stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

Yup, it's back to being broke for me too. The first 2 syncs were faster (5 minutes each) but I'm doing my 3rd sync now and it's been running for an hour so far.

Back to the drawing board Apple! I would really like to sync my expensive phone to my expensive computer...

A few things that have worked for me most of the time when I'm stuck with "Waiting for changes to be applied":

b e f o r e syncing:

- deselect Photos and any other things that don't need to be synced

- "Back up Now" to local backup

- reboot iPhone

I'm still experiencing the occasional long sync, maybe once every one or two weeks.

The problem is that there is no single cause. Or rather, there may be a cause, but it's different for each of us.

Most often, it appears to be some media that iTunes doesn't like.

In my case, it might've been a corrupted song file, but it was rebuilding the playlists that finally unstuck it

That said, I'm still experiencing long syncs. I'm in the middle of one right now, as a matter of fact. It will likely take several hours, just to add four new songs.

But I've also learned it's best to just let the long sync "play out" rather than try to interrupt it.

I was having the issue with my 4s where it would freeze during sync. Nothing I read helped, then in iTunes I stumbled across an option in the top left corner:

iTunes Store>Authorize This Computer...

Did that and all is well now. I hope this helps someone else with this very frustrating and time consuming issue.

since the most recent update, my songs do seem to be transfering without issue again, but any change to metadeta of an album (title, year, artwork etc.) is never updated or reflected via sync and if i ever add a track to an existing album, the track will never sort with its appropriate album, it will always create a duplicate of that album with just that one track, even if all metadeta is the same. only way to fix these issues is by wiping to factory settings and restoring from default, when it then fixes itself automatically.

iTunes has always been such a piece of garbage software, i wish i could go back in time and tell myself to build my library with a different device.

Have you tried changing all the album's song's together? That way, there's no variation in album name, album artist, sort names and, most importantly, whether they're compilations or not.

I also find it takes a while for the reconciliation to make its way to the phone, but one way to speed it up is to uncheck the songs (and set the phone to only sync checked songs), then check them and reload them.

ah, the check/uncheck method works! thanks a lot ExTech, that's the first piece of advice in this 30 page thread that's resolved something for me. i unchecked, synced and then re-checked, synced multiple different albums that had the duplicate one-track album issue and it worked on all of them. still have one piece of metadeta not transferring on one (one track on the album had the year 2001 on it while the others had no year and since removing 2001 the album continues to list itself as 2001 on the device) but i think that may be because it hasn't been uploaded to Match yet.

After the new updates I tried to sync (it took a while still, maybe an hour or two) just to get the play count+rating data synced over. Then I removed all music and tones, reset the phone by holding Home and Power for a few seconds and tried to sync it back.

That was 13 hours ago. It's now stuck on "waiting for items to copy" but the same problem is there; it transfers songs without telling me where it's up to. It doesn't display the current file number and total files being sent in iTunes. On my phone under Settings>Wifi Sync it says it's copying song number "1701 of 12611". That initial number has changed a lot but still says the same file name. Earlier it was '1680 Private Number' and now it's '1701 Private number'.

It's sunday so I'm hoping to just leave it all day doing this. But if future, smaller syncs also take a while then it's back to emailing Apple support for me.

(so annoyed at all this. It's been going on for a year and no iOS or iTunes update has fixed it. I'd expect something like this from Samsung or Sony but not Apple)

I give up Apple. Fix the problem with iTunes and we would not have to resort to China made INFECTED SPYWARE LACED programs to transfer our conent.

All I was trying to do was warn people "that program" is NOT SAFE and will steal your personal data.

"Yes spyware was installed but my anti malware/spyware alerted me and I was able to remove and the programme still works! - Bonus"

"Installs Adware on your PC without asking you first! After installing this - my web browser highlights and displays adds for words shown on any web page you visit. I didnt ask for these 'extras' to be installed ** iTools installed them anyway. WHAT ELSE HAS THIS TROJAN INSTALLED ON MY PC. AVOID!!!"

"Also watch out for WAJAM which installs itself. I thinks its SPYWARE! Read: Your Facebook, Google+ and Twitter user data is used by Wajam to give you personal results from friends based on what you search for. Wajam may use cookies, pixels and/or other means to collect your IP address, URLs of the pages you visit and other non-personally identifiable information in order to give you personal search results and show you advertising."

😟

If you're getting the infamous "Waiting for changes to be applied" stuck in iTunes for iOS 7 Beta 5 & 6, after 11 fun days of trying to figure out the problem I've figured it out.

1) Close iTunes, unplug your device and reboot the computer.

2) On your iDevice, connect to your Wifi network & leave it on and reboot it too. Now plug your iDevice back to the computer.

3) Everything will sync and the problem goes away.

We've had dozens of "solutions" posted, but I don't think that any of them are a real answer. Changing various things in your procedure/configuration seems to help at times, but I think these are indirect/probabalistic effects. E.g., I turned on the option to transcode to a lower bitrate on my iPhone 5s, and it seemed to fix the problem for a bit, but then it returned. I can't believe that Apple hasn't addressed this in such a long time. Several of us here (myself included) have spoken to senior techs about this, so it's not like Apple isn't aware. Dr. Dre needs to pop a cap into somebody.

I've basically given up. I rarely sync my iPhone anymore, and I'm enjoying my music a lot less. We are like Windows users here — suffering an arcane glitch that can't be fixed — eventually going into "learned helplessness" mode:

"Learned helplessness occurs when an animal is repeatedly subjected to an aversive stimulus that it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal will stop trying to avoid the stimulus and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation." http://psychology.about.com/od/lindex/f/earned-helplessness.htm

Definitely down with the learned helplessness feeling

I sync with great anxiety these days, although I should admit that most of my syncs currently do as they're supposed to

Still, there are the occasional problem syncs that I interrupt (usually if "waiting for changes" goes on longer than 5 minutes). Those I can usually fix by restarting the device

So far, though, I've twice now had to employ the solution I described earlier. Specific to me, it involved exporting all my playlists to TXT files, deleting them, then re-importing them one at a time. For whatever reason, the playlists are what keep getting corrupted for me

But I definitely don't feel "safe" syncing anymore; it's like russian roulette every time, wondering if this will be the "long sync" (I'm dealing with one right now, as a matter of fact, my first in several days)

That's perfect. That's exactly the situation.

I'm listening to music much less now since I relied on using iDevices for my music. It's my own fault and I'm already looking up alternatives for music since I do not believe this will be fixed for the foreseeable future.

What a situation we're in.

All,

I'm starting to think either...

1) The programmers of iTunes are Incompetent. (Please understand that I do not feel this way about the other departments at Apple; I absolutely love my Apple design, hardware, software, and eco-system.)

or

2) Apple is purposely degrading the software so we move to iTunes Radio/Beats Streaming service.

or

3) The music industry has some say in this is intentionally pressuring Apple to make it more difficult to sync local media.

I know it sounds like conspiracy, but I can come up with no other logical explanation -- I am sorry, this is how I truly feel.

WirelessDJ

I tried a few solutions suggested in this 31 page thread but they didn't work so I restored. Synching is now working & hopefully will continue to do so. I'm using a Iphone 4S, Windows 7 laptop, latest version of IOS and Itunes. Cy.