappear on my phone. When in "random" shuffle mode, I've discovered that the music occasionally just stops unless I advance to the next song. I suspect these "ghosts" are the reason.

How can you tell whether you're dragging the file from the library, not from my files?

(Sorry, am super-confused about all this 😕

I have no idea what this actually did, but it seems to have worked. Mystifying.

"no help from Apple, though." What a surprise! haha

If anyone still experiences this problem, please check out this video on YouTube!

This is the best way to fix this issue and it works. I have tested and tried this method with a number of devices and computers and has worked every time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVbZZEZlGGY

All the best,

TheMusicKnowGuy

This does nothing for me. I manually manage my music on my iPhone. Still hoping for a solution from somewhere.