What are these red circle symbols that suddenly appear in my iTunes library on my iPhone?

That's a temporary fix as well. Here's a permanent one:

This has bothered me since the beginning of the iOS7 betas and iTunes 11.1 and it has continued to plague me and thousands of iTunes users. I think I have finally nailed it.

Firstly there are two separate bugs: The "Waiting for sync to start" bug where you'll get stuck on this step. That one is simple. iTunes can't sync when your passcode is locked. Unlock your phone, and make sure it doesn't lock before you finish the sync. Stupid I know.

The second one was much much harder to nail down. The symptoms include: "ghost songs" on your phone that will stop new syncs, cause your iPhone to skip over them when playing/shuffling. And not having your phone sync new or all of your songs. The common denominator: When looking at your phone in iTunes there will be grey circles in front of a bunch of songs/media.

A million different temporary cures from logging in and out of the iTunes store on your phone and your iTunes; turning off 'Show all songs'; turning off iTunes Match; selecting your iTunes library in your music apps sharing options (obscure); turning on and off sync (the most common temporary cure); resetting your phone settings; restoring from backup or most destructively restoring from fresh, deleting all your data and settings. Yes, the equivalent of the good old nuke your PC and reinstall Windows option we've all derided for so long is now a common troubleshooting technique for your Apple device. Sheesh.

Have you tried all of the above already? Too scared to nuke your phone and start afresh? Grab a copy of iExplorer or PhoneView (the demo version will do) and follow these instructions:

MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS BACKED UP TO BOTH YOUR LOCAL MACHINE AND ICLOUD.

Connect your iPhone to mac, open PhoneView, go to Settings>Show entire disk. Here I would recommend you back up all the contents of your phone. Or if using iExplore, open the media section.

Deleted the following folders:

• Purchases
• Downloads
• iTunes Control>Sync>Media,
• iTunes Control>Music

Deleted the following files from iTunes Control>iTunes:

• MediaLibrary.sqlitedb
• MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-shm
• MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-wal

You may get away with only deleting purchases, but just to be safe nuke them all.

Restart your phone by holding home and start buttons for five seconds.

Resync with iTunes (make sure you reset all the options for only syncing what you want, deleting these files makes iTunes think you want to sync everything).

This should (most likely) cure your ghost song troubles once and for all.

Credit to this obscure fix goes to an leeg330 on old thread I dug up on the Apple Discussion forums with people having issues with ghost songs on iOS5.

YAY, I did it!!! Ok what I did was I synced the phone like normal and of course the dreaded red circles were still there. So I went to iTunes and unsynced all my music, synced once again...all music was removed from my phone, Then when that was over I checked sync music and then the songs started coping YAY now my entire playlist has returned with NO red CIRCLES!

REMOVE RED CIRCLES WITH SQUARE IN THE MIDDLE AND PLAY SONGS:

1: Connect your iDevice.

2: Navigate into your device and on to your Music tab. Uncheck Sync Music.

3: Check that all of your songs are being imported by going in to Music on the On This Phone tab.

The gray text songs represent that they have to be manually installed inside your device by pressing the iCloud button where the "red circle of death" used to be 😉.

HAPPY SYNCING!!!

-GlexAomes

I have manually downloaded my two my recent album purchases onto my iPhone about 4 times now. Every so often when I sync my phone to iTunes I have to download them again.

I followed your instructions and I have two versions of the same songs. Why can't I have the already downloaded versions on my phone? Why do I have to keep downloading them??

Hi Everybody. I had the same problem with the red circles but only after I upgraded to IOS 7.02! I went out to jog and my phone was missing 90% of my music! It showed the music in the library but had red circles everywhere, i.e. the songs were gone! When I got home, I followed the recommendations of several of you in that I did the following:

• Start iTunes on your computer
• Connect your iPhone and let it synch
• Select your phone among the devices in iTunes
• Select the tab for Music
• Uncheck the "Synch Music" and then hit "Apply" (down at bottom of page). NOTE: this will remove all the music from your phone but it will not affect your iTunes library. Don't panic. It's necessary medicine.
• After the phone has synched and removed all the music, Go back to the same Music tab for your phone in iTunes and recheck "Synch Music". Then synch your phone again with iTunes. It will now reload all the music in your library back on to your phone.

The above fixed my problem. I hope it helps you.

I think I've figured out the problem. I was having the same issues and here's what I did:

• Uncheck all songs from the selected playlist
• Sync iPhone
• Once sync is finished, re-check all of the songs
• Sync iPhone

If done properly, you should see a lot of the songs under your device with a dashed looking circle. It will take a few minutes, but the sync will be on the last step before any of the songs load. After that the songs will lose the dashed circle and they will re-appear normally without the red circle with the square. Hope this helps.

-Alex

• Start iTunes on your computer
• Connect your iPhone and let it sync
• Select your phone among the devices in iTunes
• Select the tab for Music
• Uncheck the "Sync Music" and then hit "Apply" (down at bottom of page). NOTE: this will remove all the music from your phone but it will not affect your iTunes library. Don't panic. It's necessary medicine.
• After the phone has synced and removed all the music, Go back to the same Music tab for your phone in iTunes and re-check "Synch Music". Then sync your phone again with iTunes. It will now reload all the music in your library back on to your phone.

This FINALLY worked for me. I have been following a couple of threads on this topic and I had tried most of the solutions I'd found in the last week or so. None of them worked--INCLUDING this one. I had tried this more than once, in fact. But for some reason I did it again today and finally my Playlists got in sync on my iPhone 4. Not sure if it will keep syncing once I add new music in future, but for now it has worked. 🙂

The fix posted by NDJerry and others worked for me, thanks guys!

• Start iTunes on your computer
• Connect your iPhone and let it synch
• Select your phone among the devices in iTunes
• Select the tab for Music
• Uncheck the "Synch Music" and then hit "Apply" (down at bottom of page). NOTE: this will remove all the music from your phone but it will not affect your iTunes library. Don't panic. It's necessary medicine.
• After the phone has synched and removed all the music, Go back to the same Music tab for your phone in iTunes and recheck "Synch Music". Then synch your phone again with iTunes. It will now reload all the music in your library back on to your phone.

hmm, werid. Yeah, I can't see my download all icon, and all the song I have problems with are songs imported from CDs years ago and they were not properly registered by itunes back in the day. All my itunes purchases work. I guess I will have to restore my iphone at this point.

But, yeah. This is a major bummer. It seems like I have the same problem as you but I don't see the download all button.

Thanks for your help!

Yeah, I haven't set up itunes match yet. Do you recommened that I use it? The issue is probably because I imported CD's without any internet connection at the time when I was like 17 when I got my first ipod back in 2002. So for example, Steely Dan Album is listed as track1, 2, 3, etc. And it's not under artists. ugh. I hate this crap.

I also have the same problem.

Red square in red circle in iPhone iTunes.

Never used itunes match - what so ever.

Always used manual upload. Funny thing is that manual upload worked for all files but for Black Sabbath. 🙂

Anyway, could it be due to a codec Doublt that because all songs played with the old configuration.