stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

STILL isn't fixed Apple! How many months has it been?

I haven't had a successful sync in months and my iPhone has none of the songs I PAID FOR. Great work to your QA department, you hiring people from Microsoft now?

If your goal is to drive people to buying other phones, then you deserve a pat on the back. Otherwise every one of your coders deserves something else that involves a boot and their posteriors which is clearly where their brains are located.

Just went through this for the third itteration of iOS7 (7.1, 7.2, 7.4). Happened every time. Last two I just ran it overnight and eventually it fixed itself. This time, screw that.

• Turned off Find My iPhone
• Deleted my one ancient voice note (it HAD been duplicated) both on my pjone and in iTunes [Emailed it to myself first.]
• Devices > Turned off auto-sync.

Everything's cool now.

Reinitialized FMiPhone, still fine. Leaving auto-sync off since I prefer that anyway.

The 1st technique from the 1st page seems to help but only if I manually transfer up to 50 songs max at the time.... so now having done the 2 techniques I am trying again to automatically sync just one of my playlist. Its very frustrating as it's been 30 mins now that my phone is stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied" when I only have 3GB on it... anyways what a pain

Thank you L3nn1n

1st reply page 1.

This worked for me.

brmlburt,

I deleted my entire library AND xml, prepared to rebuild all my playlists from scratch and reload all my songs from a separate drive...

... BUT ...

something occurred to me while reviewing the settings. I'd had the checkbox checked for synchronizing playback information across devices.

That'd mean that whenever I played songs, iTunes might try to match playback information for the same songs on other devices. Maybe that info is what's causing you (and me) to experience loss-and-reloading of so many songs.

I'm currently rebuilding my library from TimeMachine backups, so I have nothing to report yet, but if you haven't gone as extreme a route as I have, you may want to give it a shot.

I think it's among the "advanced" preferences, but I can't be sure and I can't boot up iTunes at the moment.

Success! I followed AlexInMtl 's solution posted in this thread 14-Dec-2013 7:47 AM

(Not the first time today, I did reboot the phone and started iTunes (I monitored the processes) just before I executed AlexInMtl steps:

- with the device connected, select the device in iTunes

- go to the Summary Page

- uncheck "Automatically sync when this ... is connected" <-- I already had this unchecked

- I had "Sync ... over Wi-Fi" selected, I unchecked that too <-- I unchecked this one

- click Done <-- I think I just had <Apply>, not <Done>

- answer "Apply" to pop up.<-- ignored this one

- sync wait stopped immediately <-- My sync sarted and stopped immediately, like under one second. Idle.

- recheck the unchecked options and Apply again <-- Instead of editing options, I was staring at a <Sync> button, so I pressed...

- turn on big smile on face <-- me too it worked ! - Backup happened, followed by contacts sync etc, then apps...

Yay! Merci Alex!

By the way, I'm running XP, iOS7.0.2, iTunes 11.1.0.126. I don't have playlists, nor iCloud.

Though I wasted hours today (and less, just a few days ago during an earlier attempt), my results did motivate me to sign-up into this Apple Support Community to post my findings to share with you in this discussion thread.

To do that it would be every song in my library

My library is not corrupt because I can still sync my iPod Nano. Apple just need to recognise that in iOS7 they have created a problem and fix it.

So I've had that issue the other day combined with lots of GB in "others" that I couldnt get rid of. Like I said before, I have followed the 2 techniques on the 1st page, but I still struggled to put my music on my phone: I'm talking 3 hours to put 3gb, doing 50 songs at the time, my computer was stuck on "preparing to install" for ages before finally doing it. If I tried to send my entire playlist in one go, I was back to square one: stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied". So eventually my 501 songs where on the phone but I had 1GB in "others". Having a little 8GB that was too much. So I followed a third technique to rid of "other" that say to go in Settings-General-Usage-Music then delete it and straight away restart the phone. It worked but suddenly my music randomly disappears ??

So anyways this morning I restored the phone from Itunes, and tried again without using any methods and it worked straight away, my little 3GB of music where on the phone in 5mins. So I don't know what happened, unless Apple fixed the issue over night. Good luck everyone !!

Thanks, MacGyverRick. Sounded promising, but your fix still does not work (for me). After following it, I just tried to delete two now-completed audio books from my iPhone 5 to make room for one or two unread audio books. Twice so far iTunes has hung after reaching "Waiting for changes to be applied." Bear in mind, I am only deleting two comparatively short files from my phone. I am not ADDING anything (yet). Even after totally shutting down and then rebooting my iPhone (after the first "Waiting for changes to be applied" hang -- 15 minutes worth), closing iTunes, re-opening iTunes, again connecting my iPhone, and attempting for a second time to delete the two audio books, iTunes hung again at "Waiting for changes to be applied."

All I wanted to do before going to lunch was to uninstall already-read books and install an unread audio book. It has so far required 40 minutes AND I HAVEN'T EVEN MANAGED TO DELETE THE TWO ALREADY-READ BOOKS. I believe, based on past experience, if I leave my iPhone connected and return to my PC in an hour or two the playlists, photos, audio books, etc., will be loaded and totally re-synced. But, hey, I need my iPhone to make, you know, phone calls. I cannot see having my phone linked to my PC for hours at a time just so I can swap out one already-read book to replace it with an unread book. 250GB of data on my PC's hard drive backs up faster than this.

brmlburt,

No luck with my latest "trick." I have every box unchecked, and still the exact same problem occurred that you're experiencing.

Like I said, iChat support said I should create a new user and see whether my phone syncs there. But I can't really afford to sync to a whole new user for however many days it takes, given that my schedules and contacts must all remain current for work. I'm guessing you're in much the same boat.

Clearly this is a song/audiobook/movie issue, so the only acceptable next step is to wipe all the media off my computer and reinstall it all brand new. Ten years of playlists will have to be rebuilt from scratch. Maybe it's a good thing.

Meantime, you might want to consider deleting audiobooks off the iPhone itself, using the music app. I've started doing that with completed movies and audiobooks, and it's cut down on that yellow "other" bar in my storage.

I've tried everything except resetting my library. This only happens with my iPhone, not my iPad Mini or iPad Air. The only thing that seems to work is unchecking sync music, and then checking it again after it's off the iPhone. This is a pain, and I really wish Apple would fix it.

Most annoying thing - I subscirbe to podcasts from the iPhone. They all disappear during this process and I have to go get them again.

bravesirrobin33:

I've experienced the exact same problem with podcasts. In fact, for a while I thought podcasts may have been the cause, but I removed the app (and podcasts with it) and still experienced the problem, so you can skip that step, at least.

Reloading all your podcasts, though, is something you'll have to live with. I'd suggest subscribing in iTunes, downloading them and converting them into "music" through the "get info > options > media kind" tabs. It's a hassle, but at least you won't lose them every time this problem occurs.

Also, it's possible your Mini & Air haven't been synced often enough - I've been able to duplicate the problem on an iPad running iOS7, but only after syncing it many times. My iPhone is my primary iOS device, so it gets synced the most and, as a result, manifests this problem the most often.

I did go ahead and delete ALL my music, audiobooks, movies and epub books. After a number of syncs (no issue of course, since there's no media to reload), I reloaded all of them from a separate drive. No problems yet, but it's been only two days.

If I go more than two weeks without a problem, I'l check back in with this thread.

In the meantime, I get to rebuild 10 years' worth of playlists from scratch. Woohoo!

I found a solution that isn't "just nuke everything and reinstall, hoping it doesn't happen again."

This is what I did.

1. Turn off wi-fi sync (this may not be necessary).

2. On the iDevice (mine is an iPad) go Settings - General - iTunes WiFi Sync

3. Sync with USB cable. Watch the status on the iDevice.

4. I discovered that for some bizarre reason, it was trying to install Pages even though it was already installed and running fine with the latest update on my iPad.

5. Delete and reinstall Pages from the iDevice's App Store.

6. Initiate a backup via iTunes on my Mac, including transferring apps/other purchases that aren't on the Mac. (This may not be necessary, but likely is).

That fixed it. The key was to have settings up and running before sync'ing so I could see which app was crashing the sync. Note that the Pages warning message was replaced with the annoyingly unhelpful "preparing for sync" message that iTunes displayed if I hit the home button then launched settings again. Also, the iDevice status has more info than iTunes does.

Thanks! I sync often (daily?) all 3 devices, and not via wifi. I usually listen to the most recent segments from a few podcasts, so I may just sync my phone much less often. I mostly sync frequently so it updates the photos from my Mac to my iOS device. This problem is frustrating - I wish Apple would fix it.

Thank you so much for all of your brainstorming on this thread. My ipod touch 5 is FINALLY syncing music again. This is the 1st sync I've tried to do since I "upgraded" to IOS 7. Can't believe Apple didn't address this issue yet.