Q: iTunes won't sync my music, movies, ringtones... Anything!

You can try to do a restore and retry the sync and see if it completes succesfully.

iOS: How to back up

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766

Right, I understand that.

I'm trying to rule out software corruption on the iPhone by trying to restore from a backup.

A restore does indeed accomplish something in this case as it will help us determine if it's an issue after backup point or not.

Alternatively if you do not wish to do a restore, you can reset the phone to factory settings and setup as a new device and sync everything back to your device.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4137

And as obvious as it sounds, if you have not already updated iTunes, make sure you're running the latest version.

I'm sorry to hear that your not willing to entertain the idea of this troubleshooting step.

Having the same problem since the iOS 6 update.  Restore did not help.

I just had the same problem with my iPhone 5.  For me, unchecking "Sync Movies" in the iTunes/iPhone/Movies pane, then clicking "Apply", then rechecking "Sync Movies" and clicking "Apply" again, caused the movies to transfer correctly.  Good luck.

UPDATE:  This also worked for songs that refused to sync.

Hey, I know you posted this 2 months ago, but I have been encountering the same problem with my iPhone 5 not sycing any data. What I have done is completely quit iTunes and then reconnect the iPhone. Hopefully this is helpful,  it worked for me.

I am also having this problem!

Although I have an iPod Touch 4th gen, since I updated to the new iTunes it hasn't sync correctly. Though it says movies and songs etc. that I want to add are on the device, they simply aren't! Every time I watch the sync, with my computer doing nothing else and my iPod only syncing, iTunes either freezes or suddenly declares that the sync is "canceled" and is done. Sometimes both things happen.

I have tried unchecking 'sync movies' etc. as suggested and this didn't work for me. I've tried various managements of sync options; none of which have worked for me.

I've been heavily considering backing up and just reseting the iPod but I continue to hear this won't work either.

I'm becoming more and more frustrated!

Make sure you don't have "Manually Manage Music and Videos" checked. Unchecking that worked for me.

So basically i went to the device sync settings tab thing and went to "Summary" tab, scrolled all the way down to where it says "options" in bold and clicked the "Sync only checked songs and videos" option, synced, and now all my songs are syncing which is taking forever because i have to re-sync my 1256 songs...

In detail...

Alright i had this same problem where 30 of my songs wouldnt sync when i just added them to itunes (I had 1256 songs on itunes and 1226 on my iphone).

Then i started messing around and went to my device sync settings tab thing where you start the sync, and then went to the music tab and clicked "Selected playlist, artist ...genres" instead of "Entire Music Library".
I had nothing checked, synced, and every single song on my iphome was gone.

Then im like WTFFFFFF and clicked back to the "Entire Music Library" option and synced like 5 times and the same problem as you occurred, "My iTunes pretends like it finished syncing successfully. However, none of my media (songs, videos, ringtones, books) ends up on my iPhone."

So then i went "Summary" tab, still on the device sync settings tab thing. Scrolled all the way down to where it says "options" in bold and clicked the "Sync only checked songs and videos" option. All my songs in my itunes library were already checked, i clicked sync and applyied that change and now all my songs are syncing back to my iphone, even the 30 that wouldnt sync before and my playlists.

I had the same problem but I finally found out how to fix it... I dont know a faster way to fix it but in your music library you have to make sure every song you want is checked and then when you check the artists or the playlists you want to sync, the music will now sync

simply dont check "sync only selected music and video" in overview of your device.

Yah my iphone that i got for christmas wont download random songs and i had them on my ipod( and that was a crappy 2nd gen!) now i cant get those songs on my phone no matter what i do. Getting so frustrated. Also when i got my 2nd gen i lost all the songs i had on the previous phone and now they are back on itunes and they are some of the ones that wont download.... T_T

If you drag each of the ringtones to the iPhone one by one that should work. I've been having the same dilemma since I got my iPhone 5 and this proved to work.