iOS 5 Wireless iTunes sync..Not really wireless or what?

warewulf wrote:

One thing I was wondering:

Will this only work if the PC you're using has wireless? I have my pc plugged into the router with a cable, but the router is wireless. Wireless works fine on my wife's PC and my phone. Maybe the PC that itunes is installed on has to have wireless? Kind of pointless if you already have it hooked up wired.

No, in theory, the phone should sync connecting straight to the router. No wireless PC connection needed.

Update: syncing half works, half doesn't for me. Last night's wireless sync was interesting. I downloaded an update to my TomTom app over wifi, which previously wasn't possible. That sucker's 2 GB, so in the past, I would have gotten a warning that I needed to sync the update over a cable. Of course, that also meant the sync took a few hours, but at least it happened overnight, while I slept.

The button was greyed out this morning, but restarting iTunes and rebooting my iPhone re-enabled it. However, clicking sync didn't do much; iTunes would go through the motions of performing a sync, but nothing actually synced. I had cleared out all my playlists because of the TomTom download, so in order to get 600 songs back onto my phone, I had to do a cabled sync.

I started an audiobook this morning, so there won't be a whole lot of syncing in my immediate future. But I definitely agree with warewulf, this update seems a little rushed.

Update (and a cautionary tale):

So far the trick I posted yesterday of going nuclear on itunes still allows itunes to see the devices over wifi, but now that I had a bit of time to try syncing over wifi, I have to suggest that it was a feature that was rushed and the error correction/handling is not enough or non existent.... Which in my case took my ipod offline for 5 hours today as I had to essentially do a "factory reset".

My library consists of 11,000 songs on my ipod touch 4th gen 64gb, along with several dozen podcasts. Last night I played a few of the newly downloaded podcasts on my PC, downloaded a few more, deleted a few, and this time I went to do a wireless sync. It got stuck on step 1 of 6 on the PC and the ipod was stuck on step 3 of 4 for what seemed like 10 minutes. I tried to abort but the only thing that seemed to snap it out of whatever mode it was in was to reboot the ipod. The sync did eventually finish last night after a bit of prodding but this morning I was horrified when I couldn't play a single song from the ipod, from the play list, from an artist or from the song list itself.

I had to bring my laptop in to work today, and while it was locked away in a cabinet, wipe all music, podcasts and movies from the ipod --- OVER THE CABLE THIS TIME --- then proceed to put them all back on (5 hours later).... So far, the ipod is behaving itself, but given the trouble wifi sync is giving me and how easily it could pooch the music library database on the ipod, I'll stay old school for now.

I may brave the wifi sync in the future if apple decides to think outside the box and put in a useful feature such as "fix errors / rebuild the ipod's music database", that essentially would do the equivalent of a factory reset without doing the full wipe/re-copy of the 50gig of media that are not corrupted. I also had previous genius updates (in ios 4 with the previous itunes version) fail due to "not enough memory" error, and after restarts, it would work the second time, but the thumbnail artwork would show genius playlists instead of the album cover on some albums. Such a "fix/rebuild" feature that would also unconditionally rebuild artwork on the device would have saved me similar grief there as well...

I had this problem when i got my phone recently. I read soemthing about old registries being messed up from auto matic updates and it recommended me to download a cleaner for that and after fixing the old registries and the usual check the "sync over wifi" box and rebooted my laptop, everything worked.

Here's the link to the article I read: http://cnx.com/?p=1612

I don't know if this will work for everybody, but I tried a lot of other methods such as restoring phone, uninstall and reinstall itunes, update firmware, and other things. This was the only solution that worked for me and was quick and easy. Hope this helps

I had the exact same problem. iPhone 4, iOS 5, Windows 7. Eventually it worked for me. My laptop was connected the same router as my iPhone but was using both wired and wireless connections (My docking station is pluged into the network cable also). I disconnected the wired cable and now I can sync my iPhone over Wi-Fi. What is a puzzle for me is the fact that both my wired and wireless connection are over the same router and have the same IP 192.x.x.

Here's what worked for me in Windows7 32 Bit:

1. Go to Add/Remove programs.
2. Right click 'iTunes' in the program list, and click repair.
3. Restart your PC
4. Restart iDevice by Pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until the red "slide to power off" slider appears, and then slide the slider. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears to turn device back on. (I'm not sure if you need to restart your iDevice, but I did anyway)
5. Plug in iDevice to PC (just this once).
6. After device shows up in iTunes, and make sure that 'Sync with this iPod over Wi-Fi' is checked.
7. Press the sync button in iTunes. (This step may not be necessary)
8. IMPORTANT: DO NOT EJECT DEVICE! Merely UNPLUG USB cable from device or PC WITHOUT ejecting.

Your device should now stay visible in iTunes even after unplugging USB cable, and any time in the future when your PC and device is turned on & connected to the same network. (If your PC is put to sleep or hibernate, you may have to restart iTunes.)

You can now go on device to Settings>General>iTunes Wi-Fi Sync and tap 'Sync Now'.

It is not necessary for device to be connected to power in order to wirelessly sync. This misconception comes from what you see written in device (by Settings>General>iTunes Wi-Fi Sync) “Automatically sync with iTunes…when your iDevice is plugged in to power and connected to Wi-Fi”, but let me explain.

Your iDevice will AUTOMATICALLY sync when plugged in to power, but you can still tap “Sync Now” and do a MANUAL sync while not being plugged into power.

And my dear Apple.

If we need to repair or restart anything, please let us know beforehand, as to spare us future grief.

Good luck PNGC and all you out there, how this works for you.

Why does my iTunes doesn't show the "Allow Sync over Wi-Fi" option?

I triedgruber1401 suggestion, didn't help at all for me.

What did do it though -- I had Spy Dr w/ Antivirus installed. I removed that and installed a different AV program (Symantec Endpoint Corporate), and it started working right away.

Even though I got it working, my best advice as an IT support rep is to not waste too much time trying to get this to work. It's still a very new feature, probably won't work reliably until the next itunes update.

pegaudet - My ios5 upgrade went similar to your problem with corrupting the device -- It would fail on backup, and I kept trying it, it eventually wiped my phone with NO backup... Thanks Apple! Makes me miss my android phone. 😠

Windows7 Users

I was having the same issues.

Go to Start Menu.

Type in iCloud.

Under Control Panel click iCloud.

The rest is obvious.

Good Luck

I followed all the instructions in the previous posts, checking firewall, resetting router, powering off phone/computer, manually syncing with cable, etc. all to no avail. Then I finally removed Itunes from my computer and reinstalled it and wi-fi sync works like a charm now.

Thanks to all for the suggestions.

Did all suggested but not worked. Finally went to Settings on iDevice and choose your own network arrow and tap on "Forget this Network"". Reconnect again to your own network and enter your preset passkey. And wheehey! it worked thereafter. Hope this may help some of u guys.

I am having the same problem as you, but at least I can say that it's possible to hide the pesky newsstand app. All you need to do is:

-Drag an app onto another app to create a folder

-Quickly, hold the newstand icon whist the folder is being created.
If you're quick enough, the newsstand app should drop right into the new folder. It may take you a few goes, but it's fairly simple if you're quick enough. Sorry I couln't help on the main topic but I thought I'd help with this issue, since I know it frustrates a lot of people.

I too had this problem, i done absolutely everything i could... I had the sync over wifi button checked, phone plugged into wifi. I had also checked my firewall settings to see if itunes and apple were allowed and they were. I was really coming to the end of my tether so i decided to turn off avg firewall to see if this made a difference and it did. It seems though even itunes was allowed access it still wouldnt allow it, so i have not got avast and it works no problem. Even although u think youve done everything it is within your best interests to turn off your firewall, sync idevice while connected to computer and then take it out and it will still be there, trust me it works

Thank you Radiv78, that finally worked for me.

Wifi sync had stopped working on both my iPhone 4 and iPad 1. It started working again after upgrading to iTunes 10.5.1 and iOS 5.01.

Yeah! This worked for me too! Hope no more problems anymore.

p.s: Using Windows XP (SP3) and Ipod Touch.