The iPhone “...” cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all the selected items

When you start syncing your iDevice in iTunes and then you get this annoying message (especially when it tells you it needs like 1.4MB and there is 300MB available?!): 'The iPhone/iPad “iPhone(insert name)” cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all the selected items'. What do you do?

Basically the problem, in many cases, seems to be that iTunes thinks it has too many updates to install on your iPhone/iPad and it isn't smart enough to load them one at a time when there's not enough space to do them all??

Fortunately it can often be side-stepped by just taking your iPhone/iPad and clicking on the App Store app,  then tapping on the Updates tab, and then tapping on 'Update All' at the top right. If that  complains that there's not enough space you can let do some updates then try again (and again) and will update the rest of the apps. Then the sync should be fine with iTunes.

iOS9 on older devices

The performance of iOS9 (9.0.2,9.1) on older devices iPad mini 1,2 is terrible (and to a less degree the iPhone 4s) - no amount of settings tweaks (like Settings-Accessibility->'Reduce Motion' off, Background refresh off, Hard reset etc) as mentioned across the Internet make much difference. There is a substantial lag in performance and speed as compared to iOS8.4.1 or earlier. Don't upgrade if you haven't already!

Note: It's no longer possible to revert to iOS8.4.1 (or 9.0.2 for that matter) as Apple is not signing older versions of iOS prior to iOS 9.1. To explain: Apple cryptographically signs iOS on every single device it is installed onto provide for enhanced security and integrity protection - and secure booting - as detailed in their iOS Security Guide.

Update[May16]: iOS 9.2/3 does improve things somewhat on the older devices (but I'd still advise staying with 8.4.1 unless you need particular iOS9 features/fixes).

MythTV on Kodi (XBMC)

I've been playing with Kodi (once known as XBMC) which is a slick open-source media centre system that runs on almost everything (OSX, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android, Windowz, even [jailbroken] iOS). I wanted to connect it to MythTV, which is rather a handy open-source DVR for TV streaming and recording. So in Kodi (v15.1) I went to System->Settings->Add-ons->My Add-ons->PVR Client->MythTV PVR Client and then added the IP address of my MythTV server. That's all then I thought... so how does it work...?

It's not entirely obvious - but very simple when you know how - you then need to go to System->Settings->TV->Enable and just enable it! Then a new TV menu item appears on the main screen with various options for interacting with MythTV - like watching live TV, or recorded shows etc.

Also it seems that one can reduce the CPU load when running Kodi with the current versions by switching off the RSS display on the main screen by going to System->Appearance->Show RSS news feeds and disabling the option.

Apple Bluetooth keyboard problems

If you've got an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard it may be working fine then one day it just seems to stop working (in a variety of ways such as; the caps/shift lock light not coming on, certain keys working (like alphanumeric) whilst others do (e.g. arrows keys)). So you search the Internet for 'Apple keyboard reset' or 'Apple keyboard fix problem' etc. There's a bunch of pages out there suggesting to just take out the batteries on the keyboard and then put then back in and reconnect the keyboard over Bluetooth.

But it can also be caused by [temporary] software issues on your computer (with the Bluetooth drivers) - so try rebooting your machine (or iPad etc) and try again. It may well fix the problem - as the lack of a caps lock light etc isn't necessarily due to the keyboard itself.

Stopping iPhone Voice Control appearing (so much)

Does the iPhone's Voice Control keeping appearing when you hit the home button? It's annoying as it is basically useless. So how does one disable it?? Well unfortunately without a jailbreak you can't (With a jailbreak you can install the Activator app and set the 'long hold' action on the home button to no action).

However I've found that if you have the triple click Accessibility Shortcut enabled (for stuff like Invert Colours, Greyscale, Assistive Touch etc) then Voice Control seems to pop up a lot more. So if you want Voice Control to appear less often then try switching off the Accessibility shortcut - by going to Settings->General->Accessibility->Accessibility Shortcut and unticking all options. I think I've also noticed a slight overall responsiveness on the phone too (this is under iOS8.3 on ye olde iPhone 4S).

How stop an iOS app from being upgraded by iTunes

So there's that app that you like the current version and newer ones just suck but iTunes doesn't make it easy to stop arbitrary apps from being upgraded. The problem with trying stop an old app from being upgraded is that it's all or nothing - you can either switch off automatic updates or you have to manually select the apps you want to upgrade every time.

The way to stop this is to change the permissions on the app so that it's can't be deleted (nor upgraded) by iTunes - first locate the app (e.g. /Users/test/Music/iTunes/Mobile\ Applications/Twitter\ 2.19.ipa ) Then you set the immutable flag on the app from the Terminal:

chflags uchg /Users/test/Music/iTunes/Mobile\ Applications/Twitter\ 2.19.ipa

When iTunes tries to update the app it tries to delete and replace it with the newer version but it fails ('Saying the original file can't be found'). But you can ignore that warning.

If you want to upgrade it at another point you'll need to just delete it and rerun iTunes so that it fetches the new version.


Note: That apps are unique to your user ID so you can't just copy an app (an .ipa file) from someone else an install it on your device, though you can with if you have older copies of an app for your device installed with that user ID.

Update:27nov15: Unfortunately it's not clear that this technique does stop iTunes from upgrading the apps in all situations;(

Update:23feb16: If this doesn't work you can copy the desired version of the app ipa file elsewhere and then delete the app from iTunes and then copy in the older version and sync again.

iTunes stopped syncing with iPhone?

The other day - as had happened a few times before - when I plugged my iPhone/iPad into my Mac iTunes failed to automatically start. Indeed iTunes didn't even seem recognise that my iPhone was plugged in - neither when directly plugged into USB nor when trying to 'sync over WiFi'. Another odd symptom was that my iPhone suddenly started to ask if I wanted to Trust this computer (that I have always synced to the past). A reboot had usually fixed this in the past but that's a pain so I snooped around for other answers - The usbmuxd daemon seemed to be complaining about weird stuff in the logs so I figured lets try and kill it! And low and behold that fixed the problem - usbmuxd restarted (probably care of launchd) and all was well again - iTunes saw my devices and wanted to talk to them again - a handy quick fix.

Here's the command line way to kill it - to be safe quit iTunes and unplug your iPhone beforehand:

sudo killall usbmuxd