iPhone 15 Plus stuck in “Preparing To Sync"

One option to get Apple to react might be to report here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

If all people that looked at this thread would do that (currently more than 5.000), there is a chance ...

This also happened on my Mac and the force quit of MDCrashReportTool fixed it too.

I had the same problem with my iPhone XR but I just updated to iOS 17.3 and the issue didn't occur with my first iPhone backup/sync after the update. Looks like the issue might be resolved.

I'm having the same issue. It affected my iPhone 15 Pro after updating to IOS 17.2. For some reason though, my iPhone 12 still work (as per the last time I synced).

I chatted with Apple Support this morning and asked if they were aware of the issue. According to the information I was given, they said they are aware of the issue.

Hopefully this gets fixed soon. I rely heavily on my music daily, so it's not great that my new iPhone is having issues.

Marc Marshall wrote:

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.

My programming days are long gone, and I’m no expert but:

I would have thought the tool is only invoked or launched in response to an error - its purpose is to send crash reports to Apple. So something returns a non zero code immediately the “Preparing to Sync” step starts, which launches the tool which hangs. The Sync clearly doesn’t crash, but something causes the tool to run and, as you say, something in it isn’t working. Or, it’s this particular invocation that causes the problem, in other circumstances the tool works fine. Just guessing. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And I could be totally wrong.

Apple must know about this issue and it’s disconcerting that they don’t seem able to solve the problem(s).

Good lord THANK YOU for this. My mac is 10yrs old and I'm NOT reinstalling or upgrading anything Apple. This issue just started for me and force-quitting "MDCrashReportTool" fixes it. I'm going to write a script because yes, literally EVERY TIME this needs to be done in order to sync my iPhone.

Thanks you again!

Hello Apple? Are you there? It's us, the users.

It helped me, thank you!

Also I performed a few additional steps before sync attempts:

-switched off my apple watch

-deleted all music from the iPhone

After restoring all music back I noticed the same issue 'all greyed tracks in the music' in my watches. Solution was much easier rather than trying to sync MacBook with iPhone, I just deleted all music from the watches and added it again through watch application in the phone.

And I was disappointed to discover that new music app in watches doesn't allow anymore to switch music between different playlists on your phone. The only thing you can do in the phone with watches is to control music in current playlist.

I went to Apple text support and linked this thread to them. The person I was chatting with said that this is a known bug. However, the more people talk about it, the more likely Apple is to fix it, so thank you for posting.

Ron_NJ wrote:

fantaisie-impromptu wrote:

The thread has basically narrowed it down to it being an AppleWatch issue. However, people shouldn't have to give up using their AppleWatch or stopping system processes to use the sync feature. I have an S6 so it seems that this has to do with multiple AppleWatch models.

Hi fantaisie... I am not certain I would call this an Apple Watch issue due to the number of reports of issues by non-watch owners. However, let's say you are correct and it is due to Apple Watch sync issues. Would you agree there are really two issues? The first is the sync between devices that raised an error. The second is the error reporting tool (MSCrashReportTool) that stalls when trying to report the error to Apple Developers.

-R.

Hi both, Regarding issue #1, I think it could possibly point to a Watch log and diagnostic data problem in the sync.

That of course might not have been the trigger in previous incarnations of the problem - something in iOS 17.2 kicked this off.

I’ve noticed posts that don’t mention a Watch, and posts that do mention a Watch; but I haven’t noticed anyone specifically say they have this problem but they don’t have a Watch and therefore the problem cannot be Watch related.

Unless I’m wrong again and missed something……..

Northern-Survivor wrote:

Hi both, Regarding issue #1, I think it could possibly point to a Watch log and diagnostic data problem in the sync. That of course might not have been the trigger in previous incarnations of the problem - something in iOS 17.2 kicked this off.

I’ve noticed posts that don’t mention a Watch, and posts that do mention a Watch; but I haven’t noticed anyone specifically say they have this problem but they don’t have a Watch and therefore the problem cannot be Watch related. Unless I’m wrong again and missed something……..

Northern-Survivor, you may be onto something. While initially I was going to claim to have tested without a watch, the reality is that the first time a sync stalled for me is when I had a connected watch. Thereafter, I disconnected it and retested with a similar result. I now realize if the issue is syncing remnants left behind from when the watch was connected, such data may still be in play. What a mess!!!

-R.

Thanks for the solution! Using a Mac mini (m2) and this synced perfectly with my iPad Air (gen 5) and iPhone SE (gen 2). However, my new iPhone 15 refuses to sync without following the MDCrashReportTool force quit procedure. Works every time but not ideal…

f-i. A bit more about iPhone backups .

You said “Whether I choose backup or sync it prompts the five step”. Are you choosing “Back Up Now”. ?

Whether you select “backup to ICloud “ or “ backup to this Mac”. , backups can be triggered either by selecting:

/ “Back Up Now” - in which case a backup ( and only a backup) will start without showing a ‘step’ number. Beneath the progress bar it simply says “Backing up IPhone “. (Which can take several minutes) .

If that prompts five steps then it works differently in French.

or by selecting:

/ “Sync” - in which case a backup will be the second step of the 5 step sync. - And you already know that doesn’t work. And skipping the backup step doesn’t help.

So don’t click on “sync”

Bonne Année .

fantaisie-impromptu wrote:

That's the thing, I can't manually add anything :/

Why not? What happens, or what doesn’t happen? In the Music app If drag n drop doesn’t work for you - right click on a song (or selected songs) and choose “add to device “

@fantaisie-impromptu, I had the same answers from Apple senior advisor support. What they said is great except updating OS, I do not believe its an OS issue. I am very much convinced that its an iOS problem. Here is my proof.

Before the iOS 17.2 update I used to sync my iPhone a dozen times per week, and I never had any issues. It all started with iOS 17.2 and up, and I am still running High Sierra. I thought that my OS 10.13.6 was outdated and no longer supports syncing with the latest iOS, but after reading this post, where so many people have syncing issues with Sonoma, Ventura, and other OS I drew a conclusion: it's an iOS problem!

Besides the syncing, there are a few other needs to be updated, like the Transparency Mode, Siri dialing people from the contact list without a prompt. I will not go into details about them as these issues are not related to this topic.

No, there is confusion, this is a pretty long thread and a lot of posts, so I'll do my best to make this as coherent as possible.

Part 1:

I have two MacBooks (MacBook Pro 2015, and MacBook Pro M3). My MacBook Pro 2015 only runs up to Monterey. I noticed the sync issue then when I tried to sync with my MacBook. I thought it could have been a Monterey issue.

When I got my MacBook Pro M3, I saw that the sync issue persisted (Sonoma). So I knew that this wasn't likely to be a macOS issue, but rather an iPhone related issue.

I only sync my iPhone 15 with my new Mac, as syncing with two Macs would just cause all sorts of headaches and it wasn't intended to be done.

Part 2:

As for manually copying music. It doesn't allow me to manually copy music (by selecting 'copy to device') if music management is turned on in Finder. Once it is turned off in Finder, it works perfectly (I tried it on my iPad, since I don't want to risk messing up my iPhone music library before there is a fix for it). It not syncing by selecting 'copy to device' makes sense if the music management is being managed in the Finder, so it wouldn't allow music to be added outside of the Finder.

Part 3:

As for the iPhone Sync, there are two options in the Finder. (Backup now, and Synchronize). Hitting either one initiates the 5 steps. The only difference (if I remember correctly) is that hitting 'synchronize' allows the option to skip the backup. So either way, it has to go through the sync process, where it gets stuck as mentioned in this thread.

To be fair, I don't really remember what the difference between 'backup now' and 'synchronize' is because I haven't done a manual backup in a while (my devices have hundreds of gb worth of data). I think I will try the two options with my old iPhone 12 on my old MacBook 2015. (Since the iPhone 12 has about 15gb of data and I can confirm it syncs correctly, given that my AppleWatch isn't paired).

This issue just became a rollercoaster of confusion. Hopefully, the above cleared it up. Regardless, the issue is still what the thread is about. Considering this thread is nearly up to 19k views, I have hope that this issue will be fixed soon.