stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

It finished after 6 hours and now it takes around 5 minutes to do a sync that transfers no new items. A definite and vast improvement but not as fast as it used to be. I hope we continue to see improvements.

I did find a temporary fix too. If I didn't sync "Entire music library" but clicked "selected..." instead and then ticked every genre, it woudld. Not perfectly but faster than 18 hours.

jimmirock wrote:

It finished after 6 hours and now it takes around 5 minutes to do a sync that transfers no new items. A definite and vast improvement but not as fast as it used to be. I hope we continue to see improvements.

I did find a temporary fix too. If I didn't sync "Entire music library" but clicked "selected..." instead and then ticked every genre, it woudld. Not perfectly but faster than 18 hours.

As an alternative, you might try this strategy that seems to work more or less OK for me....

Create a smart playlist that has one rule "media kind = music" (called something like "all music"), then, as you indicated above, don't automatically sync music, but instead go and in the music tab, select that playlist (in other words, try syncing a playlist rather than genres. Since that playlist is all inclusive, if you end up getting a new song that is not in one of the already selected genres, it will still show up automatically).

If you decide later you have some music videos and want them on the phone too you could edit the playlist and add a "or media kind = music videos" rule. The same playlist can then be used for other interesting controls over what goes on the phone... You may choose to rate the songs and add a rule to the smart playlist so everything 3 stars and above are included... If you get tired of a song, you could rate it down to two and it will automatically disappear the next time you sync.. setting the song back to 3 or higher will put it back on... and you can also add some other clauses like "song not listened in the last X days".

That's a strategy similar to what I use. In part because my 64gig phone is short by about 20gig for just the music alone (I can live without my music videos on my phone, but it would be nice to have the space for them too....) so I have several static playlists that represent songs/albums I'm willing to live without and the stuff I want to keep is a smart playlist that states "all music minus those playlists I can live without". I then have several smart playlists that selectively choose from those base playlists and creates a sort of "radio station" that picks from the entire library. Ultimately, I tell itunes to sync the playlist that is "always on phone", along with those daily use playlists. Every time I sync my phone (about once a day), it will end up swapping out 20 songs or so. On any given day, the phone maintains about 10,500 songs (with some room left over for apps and a bit of breathing room for other things). Much of my music stays, but some of which will appear and disappear based on my plays.

The sync time for me ends up usually lasting about 5 - 10 minutes when the playlists are out of sync (between itunes and phone). If they are in sync, the process is usually done within 15 seconds.

Overall, this strategy works ok, but I would prefer if the phone had the capacity to hold it all AND it was able to sync like it did in ios 6 (done in less than a minute).

I should also add, I have TURNED OFF in both itunes and on the phone, the options that go back to the cloud for music or videos.

I was able to select all genres and sync, which meant all the songs uploaded but none of the playlists

THat's how I was able to confirm that a playlist might've been at fault

After exporting and reimporting all my playlists, I've had relatively reasonable syncs for several weeks now

It's still not fixed as of iTunes 11.1.5.5 and iOS 7.1.1. I got stuck at "waiting for changes to be applied" for over 2 hours on April 30th. I left my phone to sync and went outside for a walk. Came back over an hour later and nothing had changed. However, there may be a simple solution to this....

So here's some additional information about my situation which may help everyone:

I run iTunes 11.1.5.5 on 2 separate Windows computers. My "master" computer, which has all my 68,000 song library on an outboard 2TB drive, is a new Windows 8.1 machine. This is the first bit which may be of importance - I just bought this computer 3 months ago, and transferred my library from a different outboard drive to the new 2TB drive I bought with this computer. I was previously running iTunes 10.7 on a Windows XP machine with this library. I think copying the library from the old HDD to the new one may have corrupted a few song files. So remember this for later....

My second computer "the slave", is running Windows 7 Pro SP1 with iTunes 11.1.5.5 also. This is the same computer I've always used to sync all my iPhones. I have a 5S 64GB, a 5c 32GB, and a 3Gs 32GB. I've never had a problem syncing any of these phones with this computer. Why? Because I select songs one by one from my "master" library and transfer them over to the "slave" library, which only has about 3,200 of my 68,000. I've noticed over the years as I've done this, I've found a few songs that were corrupted - meaning the metadata of the song had disappeared. iTunes would still play the song (mp3), but Windows Media Player would not. I think this is significant, meaning the latest versions of iTunes and iOS may be having a problem syncing corrupted song files, even though iTunes will play those songs. I arrived at this theory because I tried to sync my phone with my "master" computer library, by selecting only the songs that had already been synced from the slave library. It synced those same songs from my master library with no problem, because, I think, those are "proven" song files with no corruption. So I tried to sync again, adding additional songs from my master library directly to the phone, and it stuck at "waiting for changes..." for the 2 hours mentioned above. So I wiped all the songs from the phone and re-synced it with my slave library, and it synced fine. "Waiting for changes" only took about 10 seconds, then it started copying the songs. I did this twice with the same result. Again, I think that's significant.

So my conclusion from this is that I'll continue to run two separate databases, and only sync my phones with the smaller one, with the "proven" song files. HOWEVER... APPLE also needs to do their part, and EXPLAIN this to their customers. If I am right, at the very least there should be some kind of message that pops up in iTunes that says "Some of the songs could not be synced because the files are corrupted" and it would be more helpful if iTunes could indicate which songs are the problem! I remember when I first started using iTunes about 6 years ago, the early versions wouldn't even populate corrupted song files. (I know this because I also run Windows Media Player as a cross-check of my database - WMP will populate a corrupted file, but will not display the song data and will not play it.) So Apple went from one extreme to the other, by now populating and playing ALL songs, but just not syncing them, (having us all stuck at "Waiting for changes") and not telling us what is the problem. ARE YOU LISTENING, APPLE???

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...

Dear ones.

I did exactly as describe.

It really worked for in my casa.

Although, in a couple of days, it has happened again.

Is there anything to fix this "bug".

Your sincerely,

Jeferson Medeiros.

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 changed the file format of my voice memos to music and it seemed to fix the problem. I would also uncheck the include voice memos box under music options on your iPhone. I hope this helps!

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.

Just grabbed and installed the latest iTunes and OSX update. No luck, still got the long "waiting for items to copy" message.

issue is totally resolved for my after upgrading to latest itunes and restoring ipod _without_ restoring device backup.

had to reconfigure the device, but ok.

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.

Can the lazy slugs at Apple fix their junk please.

For me, the workaround simply is activating flight mode on the iPhone before syncing, maybe this helps someone here too.

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.