stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

Hello, like so many of you, I've had this problem for ages. The solutions offered by Apple didn't help, nor did the other solutions that I tried from this and other forums.

Finally, I may (fingers crossed) have found the best solutions for me. So far the problem hasn't returned for nearly ten syncs, which is the longest run of success I've had in quite a while.

I have no clue what causes this syncing error, but it seems to relate at least in part to some sort of problem in the itunes library. Two different programs I found online deal with errors in music files in the itunes library. I don't have any connection to these programs, and can't vouch for their safety for your computer, etc. All I can tell is you is my individual experience.

One is called SuperSync. The free version of this was able to identify a number of songs that seemed to be problematic for itunes. I was able to fix some of these errors and in a few cases just deleted songs I didn't care too much about.

Unfortunately, even after getting rid of these problems, I still had the syncing issue.

That's when I found another program called MP3 Scan+Repair. This program is also free to try. It seems to analyze songs to see if there's a problem with individual songs, and then repairs them. It seemed to find a number of problems with songs that had strange bit rates -- perhaps that's part of what's causing itunes issues. Anyway, it then repaired these.

The outcome seems mostly positive. The sync still takes far too long compared to the number of songs added/removed, but it is able to successfully complete a sync, and I haven't gotten the "waiting for changes to be applied" message once. Note that the area at the top of the screen sometimes doesn't seem to show that the phone is syncing for extended periods of time, but the smaller icons and the phone itself show that it is still syncing. Eventually the top shows syncing again. Don't unplug until there is no sign of syncing anywhere, including the phone, or else you may be interrupt the syncing.

Of course, now that I've put this on here, the problem will probably return.

Hopefully this helps somebody.

Sometimes, I'm fairly sure it has nothing to do with the media. What pooches on me is that I have a handful of smart playlists that add and remove songs from the phone (64gb is only 1/2 the capacity I would need for music), and when enough songs have to be added/removed, it can take several hours... like today... I'm on vacation and haven't synced all week, weather was uncooperative, and now I want to go enjoy the sun instead of staying home, but I'm stuck here waiting for my phone to finish syncing so I can go out.... It's been 1 1/2 hours now.. it's nominally done in about 5 minutes.

Your suggestion really worked for me. I had exactly the same problem: stuck on Waiting for changes to be applied. Transferring purchases from the iPhone before syncing solved the problem.

@zornie Perhaps you can provide a little more info here so one doesn't have to wade through 33 pages of complaints (Hello, Apple? Anyone home in tech service??)

Running an iPhone 4s with IOS 7.1.2 on my Mac Tower (running 10.9.4 ) with iTunes 11.3.1 (2)

Was syncing fine about 6 weeks ago. Now, it hangs forever while trying to sync. There seems to be no reason as to why this is happening (other than a bad update) and no solution. Any direction is helpful. As a last resort, I am going to let the iPhone go for however long it takes to see.

Also note, I sync only my contacts via my Windows laptop (long story- why? I like CardScan!) and it hangs there as well......

Thanks in advance! 😕😠 Come on APPLE!!!! Geez...................

SOLUTION that worked for me-

I guess one needs patience and about 1 hour or more of time. I found that by allowing it to sync over this very long time solved the problem. The next time one tries to sync, it works very quickly. This makes no sense but appears to be the fix.

In Brief- just wait it out as it will be a significant time but then it is fine. Forget the deletion of playlists and signing out of iTunes and whatever else is there. Hope this helps someone!

Unfortunately that's all you can do. Find one, pick one, try one.

Still waiting on the fix Apple said they would include in their next update. This is such a sad situation.

I left mine syncing for 36 hours once. I thought it had finished but then only around 10% of my music was actually on the phone itself. Make sure yours is all there, check the About panel on your device for how many songs are on.

I had this issue for a while after updating to beta 5 of iOS 8. Read a suggestion to authorize the computer in iTunes. I thought I had already done so, but I guess I didn't. Seemed like an odd thing that would fix it, but I did it and then clicked sync. It synced immediately, ALL songs and ALL playlists!! FINALLY

Hooray, it's all working on the iOS8 GM (installed to see if they finally fixed it) and the latest public iTunes build. After restoring my previous backup it just began sending all my music over. No waiting or delays.

With iOS7 and the latest public iTunes I still had the sync problem. So the fix was on the iOS side after all.

It appears my jubilations were premature.

iTunes is currently syncing all my music across. It's listing the files as they go over, as it used to before the bug. It's up to track 9,100 now. This bit looks good.

But on the iPhone the songs aren't showing up on the Music app. And if I go into the Settings>About page it says I only have 286 songs transferred. This number is going up very slowly compared to iTunes.

quitting all the apps running on the iOS devise worked for me right away! it is at least a simple fix to try w/o restoring/etc.

I've fixed the problem I was having, mine was to do with converted music it seems. (Or at least that's the remaining sync problem since updating all my devices)

Before the bug iTunes would slowly sync music, but after it would rapidly shoot through like it was sending over unconverted music. The song number iTunes was up to was way ahead of what the iPhone displayed but would eventually catch up on "waiting for files to copy" or "waiting for changes to be applied".

On iOS 8 and the latest iTunes I managed to remove all music (without deleting any folders using iExplorer, yey!), untick "convert higher bitrate music" and copied over a small number of tracks. They went over fine. Tried a few thousand and they worked too. The problem returns the moment I enable "convert higher bitrate music" again.

So I'm not done on this topic. I've still got an Apple Bug Report submitted and will provide as much evidence and logs as I can to Apple to help get it fixed.

I realized that my issues was this step.

Before I updated to iOS8 I ignored the alert that asked me to transfer my purchases from my phone to iTunes. After I updated iOS I couldn't sync until I manually transferred purchases as LeoGecko suggested. However I am sure there are other reasons why other people's phones aren't syncing but this worked for me.

"I disabled the auto sync in iTunes like in step 5 of cpaulPHL post. After that I connected my iPhone to iTunes and selected the Devices> Transfer Purchases from "my iPhone"."

This is what worked for me. I deleted music on my iPhone. But when I went to sync, it would hang incessantly. I noticed that iTunes showed over 11 GB of music on my iPhone even though I supposedly deleted the music. So instead of backing up my iPhone to my computer (back up to computer or iCloud is part of the sync process), I checked the box to sync to iCloud as iCloud did not recognize any music. After that I tried syncing again, and it worked (after about a 3 minute delay).

I spent several hours with Apple tech support today, and this is what *seems* to have worked for me:

1) Repair permissions on boot drive

2) In: /Users/MyUserName/Library/Preferences

delete all prefs files starting with "com.apple.iTunes"

I doubt that this is a solution for everyone, or even most of us. But it might be worth a try. There are still some non-trivial "Waiting for…" pauses, but it doesn't get completely stuck (for now).