stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

this has happened to me several times. RESTORE iphone, then DO NOT sign in to ICLOUD when prompted. Icloud seems to mess up everything when activated.

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!!

I agree iCloud is a pox. It wiped out all my calendar entries once, and doubled them all another time. Definitely not ready for prime time.

In the meantime, here's my latest "fix":

I moved all my iTunes media to an external drive and deleted it all, along with the entire iTunes folder. I also reset the iPhone and rebuilt it from scratch. I was able to re-import most of my playlists using the method discussed earlier.

So far, syncs have been mostly OK over the past 12 hours. That doesn't sound like much, but it's the longest I've gone in the past two weeks

That said, there is something strange still happening: my home movies are getting removed and reinstalled during every third sync or so.

These are movies designated as "Media Kind: Home Video" under the Options tab in their info.

They are NOT getting "disabled" like all my files were previously. Disabled files show up with little exclamation points next to them. Deleted files, like my home movies, show up as grayed with dotted circles next to them.

This is not a huge problem, as my home videos take very little time to load (and reload). Also, I re-designated them all as "Media Kind: Movie," and they've stopped getting deleted for now. I just hope this doesn't cascade into a more serious issue.

By the way, iTunes is organizing movies differently now. The iTunes Media/Music folder used to collect them all within two folders labeled "Movies" and "Home Videos." Now, iTunes Media has a Movie folder separate from the Music folder, and each movie is stored in its own, separate folder. It's different from last night. At this point, any difference is a good one.

masc88 wrote:

medialibrary on iOS was borked in my case, too.

resulted in erratic behaviour, some changes outlined in this thread or simply waiting a long time seemed to help, but only temporarily.

simplified steps I performed to fix it without having to re-setup the whole device:

• cancel all pending syncs on iTunes and the device
• clear out all songs on the device (settings->general->usage->music, left swipe on All Music, delete)
• use iExplorer (eg. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/download/iExplorer,0301-46194.html) or a similar tool to delete Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/MediaLibrary.sqlitedb on the device
• power down and restart device (this will create a new MediaLibrary.sqlitedb)
• resync (waiting for changes to be applied will take a while on first clean sync as it's figuring out the changes. that's ok, don't cancel)

nothing required on the iTunes side except triggering the sync.

This finally worked for me - after trying all the other suggested solutions, deleting the

Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/MediaLibrary.sqlitedb on the device using iTools did it for me.

same problem here, 3 hours later this was the fix. Go the Apple Store and check for music downloads in your account. I had a pile which made no sense because all of the files that were sitting there I already had. So I redownloaded them and the ipad synced immediately with one final middle finger from Apple, it blew away a bunch of recent playlists on the Mac.

Anyway synced a few times since then and it seems fine.

Glad you worked it out. Mine is usually ok but about once a month, and for no obvious reason whatsover, goes into this mode of 'Waiting for changes to be applied'. I panic as I see red boxes next to loads of songs. Suddenly, it decides to reupload about 1500 songs to my phone that were already there before. The process takes ages. There's no rhyme or reason to it. I think it's a very annoying, completely unacceptable bug in the Itunes software and I find it a little disgraceful that a thread that started in September last year has not resulted in a universal fix in the software.

masc88 wrote:

• cancel all pending syncs on iTunes and the device
• clear out all songs on the device (settings->general->usage->music, left swipe on All Music, delete)
• use iExplorer (eg. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/download/iExplorer,0301-46194.html) or a similar tool to delete Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/MediaLibrary.sqlitedb on the device
• power down and restart device (this will create a new MediaLibrary.sqlitedb)
• resync (waiting for changes to be applied will take a while on first clean sync as it's figuring out the changes. that's ok, don't cancel)

Cleaning of MediaLibrary.sqlitedb and a few other files with iExplorer worked for me ! I had been stuck with this problem for months and now my iphone 4s is syncing fine again, Masc88 and JNoel you are my heroes !!

I also deleted artworks, playlists and some other files with Iexplorer, not sure it was really safe but it worked anyway !!

Thanks a lot !

UPDATE: I earlier posted about moving all my tunes to an external drive, then rebuilding iTunes from scratch, as well as resetting my phone as a new phone

It worked ... for 36 hours.

Then the long-sync returned, with exactly the same symptoms: disables most ripped songs, all home movies, no purchased/protected media EXCEPT audiobooks. All audiobooks get disabled, including purchase.

The entire process took about four hours, start to finish, so it's not worth doing every day and a half, I can tell you now.

Hey Guy

I have been f**king around with this issue for a long time.

BUT today i discovered something very interesting!!

My journey today:

Deselecting all sync options in itunes (music, movies, podcast,... ) everything was deselected. My phone completed his sync without any problems.

I randomly tried to sync one of my many playlists --> always got stuck at "waiting for ..."

then suddenly ONE playlist worked!!

i couldn't belief.

now here is the deal:

IF i create a list containing songs NOT purchased (ripped, whatever) i was able to sync.

As soon as i added a purchased song (stored on my hdd) the "waiting for.." problem occurred!!

i dont know whats going on here BUT at least i can now sync playlists (some of them).

can someone crosscheck and tell if this works for him too.

greets

XfitSwob wrote:

Deselecting all sync options in itunes (music, movies, podcast,... ) everything was deselected. My phone completed his sync without any problems.

I randomly tried to sync one of my many playlists --> always got stuck at "waiting for ..."

then suddenly ONE playlist worked!!

IF i create a list containing songs NOT purchased (ripped, whatever) i was able to sync.

As soon as i added a purchased song (stored on my hdd) the "waiting for.." problem occurred!!

I haven't tried ONLY non-purchased songs yet, but that'll be my next attempt.

What I've noticed is ONLY non-purchased songs FAIL to sync, or worse they get actively disabled on the iPhone AFTER they've synced.

I can get relatively stable syncs by eliminating all my songs EXCEPT the purchased ones. Problem is, eventually iTunes starts disabling even the purchased songs.

I have to say, I've never tried syncing WITHOUT purchased media, but that's next on my list.

Currently, though, my top priority is to sync my calendars. I tried to sync through iCloud, for about the fifth time, and like the previous four attempts over the past few years, iCloud wiped out my calendars and contacts entirely.

Gotta avoid iCloud at all costs.

Update!

I was sent a special sync diagnostics app by Apple. I really hope this helps them fix it. Problem is I need to perform 2 syncs (1 to generate the data, the 2nd to copy the file across). So obviously it's taking a while!

Each sync seems to increase the time it takes. After I fixed it the last time a sync would take a minute if there was no new data to send, then it took half an hour, now it's taking an hour, etc. I'll let them know of course.

I have had this issue for some time running iTunes 11.1.4 and ios 7.0.4. The issue for me was easily resolved after a chat with Apple Support. My issue was related to a conflict with wi-fi sync and syncing via cable. The resolution was simple:

1. With the phone connected to the computerm uncheck the option to sync the phone over wifi via the summary tab

2. Disconnect phone form computer

3. Reset the phone by pressing both buttons on the phone until the Apple logo appeared

4. Once the reset is complete, plug the phone back into the computer and apply the changes

That's what did it for me. I will no longer sync over wifi. It's not worth this headache.

Hope this helps some poor souls like me.

Disabling wifi sync fixed the problem for me. I wish Apple fixed iTunes. It has become a beast.

jimmirock wrote:

Update!

I was sent a special sync diagnostics app by Apple. I really hope this helps them fix it. Problem is I need to perform 2 syncs (1 to generate the data, the 2nd to copy the file across). So obviously it's taking a while!

Each sync seems to increase the time it takes. After I fixed it the last time a sync would take a minute if there was no new data to send, then it took half an hour, now it's taking an hour, etc. I'll let them know of course.

Well that's more than they asked from me so that's good news.

As for me, I may have fixed the problem, but we'll see. I moved all my files to an external drive and rebuilt my computer from scratch. No Time Machine backup. I figure whatever's causing it is probably surviving in the backups as well.

So far, clean syncs. But it's only been a few hours.

Meantime, I did discover something new. Someone on here mentioned unchecking all purchased songs. I never thought to try it because the ripped media was getting disabled, not the purchases. But it DID seem to work for me as well.

However, I wasn't content to let over $5,000 worth of iTunes purchases go to waste, which is why I took the extreme route of rebuilding my system.

Well ... at least I got to rename my home folder.

Oh, one last thing:

I've been managing which songs sync and not by checking and unchecking them (then syncing only checked songs).

When I checked a number of them at once (about a hundred), a long-sync occurred with all songs disabled.

I wonder whether checking/unchecking may cause management issues that confuse iTunes' sync software.

I plan to check everything going forward. Basically, if I don't like something enough to have it on my phone, then I don't need it on my computer either.