How to force an iPhone to eject

Sorry, I meant to tell you that the force-quit to reboot the Finder didn't solve the problem.

The antivirus is off.

I'm trying to avoid the hard restart. That used to be the only way to solve this problem on older Macs. I expect the M1 to not have this problem. The only good thing is that on the older Mac, when I had this problem, the fan would kick in and never turn off.

And it's not just an inconvenience because it's hurting my battery performance because the Finder is always using significant energy trying to sync endlessly.

I used the power button to force shut it down. When the Mac restarted, it saw the iPhone and started trying to sync with it again. And it's been in the loop syncing for about seven hours.

Sorry, not iTunes. It's the Music app.

Here's the phone connect in Music and will not eject.

Here the phone in the sidebar. It won't eject from there either.

Connecting the USB cable has solved this in the past but not this week.

I don't see an option for wifi sync in Music.

Is this what you're referring to? The settings' load is stuck.

Restarted the phone … didn't help.

Turned off all security & antivirus … didn't help.

Can't shut down the Mac because the Finder is stuck trying to sync the iPhone.

I closed the Finder from Activity Monitor. The device is still trying to sync and still cannot be ejected

There used to be a process that you could stop in Activity Monitor that would stop the stuck sync. But I don't remember what the process is. Do you know what it is?