stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

I had a similar experience like ShedMan. Eventually it worked, after it re-synced my complete library taking roughly an hour or so.

Well, one thing's for sure: I'm not syncing anything for the time being. 😐

p.s. a few pointers for the Apple (cough cough) Geniusses who made this forum to make this place far more user-friendly;

*) why do I have to log in every time again?

*) why doesn't it (after I logged in again) then automatically jump back to the last page/discussion I was watching and I wanted to comment on? (bloody annooooooying!)

*) Why doesn't the spelling check work? (it works on just about every other field, except on an Apple related field, a bit embarrassing, no?)

*) when I click on a link in the email notification that someone has replied on a discussion I'm following, why doesn't a link automatically take me to the newest message after my last visit, instead of taking me to the very beginning of the thread every time? I know what was written before, I just want to watch the new content...

*) after I click "post" then it does the same annoying thing: it takes me back to the very beginning of the thread, instead of to my post so I can have a look at it.

I'm done trying my old ipod works flawlessly the new iPod touch has no music on it the step 5 of 5 never goes away!! Apple support could get my bought music on it which is like 4 cds not worth the headache might just return ipod to best buy and go with old one for the time being. Extremely mad at apple for not addressing this I have a iphone 5 s a ipad and not 1 issue with these but this ipod won't sync are we the only ones with this issue ? My friend got his same day I did not 1 problem ??? Go figure shame on you apple FIX THE PROBLEM

I just installed iTunes 11.1.5.5 <Downloaded Mar. 2, 2014> on my Windows 8.1 PC. It took a while (as seems custormary these days) and required a reboot. The good news is that--

(a) iTunes immediately recognized my iPhone 5. (The previous installation of an iTunes update required a 2-hour search through discussion groups to learn which aspect of iTunes and / or my Windows OS had to be tweaked so that iTunes would recognize any of my iDevices.); and

(b) Removing a book from my iPhone and placing 22 new songs on the iPhone in two separate syncronizations was routine and handled with dispatch. In other words, the first two attempts to add and delete items from my iPhone worked exactly as was ordinarily the case before this past fall, when "Waiting for changes to be applied" got to be a routine and long-lasting part of virtually every sync.

I devoutly hope the latest version of iTunes is more robust than the previous two versions, which dramatically slowed the syncronization of my iDevices whenever I tried to change their contents.

Folks this is a horrible problem.

I have been going through my music collectin and digitizing it as time permits so every few days I have a few songs to add.

I have restored my library using the methods described previously, but it takes over 2 hours (i have iphone 5 and a macbook pro retina 2013). its probably worse on an older phone / machine combo.

I use iTunes home sharing feature. I tried this:

• Kill the Music app on iPhone
• On iTunes in Mac, I go into the phone and the "On this phone tab".
• Wait for the sync status to get stuck at "Waiting for changes to be applied"
• On the phone, go into Settings, Music, disable home sharing by clicking on the account name.
• I get a prompt if I want to sign out, cofirm that.
• Wait for a few seconds, the new songs are copied.

I tried this about 5 times, and it works.

I am engineer and if I had to guess, the sign out of iTunes home sharing invalidates some row lock on that SQLLite database that I was deleting previously. Folks have reported this to not happen on that 10 year old iPod - well guess what? It doesn't run iOS7.

Shame on Apple for not fixing this.

I know! I've been playing music from my NAS until I followed the steps and have a completely nuked iTunes library waiting to be re-created ON MY iMAC! WHAT?!

Thanks fremont_guy, I'll have to try this if my current "fix" doesn't take.

I've been on the horn with a senior engineer several times now, and his dept. "confirmed" it's media, specifically a bad song or movie that iTunes doesn't like. That's all it takes to throw off an entire sync.

I'm trying various approaches to find the guilty song; someone posted earlier one approach that worked. It involved moving them onto the device in clumps until a bad sync occurred. Problem is, the process can take weeks because it's intermittent.

That said, I've been syncing all my media on my wife's MacBook and a separate iPhone 5. So far, it's been flawless over repeated syncs.

The only difference: the new computer runs Mavericks (so the iPhone must sync a lot of its stuff over iCloud)

Are any of you experiencing this problem in Mavericks?

I've been resisting the upgrade because my teaching business depends on software that hasn't been Mavericks-tested.

But I'm ready to chance it if it'll fix this horrible long-sync problem.

ExTech wrote:

I've been on the horn with a senior engineer several times now, and his dept. "confirmed" it's media, specifically a bad song or movie that iTunes doesn't like. That's all it takes to throw off an entire sync.

The next time you're on the phone (or anybody else is) with one of the senior engineers, maybe you can point them to this message... I think this could be quite relevant.

I made a rather interesting observation that may be part of the problem, if it is not close to one of several root causes...

I synchronize smart playlists that are based on "not played in the last n days" so as long as I don't play any songs, when I JUST synced the phone, the next sync takes seconds (about 10, maybe 15 seconds), but if I do play a song, it can take several minutes to do its thing.

I have a playlist "always on the phone" and another "could be on the phone" ("could be" is simple playlist I add/remove, but "always" is a smart playlist that is "not in could be, and not in several others", so adding to "could be" instantly transfers from always to could be)...

I have several smart playlists that take "always on the phone" and "could be on the phone" and creates a set of playlists I use all the time that are dependent on "not played in the past so many days"..

I sync "always on the phone" and the final output playlists. Therefore, some songs always stay on and some songs get removed once played, and some others get added (it would simplify my life so much if they put out a 128gb phone, but...).

When that playlist has NOT changed and I sync, I can see a message on the phone itself just before the sync finishes, briefly stating "copying 1 of 1 : <some song here>"... (in my case right now, it's "on the borg ship"... from star trek TNG "best of both worlds" sound track, which is on the "could be on the phone" list)

Sync/resync, it still states the same song so it's got to do with some specific list order at that moment...

When I play that song in itunes that causes my playlists to change and that song to no longer be on the phone, sync the phone, then sync several more times, that "copying 1 of 1" states a different song... (other songs from the same album at that point)... When I finally exhausted those songs from that playlist, the song it states was one from chopin which is on my "always on the phone" list.

I have a very sneaky suspicion that there might be zero offset vs one offset or possibly a (song < count) vs a (song <= count) thing going on, causing an "index out of bounds" problem or a "let's do it again" kind of condition... At issue might be it's going too far and trying to process invalid memory... Or, if it is not, for some people, the way it syncs the phone causes the phone to try to figure out if it needs to recopy media. In the right condition, it could be attempting to copy many many files.

I also noticed when I put the phone in airplay mode, it saw the phone with all 55gb used of the 57gb available in the "other" category. I just about had a heart attack when that happened. Certain perceived network connectivity errors between itunes and ios could explain why some people might see their "other" category balloon beyond the phone capacity... if itunes thinks the song is not on the phone for example by way of it being in the other category and it wants to copy it again, and itunes to ios communication is still good but it gets in that mode it could say "song, not on phone, so here's another copy".. compound that from time to time and you blow all available space. Luckily, when I took it out of airplane mode and synced again, it finally came back and didn't have to wipe/reload.

The playlist funkiness has been going on since, I think, the iOS 6 update.

Just FYI, I used to have playlists that had silent tracks between songs. The silent track was 20 minutes long and duplicated as many times as necessary (i.e., there was only one "silent track" in my entire library, although it could be repeated within a given playlist many times).

I noticed that the playlists stopped working in order sometime around iOS 6. There were also problems with live updated smart playlists like yours showing up different in the device.

I'm betting you're right though, in thinking they're linked.

Meantime: UPDATE: Mavericks made no difference. I just duplicated the long-sync after 12 hours and roughly 25 syncs, on a different computer using a different iPhone and using iCloud to sync calendars, contacts and bookmarks. In other words, different from my actual setup in every way.

The only two factors in common: the same song files (which, I'm told, include a "poison pill" I'm still trying to track down) and PODCASTS.

The newest long-sync occurred after I added the Podcast app.

I think this may have to do with podcasts being media files that get added, rather than anything special about the podcast apps or podcasts in general.

The consistent problem we all seem to have is with adding/subtracting files from the device.

FYI, my latest attempt will be to sync my backup phone, one genre at a time until the problem emerges.

For what it's worth, I'm noticing that the syncs spend almost no time on "waiting for changes" for the first two small genres I'm trying, so it does look like this approach may be fruitful.

I'll keep this thread apprised. More to come...

I have no problem synching music on to my iPOD using the same PC, iTunes library and cable. It is just iPhone that fails.

Latest IOS upgrade v7.0.6 has not made this any better.

This is unreal my old ipod still works I'm done trying i wish mine would sync :/

Hi jonathansc & chiahyena,

how often do you sync the ipods? I've noticed it's something of a crap-shoot, where you run the risk more the more often you sync.

Also, do either of your ipods download from the internet, or do they only get their songs from iTunes?

I just this morning began to suspect that my two phones (and iPad and iPad mini) are downloading without my permission, and this is hanging things up.

Several other posters have noticed download issues being a possible cause.

thanks and best of luck!

i am having same problem - first time i have synced in months, and cannot add any songs whatsoever. tried all the fixes listed above and nothing works. Amazingly bad service

My 5th Generation iPod still syncs just fine too. It's a breath of fresh air! Much quicker to fill an 80gb iPod with video files than it is to sync a new album to my phone.

ExTech wrote:

I've noticed it's something of a crap-shoot, where you run the risk more the more often you sync.

I think it's a setting/condition that triggers the failing sync more than anything...

I sync my phone pretty much every day and the only delay or stupidity I experience is about a 3 or 4 minute sync, most of the time it's stuck @ the 'waiting for changes" part (but that hardly ever lasts more than 2 minutes)... At that point it copies the 10 or 20 songs that are needed and finishes within seconds of completing that.

I only have books (epubs, pdf and and one or two from itunes) and my music (not even music videos) which is ONLY synced via about 10 playlists (some smart, some static). No movies, no tv shows, no podcasts.

As I noticed the other day, the 'waiting for changes' bit is pretty much not there when the phone and itunes have the same playlists. But even then it still insists on re-copying one song that was already there... I would be interested to know if that means it ends up copying that song again as a separate song and creates a duplicate on the ios (which would lead to a growing "other" category) or if it overwrites the one that was there.

I very seldom sync my phone unless I played music in itunes and need to update the playlist or I played on my phone and need to bring those plays back into itunes..... and that almost daily sync has been happening for me for 2 1/2 months.