stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

I experienced this issue last night after backing up an iPhone 5S (on 7.0.4) and then restoring to a replacement iPhone 5S (also 7.0.4).

I was eventually able to fully repair syncing by logging out of iCloud, iTunes, and Home Sharing at a specific point in the "restore backup" process.

Here's how I made this work for me:

1. Make an encrypted iTunes backup, if you don't already have one.
   I encountered this issue while restoring from a backup I took a few minutes prior.
   If you are having this issue and haven't created a backup, do so now.
   The backup needs to be encrypted, or else you'll have to login to all of your apps again.
   
2. Restore the iPhone to default state.
   Connect the phone via USB to iTunes, click "Restore Phone" on the device screen, confirm data wipe, etc.
   DFU restore also works fine.
   
3. Begin the "Restore Backup" process, unplugging the phone when it reboots.
   On the phone screen, complete the initial setup by connecting to Wi-Fi (or not) and then choosing "Restore from iTunes Backup".
   Pay close attention to iTunes and to the phone.
   Unplug the phone immediately when the Apple logo appears. This happens a second or two after the iTunes progress bar reaches completion.
   iTunes will present a dialog saying "Leave your phone plugged in". You must ignore this request, and unplug it before it finishes rebooting and tries to sync automatically.
   
4. Complete the setup process on the phone, logging into iCloud if it asks you to do so.
   It seems unnecessary to login to iCloud at this stage, but it's necessary to do this step, or you risk breaking your iCloud settings and needing to restore again.
   The setup process is complete when you reach the home screen and can locate the Settings icon.
   
5. Logout of iCloud, iTunes, and Home Sharing, and disable the iTunes "Show All" options.
   To log out of iCloud, go to Settings > iCloud > Delete Account. If asked, choose "Delete" rather than "Keep".
   To log out of iTunes, go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > Apple ID: xxx@xxx > Sign Out.
   To log out of Home Sharing, go to Settings > Music > Apple ID: xxx@xxx > Sign Out.
   If you're already signed out of any of the above things, that's fine.
   To disable the iTunes "Show All" options, go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > Show All. Ensure that both "Music" and "Videos" are disabled. This step may not be required, I didn't try without it.
   
6. Sync with iTunes over USB.
   Plug the USB connector into the phone and computer.
   iTunes should begin syncing immediately.
   Restore Backup sets a hidden flag that forces an immediate automatic sync, ignoring the global "Do not sync devices automatically" and device "Sync this device automatically" options.
   Unplugging the phone earlier ensures that the automatic sync occurs *after* we've logged out of iTunes and iCloud.
   
7. Do not use the phone until the sync is complete.
   I didn't use the phone during my successful repair, so this step reflects that.
   You're logged out of iTunes and iCloud, so a lot of things will quietly (or loudly) break if you try to use them.
   If all goes well, it should start copying apps and then music, rather than hanging at the "Waiting" screen.
   
8. Logout of iCloud, iTunes, and Home Sharing, and enable the iTunes "Show All" options.
   I entered my Apple ID information at the Settings pages for iCloud, iTunes & App Store, and Music > Home Sharing.
   If you don't use Home Sharing, skip it.
   Enable the "Show All" options if you disabled them in Step 5.
   
9. Confirm that the music you synced from iTunes is now on the phone.
   At this stage, I had a mix of songs copied from iTunes, and "cloud" purchases with the download icon.
   
10. Sync with iTunes over USB.
    At this stage, it should simply work.

For the curious, or if the steps above don't fix the issue, I have some miscellaneous notes:

• I thought of this because I heard that iCloud was causing issues with syncing for some users, and realized that it might be interfering with the restore from backup.
• I did not alter any playlists or songs, aside from (perhaps unnecessarily) removing Voice Memos.
• While debugging this issue, I deleted all voice memos from iTunes, which had no effect on the problem. I advise trying the steps below without deleting voice memos.
• Each attempt was a Restore + Restore Backup, to ensure that no issues were carried over from prior attempts.

I hope this is of some help.

Good point ExTech, I did the same thing, almost all of my iTunes library entries are changed (sort order, composer name, artwork, etc.). To be honest, I consider it unacceptable software quality to see so many mistakes being made by the software that manages my music library. Some examples:

• Wrong sort order of albums, sometimes correct in iTunes, incorrect on the iPhone, sometimes the other way round. Changing the "Sorting" fields only helps sometimes.
• Art work displays correctly in iTunes, but is missing on the iPhone.
• Duplicate entries that I can't remove, or more precise, that come back after I delete them.
• The last title does not show up in the iPhone when I view albums in the horizontal format as tiles. When I resize (e.g. from two to three tiles high), it suddenly shows, and stays even when I go back to the original size.

All these things seem to fix themselves over time, but sometimes come back after several months.

If I wanted buggy software I could probably pick many less expensive solutions.

Unacceptable indeed - I can't believe there's STILL no fix after 18 pages of comments and 87,000 views on this one problem!

hz6 wrote:

I consider it unacceptable software quality to see so many mistakes being made by the software that manages my music library. Some examples:

• Wrong sort order of albums, sometimes correct in iTunes, incorrect on the iPhone, sometimes the other way round. Changing the "Sorting" fields only helps sometimes.
• Art work displays correctly in iTunes, but is missing on the iPhone.
• Duplicate entries that I can't remove, or more precise, that come back after I delete them.
• The last title does not show up in the iPhone when I view albums in the horizontal format as tiles. When I resize (e.g. from two to three tiles high), it suddenly shows, and stays even when I go back to the original size.

I just made it ten days, personally, but this latest long sync is a doozy. Wiped out nearly all of my non-purchased songs, and I'm still holding my breath to see if I wind up with a HUGE yellow "Other" stripe from the songs still on the device but no longer recognized.

I've personally experienced everything you've just mentioned. The tiles thing has never really worked for me. The other things I've managed to fix by wiping the phone and restoring from backup (don't you just HATE that?).

I'm trying to keep my spirits up, but this is really stretching on a long time. I wish some prominent bloggers would get wind of it. But it really does annoy me that Apple could be so non-responsive. Getting-things-done was Cook's famous talent, and it's the one thing Apple is apparently not doing under his reign.

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.

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.

Thanks! I have to say this has worked for me (so far, only been a couple of days...). For the first time in months I have done a wireless sync successfully too.

Knowing this problem it probably won't last and it won't work for everyone - but it was easy to try and the results were good for me so thumbs up from me

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.

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 !

Thanks to previous post from masc88... It worked. The fact that this issue has stretched for so long - I am really concerned about apple after this experience. 6 months with no attention to the concerns raised is killing....

I believe this is also a cause for slow performance of iPhone4 on iOS7.

Capturing the response from masc88 for another reference.

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.

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'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.

What fixed it for me was when I got a 128gb iPhone I deselected "convert music", since I now had the space.

Other steps I took before that included;

• Export all playlists as plaintext, then reimported. Or rebuilt Smart playlists completely.
• Highlighted ALL songs and blanked out fields that I don't use
• Remove voice memos
• Started iPhone from scratch

So one or a combination of those things (including deselecting 'convert music') got it working for me. I haven't had any sync problems since.

I really don't appreciate the fact that no one from Apple seems to be dealing with the many, many threads that have started on this topic since iOS 7 came out. In any event, I seem to have solved my problem with a full software restoration -- that is, iOS software restoration.

I clicked on "Restore iPhone..." which does a complete reinstall of the iOS but also all apps, photos, songs, etc. Took about 45 minutes, but seems to have worked.

I had previously tried reverting to a backup of my iPhone, but that did not solve the problem. Only a full restore solved it.

I'm having this issue as well. I've signed in and out of iTunes store both on my iPhone and MacBook. Both have been restarted too. All that beta testing, and for what? A device that won't sync? Really, Apple??? Tick, tock, tick, tock... *sigh*

That sounds like awesome troubleshooting. I will try it, although I've already deleted all voice memos from my library. An Apple Genius told me on Saturday that voice memos are known as a source of sync problems. I spent three hours with him at the 14th St. NYC store. The problem is still not resolved. I am able to sync, but the "Waiting for changes to be applied" message lasts for at least 15 minutes every time.

Hello all - same issue here. I have an iPod touch, no voice messages like those above so not sure why I seem to have the problem. In any case, I found that if I sync wirelessly, it works. If I connect via USB to my iMac, the sync gets stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied". One other note, I am rebooting the iMac and the touch between each sync event. Not sure if this is helping, but I've been slowly rebuilding by touch with 50gb of music 10gb at a time.

Good luck...