iTunes Dotted Circle Persists

Question

iTunes Dotted Circle Persists

All the discussions on this topic appear to be years old. I've been tweaking the music library on my iPhone (or attempting to, at least) and have discovered several "issues" - the dotted circle being one of them.

First, iPhone 8Plus, 256GB storage (150GB+ free at the moment)

-iOS 11.4.1 (reported as "up to date")

-iTunes version 12.8.0.150 (no updates available when I checked the App store 30 seconds ago.)

1) There are several songs, including a complete album, with the dotted circle attached (left-most column in iTunes)

2) Songs are downloaded to iPhone as well as iTunes and are playable on each

3) Manual music management enabled (I only put a portion of my library on my phone.)

In summary - I can't find anywhere that this impacts functionality, but it is annoying to have visual cues present that are either meaningless or erroneous.

Does anyone have any new information on this?

Posted on Sep 1, 2018 7:11 AM

Reply

Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

274,634 points

Sep 1, 2018 8:21 AM in response to kitfromwilmington

Try signing out of the iTunes Store on your device, sync with iTunes once more, then sign in again.

If that didn't work try the following all-purpose steps for dealing with erratic device or sync behaviour (including the troublesome grey dotted circles of stalled transfers). They assume that all of the content you want on the device is in your library ready for restoring. If it isn't see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device first. I would also recommend you copy everything out of the camera roll if you haven't already.

Backup device.
Restore as a new device.
Restore the backup you made earlier.

Use an encrypted backup (*) if you want to preserve passwords, Wi-Fi settings, web history and health data where appropriate. I also suggest syncing with a selection of playlists (unless you're using iCloud Music Library) rather than manually adding content as, if nothing else, the process above is easier to do if you ever have to go through it again.

(*) The downside with backup encryption is that if you forget the password when you need it again, which could be years later, you may need to invoke a workaround to turn off encryption as shown in Re: disable encrypted backups, which can only help if your device is in a state that can backup to iCloud.

FWIW I successfully used this method about a year ago when Siri became unable to call contacts or play my music.

tt2

Reply

Answer 2

Sep 1, 2018 9:58 AM in response to askbarnabas

Just attempted a reply, but it seems to have been lost in translation. First screenshot is the Phone list, second is the iTunes Library list. (Playlists from each display identical results.) As I said, everything plays everywhere, so this is more an annoyance than anything.