Can’t sync with iTunes after iOS 17.1.1.update

Once I updated to the latest iPhone version (iOS 17.3), it has been syncing. I will say this....it does look like it's going to get stuck again on "Step 2 of 4", but give it some time and it actually does sync.

I'm on a MacBook Pro with Mac OS Sonoma (14.3), and an iPhone 13 with iOS 17.3.

Yes, it worked!

After installing High Sierra, you have to make sure you also install every security update up to 2020-006. It didn't work for me until I did that.

Now it's alive and syncing…

macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

iTunes 12.8.3.1

iPhone 13 mini / IOS 17.3

Thanks. I have iPhone 14 (17.2.1) which recently stopped syncing new music (possibly after that IOS upgrade) and I followed this and it worked. The update photos is already deselected on mine, but aside from that, pretty much similar process to above.

Just for reference: My iphone 12 with ios 17.3 is syncing music, movies and photos perfectly with itunes 12.10.11.2 on Windows 7 SP1 (bootcamp installation on MacOS 10.12.6 Sierra). I can also back up and restore the iphone with this setup.

I'm running Sonoma 14.3 (iMac M1) and iOS 17.3 (iPhone 14 Pro) and the problem persists. iPhone gets stuck in the sync process and you cannot cancel it. I started noticing this almost two years ago. Killing the MDCrashReportingTool is the only thing I've found to restore order. It's annoying but at least I can do backups again.

Really puzzling why Apple hasn't resolved this after such a long time.

I just got off the phone with a "Senior Advisor" named Joseph. He was a straight up guy and said this is a known problem, it is with the Apple Watch. He had me unpair my watch from my phone and the sync worked perfectly. He was honest enough to say that it is a problem and they are working on it. With that said he said for now you can leave the watch unpaired and sync will work fine or leave it paired and use the MDcrash report workaround. He was disappointed because the last update was supposed to fix the problem. P.S. I am in no way happy with this. but I am happy I got an honest tech.

my iphone will no longer show up in itunes after updating it to 17.3.1

Tried everything, different cables, different versions of itunes, called apple support (they couldn't fix it either), and I know it has to do with 17.3.1 because if I plug an older phone it works just fine. but two phones i have both on 17.3.1 do NOT show up anymore once plugged in and only itunes, if I open photo app or image capture app the phones show up there...... I even just tried wiping my phone and lost everything, because itunes cannot see the phone to restore it from a backup........ this is straight rediciulous considering you wont let me downgrade my iphone back to a previous version because you no longer sign previous versions..... I'm bassically screwed now until you patch it or fix it please....... literally spent hours trying everything, soft reset, restore mode, you name it nothing works. plugged phone into different pc and boom pops up right away. it refuses to work on my macbook itunes that has ALL MY DATA......... and only phones with 17.3.1................ let me downgrade back to 17.2 or something at least................

I’m in the same boat with an older iMac. Have you had any luck?

Thank you, CowKow. PC users may be in luck, but looks like 12.8.3 is the latest available iTunes for macOS:

Apple - Support - Downloads

Btw, I left some feedback comments here:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

Maybe if we all leave some words there… just maybe.

Tried this yesterday unfortunately the iTunes library file is not backwards compatible so you lose you current set up putting us in a worse position 🤦‍♂️ Or am I missing something?