stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

Thanks very much! I did not find any unfinished downloads, but I deleted the voice memos and unchecked all songs and playlists to be synched in itunes. Now the synch happens without any hiccups. Very grateful!

I'm not saying this will work but I found a solution to this problem for my iPhone 4 with I.O.S. 7.2.1.

Seemed to spend all day trying to sync my iPhone and laptop.

I certainly spent hours reading and trying out the solutions offered in this and other threads.

Finally I decided to back up my phone and re-store as a new device.

The iPhone backed up within 15 minutes and on a whim I decided to re-try syncing the phone. It was so quick I missed it.

I synced the phone again and checked it when completed and can confirm it had worked.

So, for what it's worth, I tell this story in the hope it may help someone else.

Alan

I have a 5S and a 4S. The 5S syncs with almost no problem. The 4S, however, has been having problems for two years. As others have pointed out, this is unforgivable, Apple. If there are errors in the syncing process, why not simply prompt the user to fix them? Have a "Recommended" option for the non-technical and resolve the errors. This is embarrassing. I'm actually embarrassed for your company, and I'd like my iOS stuff to "just work" the way it used to.

ok I have had it with apple. I have owned only apple electronics, probably 25+ apple products over the last 10 years but they are becoming worse and worse. List of issues that **** me off about this company:

1)"waiting for all changes to be applied." The first person trying to help should be an apple employee not some other customer. And I should not need to go through 15 steps to get my $700 phone to sync.

2) Why when I search my contacts, is there 10+ copies of each contact. My brother in law who worked at apple couldn't even explain how this happens

3) Why is it possible for iCloud.com, me.com, apple.com each to have a different frickin password. Ridiculous.

4) why does upgrading software on an older model slow it down? couldn't have anything to do with pushing you to buy the newest phone.

I don't want to waste any more of my time writing about this crap but I have completely had it with this company. Glad I sold the stock when it hit its peak, cuz it's never getting there again. At least not with the crack designers putting out nerdy stuff like the apple watch.

cpaulPHL

Thanks for a very comprehensive attempt at solving this huge Apple problem (600+ posts).

I chose one thing out of your comprehensive list - unchecking Voice memos before sync. Then iTunes no longer got stuck on "Waiting for changes to be applied" (Step 3 of my sync). However, I then got stuck on "Waiting for files to copy" (Step 7 for my sync). Back to the drawing board...

My simple solution:

1. iPhone in 'Airplane' mode.

2. Direct USB connection to Mac

3. Turn off internet on Mac.

4. Sync successfully.

This is using iPhone 6S connected to iTune 12 on Macbook Pro Retina 13" (late 2013 model)

So i recently had this problem. i had a relatively quick and simple fix. I noticed when it transferred files from my iPhone it would skip over it quickly. so i updated all my apps in my local library that were on my phone and restarted my phone and the sync completed.

Are you sure the Other category of stuff on your iPhone didn't grow? It used to be that when you interrupted a hanging sync that category would grow each time until your iThing was full of Other. It's like it really was copying stuff as Other and then it would split it up into Music, Movies, etc. if it finished successfully.

iTunes 10/11, iOS 7/8 is when I had a lot of problems. Haven't had any hang-ups for over a year.

After several hours of troubleshooting my iPhone 4s, reading through this thread and others like it, and not having much luck, I have sort of stumbled on a solution that seems to work just fine. NOTE: You have to be connected to wi-fi on your device.

In iTunes, in the top left, there are icons for your music, movies, tv shows, etc... click on the icon for your device.

Then, make sure you're in the Summary tab and scroll down to Settings.

In Settings, check the following:

- Sync with this iPhone over wi-fi

- Manually manage music and videos

Then, apply these changes and, if you're having the same problem(s) I was having, the sync will have started and should work just fine.

Hope this helps.

*** I just tried adding more files to my iPhone and I got stuck again. Simply toggle the "Sync with this iPhone over wi-fi" off, apply those changes, and immediately toggle it back on by clicking the box, apply those changes, and the sync should start right up.

Another solution is to delete your iPhone backup in iTunes. Quit iTunes. Restart. Connect to iPhone with Lightning cable. Create a new backup in iTunes. In my case, synching worked perfectly for a few weeks. When it failed, I deleted the backup, created a new one and all was back to normal. Hope this helps.

I'm using iTunes 12.3.2.35 and an iPhone 6s.

Hey everybody, this issue is a lot easier to fix than a lot of the posts below have suggested. If your iPhone is stuck at the last and final step called "waiting for changes to be applied" there is a simple fix that does not involve the countless steps that other people have suggested. That is not to say that those ways do not work but, it is a lot harder to follow all those steps correctly to achieve the same result. Here are the steps you should follow (Note: before we begin you must be connected to the same wifi network on both your computer running iTunes and your iPhone).

1. Make sure you have your iPhone connected via USB to your iTunes (I would assume you have already updated both your iPhone and iTunes to the most recent firmware releases).

2. Press "sync" and have your iPhone reach and get stuck at the "waiting for changes to be applied" step of the syncing process (of it doesn't get stuck you have already resolved the issue I am solving).

3. Cancel the process by pressing the "x" icon on iTunes, wait for the process to cancel then unplug your iPhone.

4. On your iPhone go to "Settings" then "General" followed by "iTunes Wi-Fi Sync".

5. Select the computer you wish to sync it to (obviously choose the one that you were just plugged into).

6. Wait for the process to finish (at this point it should be able to fully sync past the "waiting for changes to be applied" part of the syncing process).

7. Simply reconnect your iPhone via USB after the wifi sync has concluded, press "sync" once again and you will no longer have this issue

I found a really easily solution to the same problem. Mine was related to syncing home videos. I had 'sync videos' ticked and 'automatically include all' ticked but nothing had happened after 12 hours. I saw a message appear on reopening iTunes after restarting and it said 'All of your videos are unchecked. Unchecked videos may not sync to other devices'. All the home movies were checked, but one movie in another category (not home videos) was unchecked. I checked it and all synced smoothly as soon as I clicked sync. How ridiculous.

Thanks for all the support here.

Here is what happened with me and what I did:

I uploaded a number of books to iTunes, pressed synced and waited for Step 6 to get through forever.

After trying a few times, I gave up. I hit the forums for the solution and all the answers sounded too technical and time-consuming. So, I went to iTunes, selected the books and physically dragged them to the iPad icon and just dropped them there. And it worked!

Hope this helps someone!

This is a very common problem, and I think that Apple isn't addressing it (hopefully because they are working on throwing out iTunes and coming up with a completely different solution). A good interim fix would be to put up a progress meter with subtext highlighting what item is being worked on (this would provide some debugging inputs).

Hey, this worked for me.

Thank you 🙂

Some other things to consider:

- Make sure your USB and USB driver are not faulty. I found myself using the other port, too, as it didn't work the first time.

- Reboot your device before performing the instruction.