Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

Edit to my previous post:

So, just for kicks I tried skipping ahead to step 6 and 7 that I just posted before doing numbers 4 and 5... and it worked. So, at least this time, there was no need to remove the music from the phone first, all I had to do is delete the data for Music on my phone (which did not actually delete any music or free up space), and then re-sync the phone. Everything is now working properly again.

So, the real steps:

1. Go into my settings on my phone. Go to Settings > General > Usage.
2. Tap into Music, swiping left on Music, and deleting the information there. (Your music will still be on your phone but something magic happened behind the scenes).
3. Sync the iPhone with iTunes.

Can anyone else replicate this? I'm hoping it's not just me.

A few things I think are key before syncing your music are the following:

• always connecting to your PC, not over wi-fi
• turning off wi-fi/blue-tooth altogether when syncing
• closing all running apps and settings when syncing
• NEVER have Genius on

I have added several cds over the last few months and this has worked for me every time...First, I do the things listed above and then I start by backing up to my PC. Once my 5S is backed up, I sync (manually manage music is selected). It syncs like it used to before I started having these issues (once I installed iOS 7 😟) with the exception of one thing, I get a warning message saying that certain songs could not be synced. This is where I click on the "on this iphone" tab at the top right and I scroll through to see which songs have the dotted circle next to them. It is SO random as to which songs they are (and the number of songs), it changes each time I sync and it's never the same song(s). Once I review this (not really doing anything) I go back to the main summary and sync again. It goes through the sync process (fairly quick) and then "magically" it puts all the songs back on including anything new I added at the time with no issues and no warnings. I double check my phone to see that the songs are there and they play just to be sure but I have not found any issues. I have never needed to do anything with playlists to have this work either.

Like I said, this has worked for ME consistently over the last several months, every time. It may not work for everyone. I think there is some sort of issue with iOS 7 and iTunes and how they talk to each other. Using wi-fi when syncing really seems to send it into this "waiting for changes to be applied" issue. Once I turned it off, that is when things started falling into place. Granted, I should not get a warning on the first sync and need to sync again but I can live with it rather than restoring my phone to new every time I want to add music. I do have a large music collection and I think everyone who has a large collection will experience these same issues. The last thing I will say is that I won't be upgrading to iOS 8 anytime soon after the issues I had with this.

Good luck, hope this helps someone, somewhere!

I'm facing this same hiccup. After updating my iTunes to 11.1, and iPhone 4S to iOS 7, my apps and tones are syncing fine, but my music just isn't syncing.

iTunes just get stuck at "Waiting for changes to be applied", and after a while the status moves to "Canceling Sync". And after 4 hours, it is still canceling sync!

I have tried resets on the phone and restarts on the laptop, hasn't helped. I've even tried to un-sync and re-sync, restore factory settings, sync with cable and over wifi, and also tried to sync it to iTunes on a different laptop. No go.. It is still "waiting for changes to applied", followed by "canceling sync".

I haven't tried adding my music to a new playlist, and then un-syncing and resyncing though.

I'm not sure how that is different from un-syncing and re-syncing without the playlist bit.

I'll give it shot anyhoo, and if it works, I will worship you!

Same issue here but I have a workaround.

To install iOS 7 i was prompted to free up 3.5GB space so I wiped my 4S using 'Delete all data and settings' then set it back up as a new iPhone 4S and ran the update which completed fine.

All Apps sync fine.

Selected Photo folders sync fine.

No Music will sync (or that's what I thought)

On the 'Summary' tab I unticked everything in the 'Options' section

I then went to the 'Music' tab and clicked on 'Selected playlists' then selected a small playlist with 100 tracks and info flashed past quickly, (I noticed one bit of info that said, 'determining tracks to sync') but it got past the 'Waiting for changes to be applied' and the music synced.

I then added a playlist with 2500 songs and it appeared stuck at, 'Waiting for chages to be applied' for about 3-4 minutes but then suddenly started to sync so I think the issue is more that iOS 7, (or iTunes 11.1.0.126) is reading info from each individual file and only starting the sync once this has completed.

So try syncing playlists back in increasing size, (I have 54GB music on my 4S) then be prepared to just leave it for several hours for the rest of your music to sync.

I tried with a playlist of 19 songs, and it worked.. The 19 songs got synced to my phone..

I have created another playlist with around 3000 songs, I'll leave it overnight to see how it goes..

There is one thing, I think the sync goes for a toss when your phone gets locked with a passcode. When you are syncing it, change the auto-lock on your phone's Settings -> General to "never", and maybe for good measure deactivate your passcode lock as well. Illogical, maybe, but worth a shot.. You can always reactivate all that later.

Lilinss - When you tried to sync your apps, were you trying to sync them from your computer to your phone, or the other way?

When your phone is connected to iTunes, under iPhone -> Apps tabs, press Alt+F, go to Devices and click on Transfer Purchases from iPhone, see if that works for you

I figured it out!!! Or at least I figured out what worked for me... I took someone's advice on putting auto-lock to never and removing my passcode to make it easier on the syncing process. Didn't work, but I left those settings like that. Then I held the home button and power button together. The screen turns black, and you keep holding the buttons down together until the Apple logo appears on the screen (hard reset, no loss of data). Then I sync again, it said waiting for chagnes to be applied, and about ten seconds later it started to sync all of my songs. I still don't know whether or not the passcode has any effect, but I know that a hard reset did it for me. Hope all is well, and I hope this helps out and alleviates the problems of many!!!

P.S. - It seems that a hard reset is fixing many problems assoicated with the iOS 7 update. A hard reset seems to be needed after the update.

Don't forget to double-press the home button and close down all running apps before trying again if you have the issue.

In iOS 7 you double-press hold down the app above the icon and swipe UP not click on the wobbly icon as in iOS 6.

I now have 54GB music back on my 4S.

same problem overhere, sometimes it works but most of the times not. When it works it doenst sync my whole library en when i try to sync the rest it only deletes the ones that where already on there.....

Like yax412 , adding all songs to a playlist worked for me as well.

I highlighted all of the songs I wanted to sync, right-clicked > add to playlist, and selected the playlist that appeared automatically with the name of my iPhone. Voila! All songs synced. Next, I unchecked a few songs, synced with success, checked the songs again and synced again with success.

For anyone stuck at infinite "Waiting for changes to be applied", after you've given up after many hours of frustration and unplugged your phone or Touch, what do you see when you plug the device back in and look at the number of songs on the device? For me, I see that out of (say) 2000 songs that were supposed to copy (and did copy per watching the iTunes progress indicator) in the single playlist I synced, perhaps 584 show up on the device. When I look at it in iTunes, the space the missing songs take up is displayed as "Other", and that memory is lost; subsequent syncs don't help. I've restored iOS 7 several times, and this has been the result each time. I have found a fix for it, but I sure don't like it. It turns out syncing music works right only if I don't restore my last iCloud backup from iOS 6, which means I lose all my settings when I move to iOS 7. The initial upgrade from iOS 6 ended up spontaneously losing all my music after a few hours of using it, which is how I first discovered the sync problem. I'm worried now that this rot will develop over time as I install apps and change settings even if I don't restore my iCloud backup. I guess the only way to know is to try it.

As for troubleshooting the sync problem, I've done all the weird suggestions I found, like deleting my two voice memos. I've also reset the device (Touch 5th gen) in between steps. I've uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes 11.1 (Windows 7 x64). FWIW, this is a 64 GB Touch, and it was nearly full of music when I started, with about 5-6 GB free. I deleted my primary playlist in which I collect all the music I want to sync and recreated it with many fewer songs, the 2,000 songs I mentioned above. The only benefit of that was to make the experiments go faster, because there's no indication anything went wrong before the final endless "Waiting for changes". Apparently there's no way to debug it with logs or anything like that. I tried running Diagnostics in iTunes, and that causes iTunes to crash immediately in objc.dll.

I tried every suggestions including resetting & restoring mac and iphone without success.

Somehow, I succeded after I tried "manually managing music" option in the summary page. Plz, mess with this and let us know.

i have tried hard reset, restarting itunes, etc but it stays stuck on 'transferring purchases' and then jumps straight to waiting for changes to be applied. what is the solution here? the rest of my music appears but one whole playlist folder refuses to sync

So I pretty much took all the different pieces of advice :

1) I did a hard reset

2) Disabled the auto lock and the passcode

3) Created a playlist of about 20 songs, tried syncing only that playlist and it worked !!

So I created a bigger one with all my music and it's been like 10 min and it's still at "Waiting for changed to be applied". I think I'll live it for about an hour to see if it's stuck at that point again

I uploaded the iTunes 11.1 and did the iOS 7 all in the same day, but I had deleted a few playlists just to clear some space for the iOS 7 update. Come to find out, those same playlists got deleted from my iTunes as well, and even when I went back to create new playlists on iTunes, I can't seem to get them to appear back on my phone. It's driving me bonkers. So the songs/artists/albums I wanted to put on my phone all appear on my phone, but require me to download them from the Cloud which seems stupid, that defeats the point of my syncing them.

I'm quite frustrated and P.O'd by this. Didn't have this problem before the iTunes update.