You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

rkstiens Author

Level 1

58 points

stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

Just downloaded itunes 11 and ios 7

Trying to sync iPad with iTunes. process is "stuck" on waiting for changes to be applied

Any ideas?

pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Sep 18, 2013 10:10 PM

Top-ranking reply

cpaulPHL

Level 1

19 points

Posted on Sep 23, 2013 1:40 PM

After countless hours this past weekend with this same problem (iTunes stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied..." I finally have resolved it without having to completely rebuild my iTunes library (and losing my metadata in the process). For background, I updated my iPhone 4s while I was traveling, and when I returned home, I was no longer to update music in iTunes (it would hang).

The problem, it seems, is related to several factors:

1) you have enabled "Find My iPhone" in the iCloud settings on your iPhone

2) you have initiated a download of music through iTunes on your iPhone, and the downloads have not completed

3) you have a corrupted Voice Memo, causing duplication on each sync

Here's what I ended up doing:

on your iPhone / iPod / iOS device:

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

2) gone to the "Downloads" section of the iPhone "iTunes" app and deleted every in-progress download

3) go to Voice Memos app and see if there are recordings in the list that may have been duplicated

you can also check the "Voice Memos" playlist on your iTunes library

- delete any duplicate Voice Memos; if some memos are gray and can't be deleted see below

4) do a cold reboot (hold down top bottom, power off, then on again) but do not dock your iPhone yet

on your iTunes:

5) change your iTunes -> Devices preference to "Prevent iPods, iPhones, iPads from syncing automatically"

you can now dock / connect your iPhone to iTunes

6) select "Manually manage music and videos" in the Summary tab for your iPhone within iTunes

7) go to the Music tab for your iPhone within iTunes

- you may see a list of music at the bottom called "manually added music"

if present, select all items in this list and Delete to remove them

8) uncheck "Sync Music" at the top of the Music tab and "Apply"

- this will remove all music from your iPhone

9) if the iTunes sync completes properly, perform a Local Backup of your iPhone (you may need this later)

10) re-enable "Sync Music" but uncheck "Voice Memos" and "Apply"

- if this fails, you have a corrupted memo - see below

11) if this sync completes, change your iTunes -> Devices preference to disable "Prevent iPods, iPhones, iPads from syncing automatically"

possibly optional steps needed:

a) make sure you have a backup of all of your Voice Memos (check iTunes)

you may want to copy off these files and then remove them from iTunes, especially if there are duplicates

b) if your Voice Memos database is corrupted, you may need to clear out the iPhone internal database

there are third party utilities (I used "iPhone Disk") that let you access the directory even on a non-jailbroken phone

b) remove all files from the "Recordings" directory

c) cold-boot your iPhone

d) repeat steps above

Again, this sounds painful (it was!) but after many tries, this is what finally allowed my iPhone 4s with iOS 7 to once again sync properly with iTunes 11.1. This process will preserve your iPhone settings, voicemails, Messages, etc. And, it will let you retain your iTunes library without rebuilding.

View in context

630 replies

Mar 24, 2014 8:31 AM in response to jimmirock

I've got a long journey tomorrow so instead of trying to isolate the problem I instead tried all my ideas at once.

Removed all artwork both within iTunes and from the artwork folder
Removed all playlists
Removed all ringtones
Created a voice memo and deleted it
Disabled Find my iPhone

No luck at all. It doesn't even sync a single track over now. Guess I'm going to have to go back to using my iPod Shuffle for music!

There's nothing else I can do with this.

Mar 25, 2014 5:08 AM in response to rkstiens

I have been struggling with this problem for the last 2 hours. I just hit "Reset Sync History" in the Preferences section and it seems to have done the trick. I hope this helps someone else.

Mar 25, 2014 8:08 AM in response to solarpoweredbee

i've had this problem ever since updating to 7.1. every time i sync my iPod is now a 2 hour nightmare that involves an average of at least 4 full restores until everything transfers like it's supposed to. this is awful.

Mar 25, 2014 1:55 PM in response to solarpoweredbee

Where is this option? I'd like to give it a try.

Mar 25, 2014 4:53 PM in response to jimmirock

In iTunes on my PC I went in to Preferences then selected the Device tab. At the bottom there is a button called "Reset Sync History"

btw I am using iTunes 11.1.5.5

Hope this helps?

Mar 25, 2014 9:28 PM in response to solarpoweredbee

Is that in Windows or OSX? I don't see it under OSX, for me the Devices tab just has a list of device backups, an option to prevent automatic syncing and a button to forget iTunes remotes.

Mar 25, 2014 9:34 PM in response to jimmirock

I'm on Windows. My screen looks exactly the same except right underneath where it says "Forget all remotes" I have another section with a button that says "Reset Sync History".

Why would the different OSes have different settings?

Mar 25, 2014 9:44 PM in response to solarpoweredbee

I just found this

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1627

Pretty much saying this (for Leopard)...

Open iSync.
Choose iSync > Preferences.
Click Reset Sync History.

Does it help? (sorry I really don't know anything about OSX so apologies if you have already tried this)

ExTech

Level 1

4 points

Mar 26, 2014 11:49 AM in response to solarpoweredbee

I think OSX eventually wiped out this option. Figures.

Meantime, here's my own update: I had a problematic sync that went too long while trying to add a single 1GB movie.

Luckily, I'd been syncing an earlier phone with an identical setup, so I took a few hours and restored the current phone from the earlier phone's backup.

So the solution seems to be: prepare for the worst.

Mar 26, 2014 1:05 PM in response to solarpoweredbee

Ah cheers, gave it a quick try and nothing. There's actually no way of doing this in Mavericks too! Apparently there's no need, but considering it fixed it for you I think the need might be returning!

Mar 27, 2014 7:07 PM in response to rkstiens

I've had problems with this since october last year. I think i've made some headway with this. At some point today i randomly had a clean sync out of the blue. I deleted a few of my unwanted videos to save space. Tried syncing again and nada. 'Waiting for changes to be applied'. After many restarts of my phone and itunes and a browse on other topics of this nature someone suggested the 'File > sync' and i remembered about transferring purchases. So i stopped my phone from syncing and went up to file, then device and transfer purchase history. Soon as i clicked that my songs started to sync. I think it has something to do with accounts on the purchased songs.

Hope this helps anyone!

Mar 30, 2014 8:34 PM in response to rkstiens

I've tried several of the strategies suggested in these posts. None of them worked. I am running on a PC laptop and I have no videos or photos attached to my iphone 4s; it's songs and audiobooks only. What finally worked for me is I manually scrolled through the thousands of songs and found two items that had ! next to them, signifying that the original file could not be located or whatever. I deleted those two items. I synched my phone and it updated without stalling for the first time in about three months.

Apr 3, 2014 3:30 PM in response to rkstiens

Aaaand now it's affecting a device it previously didn't. Up until this most recent sync one of my iPads (with no music or photos) would sync just fine.

Bugger.

ExTech

Level 1

4 points

Apr 3, 2014 3:40 PM in response to jimmirock

Any other media on the new device? Movies maybe?

Seems to be a media problem for most of us; either a bad file or bad playlist

I'm chugging along, with the occasional long sync but no rampant disabling of music already loaded

A big part though is my switch to iCloud, which has lowered my need to sync as often

poikkeus1

Level 4

2,467 points

Apr 5, 2014 4:27 PM in response to ExTech

I just had the same problem. The only thing that fixed it, on my machine, was to reset my iPod Touch, and restore from the backup on my iMac. However, "waiting for changes to be applied" can refer to just about anything.

stuck on waiting for changes to be applied