trouble syncing iPhone with iTunes

Question

trouble syncing iPhone with iTunes

I am trying to sync my iPhone, but am getting the error message that it "cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the selected items (262.1 MB required, 489.3 MB available)" This makes no sense. I tried restarting the phone, but that didn't help. I tried throwing out a couple apps, wondering if that would return us to a logical point. Not sure what else to try. iOS and iTunes both current versions. Thanks to anyone who has a suggestion.

Posted on May 5, 2016 2:21 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

stevejobsfan0123

Level 9

54,384 points

May 6, 2016 1:19 PM in response to sighing over tech support

Usually, about twice the space that is shown as required needs to be free. 262.1MB refers to how much space the content will take up on your iPhone once synced, but during the syncing process, additional space is needed to store temporary files while iTunes moves the items into place on your iPhone. Try importing photos and videos to your computer and then deleting the copies on the phone to free up more space. Or you could just delete some that you no longer need directly from your iPhone.

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Answer 2

ManSinha

Level 6

12,171 points

May 6, 2016 1:19 PM in response to sighing over tech support

How much space left on the computer you are running iTunes on? Also is it a Mac or PC?

While you are at it - how much space left on the phone? 🙂

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Answer 3

May 5, 2016 2:35 PM in response to sighing over tech support

Figured I'd try one more thing while I was waiting for an answer. So I unselected some music for the sync selections and managed to complete the sync. Still curious why I got that error message. When the sync was complete, the Summary tells me I've got 2.49GB free space on my phone.

Another problem I've had recently is that sometimes the sync stalls on "Importing photos," then times out and tells me that my Photos library is not available. When it does that, no numbers show up next to the albums I've checked to sync, and the total number being synced does not show up next to the heading for Sync Photos.

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Answer 4

May 5, 2016 2:46 PM in response to stevejobsfan0123

Thanks! I took some music off and it went through. Not sure why the available space is always so different in my iPhone Settings and in iTunes. Right now iPhone says I have 1.6GB available, iTunes says 2.15GB.

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Answer 5

ManSinha

Level 6

12,171 points

May 5, 2016 3:04 PM in response to sighing over tech support

The way the two applications - iTunes and iPhone report the storage use are slightly different - there are a couple of recent threads on the topic

https://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?type=discussion&showAnsweredFirst=true &q=iTunes+storage+space+is+different+tha…

You may want to free up some more space on the phone if possible

What is "other" and what can I do about it -ASC

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