iPhone 13 Pro is stuck on "Sync (Step 2 of 4) - Preparing to Sync"

This is a known bug that (yet again) has reared its ugly head with the last round of major updates (iOS, macOS, watchOS). I'm on Ventura as well, but people running Sonoma have had this same issue.

It stems from the running process MDCrashReportTool - the process that gathers the error logs from the iPhone (from app crashes and what not) and ultimately deletes them from the device upon a successful sync. However, something with one of these recent updates has affected that process.

To finish the sync to "completion", use Activity Monitor to find that process name and force-quit it - the iPhone will then skip that step in attempting to transmit the error logs, and proceed onto syncing Contacts and Calendar info. (hence "completion" in quotes, it's not a complete sync as those logs will still be on the iPhone)

Myself (and others) have pointed out that this is seemingly more common amongst those who have an Apple Watch paired with the iPhone. Personally, I wasn't having any sync issues until updating each to iOS 17.2 and watchOS 10.2 (respectively). Once I removed my Apple Watch pairing, syncing the iPhone via USB performed as per usual each and every time the iPhone was connected.

When the Watch was paired again with the iPhone, the sync issue returned.

Advice - fill out a bug report here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone/

The more people who report this, the more likely it will get onto Engineering's radar.

Richard Liu wrote:

Maybe the newest version of Sonoma, for which there isn't a newer one for Ventura, addresses it, but 17.2.1 doesn't.

Apparently it doesn't - reading through other posts (on the same subject), there were plenty of users running Sonoma having this exact same bug.

(I can't update to Sonoma - 2017 Intel iMac here)

That's why given the number of users experiencing this now, something with iOS 17.2 and/or watchOS 10.2 changed and inadvertently triggered this bug.

iPadOS 17.2 is not seemingly subject to this bug - just personally tested it, went from Step 3 (where the troublesome MDCrashReportTool step occurs) to Step 4 (sync Contacts and Calendars) in no time and completed normally:

Considering that Apple Watches are paired only to iPhones (iOS) and not iPads (iPadOS), this is leading many to conclude that something with iOS and/or watchOS is behind this...

Thanks! This (finally!) solved it for me (iOS 17.2.1, MacOS 14.2.1). I filled out the bug report referring to this thread.

Seems to be fixed as of macOS 14.3 and iOS 17.3. But I was also having an issue with the an issue with network errors in Chrome and any Chromium based browser and had to unpair my iPhone in Xcode. I have no idea if they are related. But my iPhone sync is working now.

UPDATE: after 16 minutes backup completed normally. Backups after this now take <7 minutes - process still hangs, but only for a minute or two. Not too bad.

About on par with my 10 year old iMac, though I fully expected this process to fly on a Mac Studio M2 Max.

Is your Spotlight (drive indexing) working? I constantly had problems with Spotlight not properly indexing drives for search and the same day I fixed that problem (after macOS 14.3 and iOS 17.3 updates), sync began to work again. These two issues may be related.

In the Terminal app you can force Spotlight to re-index using these four commands. Do not change the name of the volume "data" in the Terminal command, that will automatically clear Spotlight on "data" partition no matter what the volume is actually named.

sudo mdutil -E /

sudo mdutil -i on /

sudo mdutil -i on /System/Volumes/Data

sudo mdutil -E /System/Volumes/Data

HOW TO EXERCISE CONTROL OVER SPOTLIGHT INDEXING ON YOUR MAC

https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/39844-how-to-exercise-control-over-spotlight-indexing/

macOS Sonoma spotlight search does not find applications

macOS Sonoma spotlight search does not fi… - Apple Community

I had the same problem syncing my iPhone and stalled at step 2. I can vouch for the step of Force Quitting the MDCrashReportTool in Activity Monitor and watching the syncing finish to completion after doing it. I did have a first gen Apple Watch which I removed from the account just recently to enable certain security features and have iOS 17.2.1 M1 Max with Sonoma 14.2.1.

I spent two and a half hours with support and it was in vain. I even talked with two supervisors. I'm a MacOS 14 user, so I don't even have iTunes, and if both Windows with iTunes and MacOS are having the same problem and everyone has iOS 17, I don't understand how Apple Support can't realize they need to fix iOS.

I tried switching the Watch off and that didn't work, only the force quitting of MDCrashReportTool worked... but then oh boy, not all my music is syncing even though I have specifically selected all music and have plenty space. Tried with less albums and the same thing happened. Support went as far as telling me that it was because it wasn't music bought at Apple Music (none of my music is so not even one track should have gone through in that case). I'm so going back to Windows and Android if this doesn't get fixed soon.

How long did you give it before force-quitting MDCrashReportTool?

One of the recent updates seemingly fixed it (on my end, at least). The initial sync (when first connecting via USB) does appear to hang at Step 3 at first, but after waiting about 5 minutes or so, the process finished automatically to completion without the need to access Activity Monitor.

Thank you!! This works for me. Filled out a bug report. Hopefully they fix this.

Same problem here as well. Going to file the bug report now.