wi-fi sync not working

Go to System Preferences > Network and under Locations (at the top) click "Edit Locations" and add a New location, then click done. Once the new location is set, make sure you click "Apply" at the bottom right of Network Preferences.

Close iTunes, reboot your iPhone, make sure both the phone and the Mac are on the same wi-fi network and open iTunes to see if the iPhone has reappeared.

This is assuming you're using a Mac

Correzpond wrote:

Itunes appears to try using iPv4 connections when iPv6 is not available (i.e the devices will initially & temporarily show-up in iTunes with iPv6 disabled), but it seems iPv6 connectivity is necessary to maintain stable connections to multiple devices.

Interesting...that sounds like the symptom I'm seeing in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5865335. The phone shows for about 10 seconds then disappears. Also I have found that I generally cannot ping any of our iOS 7 devices unless they do something on the network. I have uninstalled my antivirus/firewall software and disabled Windows Firewall to test and still was unable to connect so it's not a firewall issue for me.

So this theory could explain why some people report a different router fixes it, if their old router wasn't passing IPv6 packets between wireless and wired devices, for instance.

If you want to work on Windows iTunes sync via Wi-Fi, in any case, do not install iCloud! Tested on 100% ... If you have already found it necessary to take down and clean the registry!

Ditto. ipod appears in itunes for about 5-10 seconds, then disappears. Pinging all other devices on my network shows 0% loss, EXCEPT for the **** ipod, which returns the "Destination Host Unreachable" message. Using a D-Link DIR-655 router. Also, the ipod reappears briefly anytime I am performing any internet-accessing activity on it.

SteveYates wrote:

Correzpond wrote:

Itunes appears to try using iPv4 connections when iPv6 is not available (i.e the devices will initially & temporarily show-up in iTunes with iPv6 disabled), but it seems iPv6 connectivity is necessary to maintain stable connections to multiple devices.

Interesting...that sounds like the symptom I'm seeing in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5865335. The phone shows for about 10 seconds then disappears. Also I have found that I generally cannot ping any of our iOS 7 devices unless they do something on the network. I have uninstalled my antivirus/firewall software and disabled Windows Firewall to test and still was unable to connect so it's not a firewall issue for me.

So this theory could explain why some people report a different router fixes it, if their old router wasn't passing IPv6 packets between wireless and wired devices, for instance.

The posts from @jdriscol and @SteveYates prompted me to look at the IPv6 settings for my Wi-Fi interface.

On Mavericks, I went into System Preferences -> Network -> Wi-Fi -> Advanced -> TCP/IP, and then noticed that the setting for "Configure IPv6" was set to "Manual" with empty fields.

I changed the value to "Link-local only" and noticed some minutes later that both my iPad and iPhone were now appearing (and syncing) in iTunes. Setting it to "Automatic" also worked. I have a recent "Airport Express" router.

I seem to recall having explicitly turned off IPv6, mostly due to an old bug in a router. Perhaps because I had done that, these devices weren't too happy. Syncing is working now for me.

The wi-fi settings to which you're referring, is that in your router? I don't believe my router is even IPv6 capable, as it's several years old.

Nope, the settings I changed were in System Preferences, so on my Mac.

I only mentioned my router because an old, unrelated router bug *may* have been a reason I turned off IPv6 on my Mac. Turning IPv6 back on my Mac did solve the problem.

I tried several times what you wrote, but unfortunately my iPad 3 always disappeared from iTunes anyways when it tried to sync over Wi-Fi, the progress circle froze, until recently I have made a tweak in Services.msc, in case if it helps someone using Windows 7.

As we all know that Services sets individual start options by default usually either to Automatic or Manual, or Automatic Delay Start, so when Windows starts, it kind of won't be overloaded with CPU usage and RAM, to give some time room between.

I noticed that Apple Mobile Device is set to Automatic respectively, then I thought what if there is certain timeout which kicks in almost at once and closes further progress of syncing. I chose Automatic Delay-Start . And Voilà! :) Sync over Wi-Fi works as it should.

1. Services.msc type in Run command or search it.

2. Right Mouse Button on Apple Mobile Device

3. Click on properties

4. Set start options to Automatic Delay Start

5. Click Apply

Keep your iPhone/ iPad/ iPod plugged in to Power. It will always show up in iTunes.

Yes, this seems to have solved my iTunes no syncing with iOS devices problem, as well!

My sync over WiFi stopped when I upgraded to Mavericks. I had turned off IPv6 a long time ago for some reason. When I reset IPv6 to Automatic, my iOS devices quickly appeared in iTunes over WiFi.

I've never been able to get this feature to work reliably until I followed the advice in this post and created rules to specifically enable these TCP and UDP ports in Windows Firewall. Once I did this and restarted iTunes my iPhone suddenly (magically) displayed the Sync Now option.

Thank you!

Agree with others, this functionality is extremely buggy and has been since launch. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, sometimes it works for awhile then stops. I would think the Apple team needs to spend more time working through this code to get it right and ensure the proper OS-level firewall rules are managed for both Windows and Mac OS, but I don't imagine this is exactly high on the priority list unfortunately.

Since these "support" forums are really just a free-for-all chock full of misinformation and users who are not qualified to provide useful advice, I'll just mark this as helpful and hope anyone else having this problem finds it. Thanks OP!