iPhone stuck at Step 3 When Syncing Apple Music

I was hoping and EXPECTING with all the users with this issue the "stuck on preparing to sync" would be fixed in 17.3. It is not. Both disappointing and showing a lack of responisibility for their customers.

Now, in the process of trying to fix this i have made it worse.

My phonwe and outlook always synced esily and as expected. Trying to fix this I di two things: Unchecked sync contacts and tried reset sync. Both several times. When I rechecked sync contacts I get several possible erros. Tonight's : this will change more than 25% of you contacts on this phone. Add 22, delete 191 and something else for 6. I cancelled that.

Is it possible to get back into sync? I am reluctant to try one toime replace contacts on computer from this phone. Can I trust that?

Appreciate any insight. There are several similar threads on this hear so forgive me for posting more than one, but woul dlike visibility to fix this problem.

Thanks.

He is right.

It does not fix anything - at least for a fraction of people.

Yes, it makes it unstuck, but the sync fails with 2 error messages:

"The iPhone "iPhone" cannot be synced because it cannot be found."

and immediately:

"The iPhone "iPhone" cannot be synced. An unknown error occurred (-50)."

Short update. I upgraded my iPhone 13 mini to iOS 17.3, Windows build is now 22631.3007, and the sync with iTunes now happens flawlessly, using the same USB-C to lightning cable. Worth mentioning : the MDCrashReportTool task is still active, according to the Task Manager. Problem seems to be fixed, at least for Windows 11 users.

Well, unfortunately, "Quitting the MDCrashReportTool process in Activity Monitor" did not work for me...I'm running Sonoma 14.3 on my iMac, and have the iPhone 14 PRO (iOS 17.3) plugged into it via a Lightning cable. The Sync still hangs at "step 3 of 5 - Preparing to sync", regardless of whether I click "Skip Backup" or not. I remember the "good old days" when Apple products "just worked"...lately seems like virtually every OS update gives us a little surprise. What happened to Software Quality Assurance, Apple?

I cannot begin to thank you enough dpx! Your suggestion worked perfectly :-) Now, I have no clue why MDCrashReportTool is getting hung, as it is most likely collecting diagnostic information. Still, if it were not for you, the whole bunch of us would be sitting there at step three until 2026! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I called Apple tech support and they could not do anything to fix it. They said they would try to make an update to the software...I have iPhone 14 IOS 17.2.1 and macOS Sonoma 14.1.2.

I tried this and it worked....kind of. It sync some of my music but not all of it...not sure why.

But some music is better than nothing. Thanks Again!

Thank you! Been struggling for days trying to sync. This worked for us too.

Worked for me too! Thanks for the tip.

Thank you so much, I’m trying it now. Hopefully it works :)

Erasing and starting again is a very extreme way of re-syncing your phone. But if it works...

Thank you for your reply! My iPhone 14 Pro was stuck on 3 of 5 and I was like wth is going on so I decided to google and found this thread. I've never had this issue before.

I found the solution in these very same discussion pages. Thought I'd add it to this page as it's obviously prevalent to a lot of us.

Worked for me, thanks so mich. Hope it gets fixed soon.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, this worked beautifully. I just hope it's fixed soon. I just spent the last few hours fighting with it!