Q: iTunes stuck on last stage of sync, "Waiting for items to copy", NEVER COMPLETES??

It worked! Thanks.

i'm getting this also. seems to always sync 91 songs to genius and always the same songs. the sync completes ok (no hangs etc) but i wonder what exactly is being sync'd and why the same quantity/tunes each time?!

does not matter if genius is on or off on the left sidebar, i still get the syncs.

so is this getting a fix anytime soon?

my problems stopped when I upgraded to iTunes 10.5.3  running snow leopard.  Good luck to all.  I think it's not just one problem that's causing these symptoms.

Nothing I read and tried worked! For some reason, it kept copying the same 5 ringtones every time I synced so I tried manually managing tones minus those 5 and everything works fine!!!!

I'd like to throw in one more idea for everyone suffering this. It may not be the answer for you, but it was for me. Like others, I found my phone stuck in the last step of the sync. In my case, it said it was "artwork", but I know others have likely been stuck in some other "last step".

For me, after reading this thread and some others, I decided to simply tell it not to sync photos. I disconnected, reconnected, and bang, it synced to completion. Maybe others will need to tell it not to sync books, or podcasts, or videos, whatever. But give it a try.

For those not familiar with how to tell it "not to synch photos", for instance, in the itunes interface, when you've plugged in your phone, click on the phone in the "devices" area of the left tree structure. (If you don't see it there, and your phone is connected, try disconnecting and reconnecting it till it appears.) Then choose photos from the list of options that appear above the picture of your phone (or click whatever you want to try not to have it sync.) Uncheck the option now shown to "sync" whatever you selected. Click the apply button at the bottom.

In my case, I did that while it was "stuck syncing". Of course, it didn't "solve the problem" then. I had to go ahead and disconnect it (click the icon next to the phone in the "devices" tree), adn accept its warning that it was not finished. Of course, I'd usually never do that (or just yank the phone from the connection) while syncing, but in this case, I seemed to have no other recourse.

So I unplugged it, and reconnected (needed to do it a couple of times before it appeared in itunes in "devices", but that happens fairly often), and then it proceeded to sync. And it DID finish. Hurrah!

Hope that may help someone else.

Mine had the problem of getting stucked at the end of the sync while "copying album artwork"

They way I fixed it:

I went to the music>itunes>album artwork, then deleted the "cache" folder and emptied the trash bin (I have a mac computer)

I restarted itunes and tried to sync again and it worked just fine finally!

The cache folder got regenerated again by itself but without whatever corrupted files were in it.

I was having the same problem.  It may be a coincidence, but after at least an hour stuck on "waiting for items to copy", I went to the iPhone and closed all the open apps.  The sync finished almost immediately.

doug

this is what i did, restored as new, started added adding a few things, i found my problem was 3 of my custom ringtones were duplicated, this wasn't a problem with 5.0.1

What I did, since mine was getting stuck on the same thing for what seemed like forever, was uncheck the "sync ringtones" and gave it a few moments and then it finally finished syncing. From there, I went back and re checked the ringtones I wanted to sync and then it finally added them to my device and finished syncing :)

Hope that helps some of you!

I have no ringtones to disconnect, no apps to close, etc; still both my iPad and iPhone keep getting stuck and the same, ever increasing numbers of items (don't know which) are not being syncronizes, the final message says..

I am having a similar problem after upgrading to iPhone 4s.  I had restored by settings from a fresh successful backup and when syncing them to iCloud after restoring my sim contacts my subsequent sync's would hang at final stage.  I unchecked ringtones, deleated photo cache and reuploaded all tones photos and iBooks.  I have no voice memos and that was never checked anyway.  My music and tones reloads every time I sync and, although after ejecting the device at the hang point all looks normal I know this is not good.  How can I determine which file if any are at fault since all was deleated and restored without correcting the problem.  Why do the tones and music reinstall now when they never did before?  Is there a music cache like the photo cache to delete?  I hope I hear some good advice from one of you wise folks. (Win 7 64 bit)

I was having this problem today for the first time. I do not know what introduced this problem, however, Jillovely's suggestion solved this problem for me.

Hello, I was having the same issues. I've tried unchecking the "Photos" and other things, but nothing worked. Finally, Jillovely's solution regarding un-syncing / resyncing "Ringtones" finally worked for me. Thanks so much!!

Thank you!  This was indeed the solution to an odd and pesky problem.

Tried all sort of remedies and it simply does not work. The irony is that my "old" 3GS with an outdated IOS 4 works perfectly, but the new ipad, started from scratch simply does not want to sync (at least does not want to finish syncing). As no logs are available at my knowledge, there is no way to understand what hapens.

PLEASE APPLE SOLVE THIS RECCURING PROBLEM !