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iTunes sync still getting stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied" with the latest iTunes 11.1.2 and iOS 7.0.3!

Anyone having this same problem? I need my iPad to sync! efclvkjhbsdfvlkj

iPad (3rd gen) Wi-Fi, iOS 7.0.3

Posted on Oct 22, 2013 4:58 PM

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119 replies

Apr 8, 2017 7:56 AM in response to iamkurtvella

My problem applies(applied) to itunes 12.6 and ios 10.3.1, but I think there is something at play that goes beyond the various versions of itunes or ios.


I was seeing several problems related to syncing but I got hit with the "waiting for changes to be applied" last month the DAY I got my apple watch.


My library is relatively stable (I don't add too much to it any more) and it only happened when I played music on the phone. If I played music in itunes but not on the phone, I discovered it wasn't getting stuck. I do not use itunes in the cloud and itunes on my mac is the authoritative source of my music which I cable sync to my iphone every day, sometimes twice a day.


After a few days of consistently getting stuck after getting the apple watch (1.5 months ago), I discovered it would not get stuck if I flipped the phone in airplane mode and reboot it.


This went on every day, but last week, I was noticing some albums had the track titles of the album and the artist was "unknown"... for example, Pink Floyd's "the wall" had all but about 5 tracks named "the wall" and the artist was "unknown", but when I'd play those tracks, it correctly displayed the track title.


I've been going back and forth with apple support, I even opened a bugtracker ticket a few days after getting the watch, but I thought I'd try one more time to get to the root problem....


A couple days ago, when I told itunes not to sync the music to the phone, I expected to see all songs off the phone, but when I went into the settings in the storage area, I saw at the very end, the artist of '?'.


A lot of fiddling around later to find out why it didn't get the artist properly, I strongly suspect it had to do with the 'album is a compilation of songs by various artists' checkbox associated with songs/albums. When I changed it so those songs are a part of a compilation, the phone said it those songs were from an unknown artist and when I unchecked that setting, it correctly put the song under the artist's entry in the storage tab.


I'm starting to think with all the reworkings of the ipod player in iOS 10 (and maybe earlier versions too) that some settings like the compilation flag are causing borkage.


If ANYONE still has this issue, can you try changing your library to see if this fixes it for you?


a) find an album that has ANY song (does not have to be all songs, just ANY song) with the compilation flag set

b) edit the entire album so the album artist (this would mean one of the latest versions of itunes and iOS) is a specific artist (for example, 'Van Morrison' album 'still on top' has some songs 'Van Morrison & Them', so the album artist is 'Van Morrison') or if it really is a collection of various artists, then use 'Various Artists' in the album artist tab AND unselect the compilation checkbox (make it so it is NOT a compilation of songs by various artists and set the album artist to something meaningful)

c) sync your music back on to the phone


I did that (with the extra step of deleting everything off the phone first), but to keep the copy process short enough (I have 21,000 songs in my library), I only synced a couple choice playlists and yesterday, when I synced after coming home from work, it went through without a glitch.


(edited --> clarified a few things about the compilation checkbox)

Oct 22, 2013 8:56 PM in response to Orest75

Same here with iphone4, latest iTunes version and after applying 7.0.3.

Haven't tried rebooting but before I gave up on the 'Waiting for changes to be applied' message, iTunes started syncing, or should I say copying music to the iphone. I noticed the same thing earlier when updating my 4S to 7.0.3.


Hence, just let the sync do its work, be patient.

Oct 22, 2013 11:34 PM in response to iamkurtvella

Same issue here. Eventually it decided to resync a bunch of music (about 3900 songs out of 6600). Guessing there was some sort of problem with them that meant it needed to resync them all. Couldn't see any particular pattern to them (mix of stuff that had been in my library for a long time and stuff that had only been added to my library in the past few months).


Mildly annoying, but still not as bad as the upgrade to iOS5 when I ended up needing to restore my phone.


The sync finished fine after all that had happened. Just resyncing now to see what else happens.


edit: it was fine on the second sync attempt too. Hopefully just a one-time thing. Guessing they've made some sort of background change to the library structure or something like that.

Oct 23, 2013 4:33 AM in response to iamkurtvella

Seeing same issue on iphone 5 and iPad Mini.


Saw similar behavior as M0rph3us did on my iphone as it partially resynced my music library - why I don't know.


What's worse is that when I went to play music on the mini much of the music would not play - something about the process seemd to corrupt the meta data about the music stored on the mini. The music and playlists are there, a big portion just would not play - either showed as playing with no music coming out or did something wierd where it jumped from song to song on a playlist, never playing but acting like each song was taking less than a second to play.


Am trying to resync the mini right now to see if I can get it work right

Oct 23, 2013 8:51 AM in response to jpsf

Same thing here ! It took an eternity on the step "Waiting for changes to be applied" when syncing. And afterward, when I open up the music app on the iPhone, all my album covers we're missing ??? Grrrrr...


I had to erase all my music on my iPhone 4S and resync. But It stuck in the middle of the process...

I will retry tonight to make things work and let you know...


By the way, I got similar problems when I upgraded to IOS 7.


Apple, please enhance this aspect when updating IOS on our iDevices.

Oct 23, 2013 9:06 AM in response to iamkurtvella

iamkurtvella wrote:


What do you mean by power cycling McGroarty? If you mean restarting the device, i tried restarting the iPad and iMac after updates were installed and I am still facing this problem. Can you elaborate please?


Every time you sync, you power your iOS device down all the way, start it again, unlock it if locked, and sync before running any other apps. If you run any app again (usually ones that play audio), you may need to repeat the power cycle.


Yes, it's very annoying. But if all else fails for you and you still need to sync, try this and hope that some future upgrade fixes things.

Oct 23, 2013 9:11 AM in response to iamkurtvella

iamkurtvella wrote:


Anyone having this same problem? I need my iPad to sync! efclvkjhbsdfvlkj


Yes, my iPhone 5 running ios 7 will not sync in *any* way with itunes now. I can neither add nor remove content via itunes. I just tried to delete 100% of my music from my iphone, it hung forever on "Waiting for changes to be applied" and then when it was finally done... no changes had been applied.

I can't add, remove, change, delete or in any way of any kind sync my iphone with itunes any longer.


I'm becoming the person who refuses to update to the new Apple OS. I used to get very excited about new OS updates. That all ended around Mountain Lion. Yesterday when I saw that Mavericks was out I wasn't excited. Instead I felt a sense of dread, and for good reason. Every time they release an OS in the last few years it's just a cluster-F.

Oct 23, 2013 9:28 AM in response to McGroarty

McGroarty wrote:


Every time you sync, you power your iOS device down all the way, start it again, unlock it if locked, and sync before running any other apps. If you run any app again (usually ones that play audio), you may need to repeat the power cycle.


Yes, it's very annoying. But if all else fails for you and you still need to sync, try this and hope that some future upgrade fixes things.


You, sir, are a genius, this worked! After following your steps and syncing everything suddenly worked just fine! Thank you so much.

Oct 23, 2013 5:09 PM in response to iamkurtvella

Hey all.


So I've been having this problem on my iPad since iOS7 & iTunes 11.1.1. Don't know which it is as it syncs fine with my iPhone4 and newly acquired 5s. But I did get it to work finally.


What solution worked for me:

1. Back up device (on the computer, not iCloud)

2. Restore (from iTunes interface)

3. Setup new device (from iTunes interface)

4. Fill out initial setup stages on device

5. FROM DEVICE select setup from Backup - it should then show a cable and iTunes icon on the screen

6. Go to iTunes and click restore from Backup

7. Sit around a bit - depending on how much is on your device

8. Try syncing - for me this was adding audio etc. as that was the problem I was having


Hope this helps some of you.


cheers~

iTunes sync still getting stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied" with the latest iTunes 11.1.2 and iOS 7.0.3!

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