iPhone 15 Plus stuck in “Preparing To Sync"

I have updated all my iOS to 10.3 on watch, iOS to 17.3 on phone 15 pro max, and iPads.and my MacBook air to Sonoma 14.3. I have for experiment added artwork, added a new song to my songs. My system is now properly updating without having to go to the crash tool. I was hesitant to post this, but now , can say it has resolved my syncing problem. Hopefully, we can see a whole bunch of you, having updated all your devices to the latest, see that the problem is resolved, just like for me. After updating all the latest , I rebooted my Studio Mac, my phone, my watch.

Completely disable all crash reporting 1. on your Mac (Settings-Security&Privacy-Privacy-Analytics&Improvement, and 2. on the iphone in Settings-Privacy&Security-Analytics&Improvement and there will be peace from that bug!

yes forcing the quit is nice but how many average users understand how to use the kill? this is an effective solution but just a work around.

open a terminal window:

ps -ef | grep -i MDCrashReportTool | grep -v grep

501 53766 53717   0  7:21AM ??         0:00.07 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/Current/AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app/Contents/Resources/MDCrashReportTool --pipe 9 16

% kill -5 53766 ( your PID will be different)

%

triple zut. This was fixed with Sonoma 14.3 and is broken again with 14.3.1 so it's back to force quitting the MDCrashReportTool in the Activity monitor.

and another bug report too.

@ mlb32704, the same here, but... my suggestion is to wait for 15-20 minutes or even longer and it will eventually sync. I tested it a few times. But, if you don't have time or patience, quit MDCrashReportTool. You don't have to force quit, it will sync right away.

I recently replaced my iPhone SE 2 with an iPhone 15 Pro. My SE that was having this problem was finally syncing on its own after all the latest updates, however my 15 Pro is having the "stuck in Preparing to Sync" issue. My cure is to unplug the phone while it is stuck and then immediately plug it back in then it goes right into a proper sync. I still have a HUGE Artwork issue as 95% of my 202gb of music has the incorrect artwork assigned to it. This has been going on since before the first of the year and one would think that the brain trust Apple would have fixed it by now, I do hope that they are working on it.

This worked for me. Had to start sync process immediately after quitting MDCrashREportTool.

Same issue here, iPhone 15 Pro Max would not sync with my Macbook Air. xCowboy's fix worked for me!

"The solution was to Open the Activity Monitor app and Force Quit "MDCrashReportTool" "

Not sure how to do quotes..(really apple?? still using 1990s bulletin boards?)

someone mentioned unpairing your watch I did that and it worked..

Will try readding and see what happens for testing..

I set my iPhone 14 Pro in airplane mode and it synced without Problems: IOS: 17.2.1, Mac OS 14.2.1 (23C71) - Sonoma, iMac intel Core i7.

17.3 update helped for me,, plus updating my Sonoma. No more going to Activity Monitor and the CrashReporter tool. I tested it out also by adding some music.

I do have an update:

I've reached out to Apple Support and sent them this thread. I asked if they're aware of the situation and if they are taking action to rectify it. For the record, this is kind of a long one, but they are very nice so 10/10 with customer service. Here is the condensed version:

AS: Just to be sure, your Music is not syncing between your iPhone and your MacBook, correct?

Me: Yes that’s correct.

AS: Thanks for confirming! I will be more than happy to help! Here is our plan, I will be asking some questions and be providing some steps, if they don't work we will continue with a call with my senior advisor, sounds good?

Me: Actually, if you could be so kind as to look at this Apple Forum thread: Stuck in “Preparing To Sync. This seems to be a major issue with many users. I would like to know if Apple is aware of this issue and if they are taking steps to correct it.

AS: Got it! I'm checking it, please allow me a second.

Me: Yes, of course. Please, take your time.

AS: Does it start working once you force quit the MD Crash report Tool?

Me: I haven’t tried it, as I’m not comfortable quitting a system process. However, some users state that they repeatedly plug and unplug their iPhone to get the MDTool to stop. I did try that method a while ago and it did work. People have found a few ways to get the MDTool to stop, but this isn’t a permanent solution.

AS: Thank you so much for letting us know! I will be adding this to my notes and submit it as a feedback for the next MacOS updates. If you want you can also submit this feedback to our web page Product Feedback - Apple. We have a team here at Apple, whose entire job is dedicated to reviewing this feedback, this feedback is escalated to our engineers team and they ad the patch in the security updates

Me: Okay, if you could please escalate this issue to the engineers, I would greatly appreciate it. As many of us would like to sync our music.

AS: Sure! I can see that this has been already reported so our engineers team is already working on a solution. I will add this case for their investigation. Just for documentation purposes, could you please confirm the MAcOS version running on your MacBook?

Me: MacBook: Sonoma 14.2.1, iPhone: 17.2.1, AppleWatch: 10.2 | I included the other devices as other users also seem to have issues syncing the Mac and have stated that the syncing works if they unpair their AppleWatch.

AS: Perfect! Thank you so much added it to the notes.

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As stated above, if these sorts of software issues are fixed through security patches, we may not have to wait for an update. As don't security patches get downloaded and are apart from MacOS updates?

I put my iPhone 15 Pro Max on airplane mode. Syncing finished in less than 2 minutes.

Try syncing over USB, not wifi. (It may help if "show on wifi" is not checked in the Finder).

When (or if) the sync stalls disconnect the USB cable and reconnect after 2 or 3 seconds.

The sync should then restart, if it doesn't click on "Sync".

hitlength wrote:

The absolute craziest bs thing is that MDCrash wasn't running in my Activity monitor when I started the process. Probably turned off from the last time I did this and synced my phone yesterday. Everything ran smoothly... the backup and whatnot. Then when the process got to "Preparing to sync" that's when MDCrashReport activated in the activity monitor.

There's nothing "crazy" or "BS" about what you're seeing; MDCrashReportTool is launched by the sync process to do just what is says it in the title--report details of a crash from Mobile Devices (that's what "MD" stands for). By definition, it's only run when you're doing a sync and the sync process wants to report something, so of course you'll never see it running other than when you start a sync.

The issue is that something in it isn't working, so while it launches, it hangs indefinitely instead of completing (or timing out), so the sync is stuck waiting for it to finish and never completes.

Like hundreds of other background processes, it's always been there launching in the background when you do a sync, it's just that it usually completes and closes itself in a brief moment, and you're not carefully watching for it, so you aren't aware of it.

This is why others here are debating renaming the file: If the sync process can't find it, it can't launch it, and it can't get stuck.