stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

Stage079 wrote:

Hello all,

I found a solution that has worked for me; I hope that it can do the trick for you.

Well I'm pretty sure the way the new artwork shows up on the phone, this is doing more than just saving the files. Regardless, I could care less about artwork showing up on my phone. So obviously the next thing I did was deleting all of the artwork from iTunes, this can easily be done by.

Going into all your songs => Select All => File => Get Info => Yes to the Prompt => Click the box next to the white box for Artwork => Hit ok

Depending on the size of your library, this might take awhile.

Since doing this my syncs have gone well, I hope that it does the same for you.

Thanks for this, Stage079.

But, as a huge favor, would you keep us updated if this does NOT solve your problem?

Obviously, if we continue to not hear from you, we'll know your solution worked and is long-lasting.

The reason I ask is that artwork DOES matter to me; it's part of the whole audio-visual experience, particularly for those of us who recall listening to CDs and LPs way back in the old days.

If this is the only way to guarantee the end of long syncs, I'll jump on the bandwagon. But only if it actually works for the long term.

I've personally nuked and rebuilt my library. It made me lose a few comments, a bit of artwork and ALL of my "date added" data. The long sync returned after just two weeks of peace. (It's a shame, too, because "date added" might've been useful for finding the media files that iTunes hates).

I'd rather not have to lose all my artwork only to have the same thing happen.

Again, if this does NOT work, long term, please let us know. Thanks much!

Thanks ExTech,

I will keep you updated, the syncs are still considerably longer than before I updated to iOS 7, this remedy has changed my sync from days to maybe 12 hours.

One of the most frusting items I believe is that if you don't go into you iPhone and look at the sync as I described you would think your phone is just "stuck" whereas at least by looking in your phone you have a counter and know your phone is transfering data. I believe that correcting iTunes to show this transfer would help ease a lot of users thoughts that the phone is simply "stuck"

Hopefully they take our words into consideration.

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I had this problem for too long, through numerous iTunes and iOS updates. If it's not this taking ages it's "waiting for items to sync" or whatever it was. I gave up. I couldn't wait days to send new music to my iPhone. I was wasting too much time so once my iPhone contract was up I switch to an Android phone instead.

I still however have my iPad which also has this problem. But once this eventually dies I'll have no problem buying another product now I know how much better it works.

It's sad because I really liked my iPhone and iOS. But music is too important for me and I'm too busy to fuss around waiting so long. My last sync was taking 13 hours before I decided to move on, and it hadn't finished yet either.

I have this problem constantly. Sometimes devices are not recognized; most all of the time I cannot sync music to my iPod. This all has started with the last couple of iTunes updates, or should I say downgrades?

iTunes has really become substandard software.

I think since Steve is no longer there, Apple people just don't give a rat's behind. If they did, this problem obviously affecting lots and lots of customers would have been solved by now.

I think I may have found something, i was having the same problem and then i restored my ipod from backup, but instead of having it sync all of my songs, i have it to sync only selected playlists, artists, etc. I have had this for a week or two on this settings and sync a few hundred songs every day and it doesn't stay stuck on the "waiting for changes to be applied" now. My library is over 10,000 songs so this was very annoying when it would get stuck, I also found on the internet that some were experiencing the problem only when they had the "sync only checked items" checked. I still have that feature on and it has been working for me, and it still says "waiting for changes..." but only for a few seconds and then it only syncs the newer songs, not all of them like it used to.

Hope this helps!

-V-

Thanks cpaulPHL

1) disabled "Find My iPhone" on the iCloud settings of my iPhone

I did this, synching went back to normal, then re-enabled "Find My iPhone" on the iCloud settings and the sync is still working fine.

Now if I could just get iTunes Match to work.....

This suggestion helped - thank you, thank you, thank you....

I spent hours (the whole morning in fact) trying all the other suggested solutions which did not help! Yours' did.

Wow! Thanks.

This resolution seems really drastic, but I'm on the verge myself, after 30 years as apple user and defender. Without the ability to manage my music -- actually being prevented from accessing and updating -- all the other bells and whistles I can get on other phones and other platforms. Have you updated to the most recent itunes version? Got some temporary relief but it still doesn't address the underlying flaw.

I cancelled iTunes Match but would sign up again if someone had a fix. Let me know if you find one,

This resolution seems really drastic, but I'm on the verge myself, after 30 years as apple user and defender. Without the ability to manage my music -- actually being prevented from accessing and updating -- all the other bells and whistles I can get on other phones and other platforms. Have you updated to the most recent itunes version? Got some temporary relief but it still doesn't address the underlying flaw.

Aye. It's just for me music is first and forthmost the feature I need most, making calls, taking photos, browsing the internet on a train, playing Free To Play games... that's all secondary.

I'm keeping my ear to the ground though. If one day there is a fix my next phone will be an iPhone once again.

13+ hour syncs just to add a single new album is not what I consider a good user experience. And I've emailed Apple about this, I've provided all the evidence they wanted in return to fix it. But each new update and the problem isn't fixed. Ah well! Android is alright! It's a nice temporary home.

What solved this for me, after long hours of banging my head against the wall. was to uncheck the Sync Movies and Sync Music and then performed a sync. After this, I rechecked these items to be synced again and it finally worked.

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.