stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

It's been a week since we heard from Satge079, so it looks like at least one possible (though drastic) fix is to delete all your album artwork.

I've been thinking about that solution a lot, and I've finally decided I don't want to give up my artwork. Like I mentioned earlier, it's part of the experience to me. I've even gone so far as to reconstruct my songs into albums from my youth (the ones not available for download) complete with original covers. It would hurt too much to give that up.

So here's what "works" for me now:

(1) I initiate a sync, but cancel the sync if "waiting for changes" takes more than 10 seconds (which is pretty much every time)

(2) I then open up the iPhone in the sidebar - songs that should've been added should appear, but grayed out with circles next to them

(3) I then start another sync and I WATCH CAREFULLY

(4) if the playlists in the iPhone sidebar start "dancing" and changing, there's a good chance this next sync WILL load the missing songs

(5) if there's no movement among the iPhone sidebar playlists, I'll just cancel the sync, because it'll almost certainly fail

(6) after the "dancing playlists," the "waiting for changes" will still take at least 10 seconds ... BUT ... the diagonal progress striping will be jerky and halting. If it's too smooth, I know I'm looking at another long sync, and I'll cancel.

(7) If, and only if, I've seen both "dancing playlists" and "halting progress striping," I'll assume a successful sync is in the works. The "waiting for changes" should last about 10 seconds, 20 at most, then my media will start uploading

If I miss the sync cancellation in step (1), the "long sync" begins and iTunes begins disabling my songs, movies and audiobooks.

It makes every, single sync an adventure of sorts.

By the way, anyone else notice these things?

(A) long syncs disable most, but not all, "ripped" songs. The survivors tend to be songs from artists "Ab..." to "Am..." alphabetically.

(B) purchased songs remain intact

(C) long syncs disable most, sometimes all, audiobooks, whether ripped or purchased

(D) long syncs disable all ripped and home movies, no exceptions.

(E) purchased movies remain intact

For me ... it was app related ... iPhone 4s ... iTunes 11.1.4.62

I removed some apps I didn't use (using iTunes) ... did the File Device Transfer Purchases thing ... set to manually manage music and not auto sync ... couple of hard reboots with power button and home button ... then it synced OK without sticking at waiting for copy or waiting for changes.

Then I turned back on sync all music and syced and it worked. Had to do a few times because some tracks didn't synch on the iPhone.

Fingers crossed it keeps working.

There is definitely something very flaky going on here though.

For me it was stuck. So with the iphone/pad etc plugged in I was having the failings at the last step.

I got it to work by unticking "Sync this ****** over wifi" and onnly ticking"manually manage music and videos"

Maybe it gets confussed and I thought I was managing it anyway.

Anyway - that worked for me, literally did the ticks. Off it goes, now adding 1500+ tunes 🙂 😀

Thanks, masc88, I actually didn't know you could wipe out the media all at once without resetting the device!

I'll definitely try your fix next. Meanwhile, here's what I've found since my last post:

I had about 50 songs that were purchased through iTunes but STILL getting disabled during long syncs.

Like I'd mentioned earlier, long syncs disable all my ripped media, all my home movies, and all my audiobooks. They leave purchased songs intact, likewise purchased movies. They disable purchased audiobooks, which made me think an audiobook was at fault (I could never confirm this; removing them all did not fix the problem).

Finally, last night, I discovered the 50 purchased songs that were also getting disabled during long syncs.

I've removed them from the device, and my syncs have been normal since then. And I mean completely normal, for the first time since iOS7 came out.

That said, it's only been 12 hours (but MANY syncs), so I'll post again if the problem re-emerges.

If not, I'll post the exact procedure I used for ID'ing the problem purchases. It can be a painful process, but I did discover some shortcuts.

I tried this and it didn't work for me.

So I thought... f**k it, and deleted the whole iTunes folder on my iPad. Not a good idea! I had to create a quick iCloud backup and then restore it! But, here I am again.

I noticed that after I removed all my music there was still a structure within my iPad iTunes folder. It was huge too with hundreds of folders labelled "c3" etc. And the album artwork folder had a few hundred mb's in it! Even though the Music app displayed no music, the usage menu said nothing was in Music.

Seems to me like the issue is in there.

I'd like it fixed. As I said in a previous message I had to stop using my iPhone and bought a Galaxy S4 just to get a phone that would play my music! A sync would take almost the whole weekend rendering my iMac almost useless. But my iPad remains. Though if this continues I'll drop that when I want a new tablet. Hate this situation.

saltgirl16 wrote:

How do you stop purchased songs from downloading the iTunes app? I have 85 songs frozen on "preparing to download" and I can't figure out how to stop them.

Good question; I have 19 frozen songs after the iTunes tech tried to force-push ALL of my prior purchases into my device. I'm worried they'll mess up what's now a stable situation (at least for the past 12 hours).

Have you tried checking the download manager in the upper right corner of iTunes? It might let you cancel downloads in progress.

In the meantime, here's how I tracked down the defective purchased songs that may or may not have been causing all my long-sync problems:

Once a long-sync is confirmed, you can cancel the sync and open the device in the left sidebar. Clicking on its arrow opens up its contents, and clicking on "Music" lets you see the songs on the device.

Pick the top song and hit play. It should play, or will show a little circle with exclamation point if it's disabled. That's how you determine, through iTunes, which songs are disabled on the device.

Now here's the tricky part: you need a playlist with ONLY purchased or protected songs. I made a smart playlist that requires either of those words in the song's "kind" field.

Once that playlist appears on the device's sidebar (it may take another sync or two), choose the top song, hit play, and then hold down the right arrow key.

iTunes will try to play every protected/purchased song in the playlist, one after another, at a rate of about four per second. When it hits the last song, you'll be able to identify the defective songs by that little excalamation point in the circle.

For me, testing all those songs took about 30 minutes. I actually placed a weight on that arrow key and sat back with a book.

But once I'd disabled those songs, the syncs all went smoothly.

For me, it was 44 songs out of 2,561. I've since "cleaned" them via old-school DRM-removal (burn them onto audio CDs, then rip them back off those burned CDs).

It was a hassle, but it's worked so far. And I didn't have to delete all my artwork!

ADDENDUM:

I'm still having long-sync problems, by the way, but I suspect it has to do with all the updated songs I was forced to download by my assigned Apple tech.

The solution I described worked for 36 hours; more importantly, it worked for dozens of syncs during that time, with no disabled songs and "waiting for changes" that never took longer than five seconds.

It only stopped working when I tried to sync podcasts. Anyone else finding podcasts to be poisonous?

Syncs resumed normally when I wiped the podcasts and podcast app. They got messed up again when the tech forced 3,500 songs onto me. Most likely there are defective tunes among them.

Heeeeere we go again!

Hi Extech

Podcasts are a huge thing for me, I listen to a lot and I reckon I've had problems since the podcast app appeared. A common problem for me has been... Plug my iPod power cable in (not attached to computer) and wifi sync starts. For whatever reason the sync doesn't complete properly. Walk out of house listening to podcast I was halfway through... It stops and won't play. Other podcasts No longer on device or refuse to play even though I just listened to them the day before. So I give up and start listening to music and find half the tracks listed don't play.

I can't put my finger on it but there is DEFINITELY something not right with podcasts these days

ShedMan wrote:

Podcasts are a huge thing for me, I listen to a lot and I reckon I've had problems since the podcast app appeared

Walk out of house listening to podcast I was halfway through... It stops and won't play. Other podcasts No longer on device or refuse to play even though I just listened to them the day before. So I give up and start listening to music and find half the tracks listed don't play.

I can't put my finger on it but there is DEFINITELY something not right with podcasts these days

Wow, that's almost exactly how I discovered the podcast link. Podcast is playing, then stops and "deletes itself" somehow.

I'd guess that iTunes would have disabled all your songs during the last sync before you'd notice. I've watched them getting disabled, sometimes while playing. The song just stops and the timing slider moves quickly down to zero. Then the iPhone scrolls rapidly through all the other songs that iTunes has just disabled.

The worst part for me is that I'd thought I had it licked, so I re-synced my podcasts ... and it's back to long-sync land.

Podcasts are poison to iOS7, somehow.

I've been doing some exploring myself.

It seems to be an Album Art issue.

If you let iTunes delete your music (it will take a long time if you have this bug, but let it do it). Even after completion with no music on the device, there will be a large "Other" section filled. Open the device in iExplorer and it will still contain all the album artwork in 2 seperate folders. Remove them and the Other section drops.

If not all of your music has album art, copy over albums (if you can make a smart playlist that only lists songs without album art (not sure if this is possible) do that) without art and the sync seems to take a normal amount of time.

I think the problem lies with album art. The delay happens even if I just add my iTunes bought music too (which is a tiny amount of my library). So the problem isn't using music gathered from CDs and other music sites.

I hate to admit it, but the album art looks like an issue to me, too

A good deal of my iTunes songs, purchased and ripped, have TWO identical album art images for no apparent reason. Clearly, something weird involving the art is going on.

Really glad jimmirock and Satge079 have had the stones to try deleting their art outright.

I've got the ear of a senior engineer - maybe he can bring it to the programmers that are supposedly working on it.

In the meantime, I'll at least try deleting all the excess album art within iTunes. Maybe that'll work.

But, if not, alerting the engineers to the problem should at least get them moving in the right direction.

Ah , I didn't delete art. I just added music to my device that had no art. Since my last post I found out that you can make smart playlists with a rule to include music that does or does not have album art. Synching only a playlist without art seems to be fine. Anything else can be included; voice memos, music videos, any other trick that people have come up with.

I've submitted this as an Apple developer bug too. Please tell your contact. Maybe this can finally be fixed.

(Although if you keep Time machine backups simply deleting all your album art, or moving the folder, should produce good results. I might try syncing all my music tonight but with the art folder hidden away)

Thanks for the clarification.

For me, the double-up art songs weren't the non-syncing songs, so I gave up editing them for the time being.

By the way, anyone tried manual media management? I've tried it in the past, and just did again right now, but it didn't help.

It's so frustrating, because you'd think manual management should immunize the iPhone music from iTunes, but no luck there.

I'm now "losing" ALL my audiobooks, ripped songs and home movies during EVERY sync.

If I can end the sync just after the calendars finish syncing, I can sometimes prevent iTunes from disabling all my media, But I'm having less and less luck with that approach.

It's so weird, almost as if iTunes were an A.I. that's actively trying to wipe out my library.

This is insane.

I "solved" the problem of iTunes disabling my ripped media by eliminating nearly all of it. There were only 75 items that were ripped songs, home movies and audiobooks. I would let iTunes disable them all and reload them

After two much-shortened long syncs, iTunes proceeded to wipe out all of my PURCHASED media as well!

It's almost as if syncing under iOS7 somehow demands disabling of media. If it can't get at the ripped songs, it goes after the purchased songs.

It's like some ritualistic sacrifice.

What to do now, is the question. As a dad, I really liked having home movies on my phone. And I would very much like to listen to music.

And even if I decide to give up on music and movies altogether, it seems likely iTunes will go after my eBooks, photos, contacts, calendar entries, etc.

I'm at a total loss. So are the two "higher up" Apple Care techs whose numbers are now on my speed dial.

I've tried all sorts of the variations of the above for months, here was the one that worked for me:

1) Power down your mac and unplug ALL external cables including power cable

2) Hold down the power button (with no cables plugged in) for 5 seconds

3) Start up the machine and Zap PRAM (hold down Command (⌘), Option, P, and R while you are powering up)

4) If done correctly Mac will restart and you'll hear the start up 'bong' again

4) Start disk utility and click the button verify disk

5) Once disk verification has completed, click the button repair permissions

6) Open itunes and then try the sync again

This worked for me without any of the restores / resets / reinstalls which didn't work - but I think there are lots of different problems.

Best of luck!!