stuck on waiting for changes to be applied

I had this issue with iTunes 11.1.2 and iOS 7.0.3 on both an iPhone 4S and 5. I've done a lot of research and it seems that there are a mulitude of fixes and you just have to be lucky to find the one that works for you.

Voice memos seem to be implicated for a lot of people, but not relevant to me as I have never used them. So I suggest anyone using voice memos search for fixes related to that feature.

The fix in my case it was simple, but time consuming. I have both my phones set to sync the entire music library which is quite large. All I did was uncheck "Sync Music" and sync the phone. This removed from the phone all music and playlists as expected. Then I re-checked "Sync Music" and synced again and everything happily copied back to the phone as it should. Seems drastic (but really it wasn't) and it did take a bit of time because of the volume of data.

I have read in other threads that for some people when they do the second sync to put everything back on the phone it doesn't work - so try this at your own risk. For me, I was prepared to take the risk as I could live without the music on my phone if I had too.

I hope this suggestion helps someone else as I know I have wasted hours myself.

Is the only way to get past stage 6 of 6, the waiting for changes to be applied message to do a full restore of my Iphone 4S & loose all the photos & data on it?

I think is just rubbish service from a company the size of apple you would think that they could actually publish on here a solution instead of leaving it to their customers to guess solutions that worked for them, none of which have worked on my phone. It is your hardware & your software you tell us why it won't work. The physical store was no better i was told well if you had a Mac it would work, well i don't i have a PC.

For the record it stopped syncing after i downloaded V7.0.3. The itunes is V 11.1.2.32. The PC is on Windows 7

Did any one of you tried speaking to apple customer support?

I did contact the customer support.

They gave me some solutions like restoring my phone,

But none of their solutions worked.

Then a senior support executive did get in touch with me.

He asked me to do a diagnose and I shared him the report.

He told me that he will get in touch with his technical team and get in touch with me.

But the thing is I am from India and the guys were from CA.

So they couldn't be of much help to me.

I request someone to please contact them and get in touch with the technical team and ask them to help.

I also request to share the solution that they provided so that it will help all of us.

Predominantly this problem is there for people having iPhone 4S

I guess..

Pls get in touch with those guys and post the solution guys!

GArvind wrote:

Predominantly this problem is there for people having iPhone 4S

I guess..

I have the problem with an iPad 3 and an iPhone 5s. I don't think this problem is related to the hardware model.

Maybe there's just a lot of 4s owners out there…

But the thing is I am from India and the guys were from CA.

So they couldn't be of much help to me.

If you could see the irony of this, you would feel the pain of millions of Americans looking for some basic tech support answers.

Anyway, what is causing it for me is my music library. I had a song in there that was from a friends Iphone when he backed up his phone so he could install ios7. After deleting that I was able to sync just fine.

Dave247 - it doesn't work with a Mac either... only things that work for me is turing off anything iCloud and then transferring purchases. This seems to be good for a few syncs until it decides not to work again. Of course, since I am no using iCloud this means I can no longer sync my Calendar or Contacts... I don't think my next phone or computers will be from Apple. I don't like the way they are going.

The problem isn't confined to iPhone 4s as I have the same issue with my iPhone 5, iPad 2, and iPod Touch 5 running the latest OS. I've still not gone as far as restoring my devices and instead just use a program to remove the library files for iTunes on my device when the sync gets stuck, then reboot using Home+Lock. After that, iTunes rebuilds the library files on the device and will re-sync all songs, audiobooks, etc. without problem.

What has helped? As LeoGecko and others have noted, turning off anything iCloud (to include iTunes Match) is a good idea. My theory is that Apple's checks to ensure you have "authorized" things on your device is causing the problem, resulting in corruption of the library file on the device. When I look at the files that didn't make it onto my device (if the sync finishes "early"), usually they have been DRM-protected or matched, so I think this may be where the problem lies, at least for me. I don't sync apps via iTunes, nor do I sync calendars or contacts (I use Gmail and third-party apps to handle this), so my concern is primarily audio files.

Given that a version of this sync problem has existed over multiple Apple software updates (even before iOS7), I've decided to cancel my iTunes Match subscription and remove all remaining matched or DRM protected songs from my device (all were converted to non-DRM format). Since turning off Match my syncs have been much more stable, but I think that getting rid of all things DRM or matched will also help. I just finished cleaning the last of the DRM stuff off my computer, so we'll find out how the next sync goes. I know that iTunes will want to sync any purchased music back to my computer, but I don't want it tangled up in the iTunes library again so I may handle that manually using TouchCopy12 (allows you to read files on the devices and manually copy ones not in iTunes to a separate folder of your choosing).

I've also started using Amazon's Cloud Player Premium and am storing my audio files there. It is a bit funky to use and tends to duplicate files that have tags they don't expect, but I'd rather give Amazon my business at this point than Apple.

Oh -- I did try working with Apple's technical support on this. I set an appointment and went through extensive explanations of what was happening. The tech admitted that I'd done most of what they would have recommended but before we could try anything new, I was put on hold while he fixed a problem on his computer. Although they had my phone number to call back in case we got cut off, I ended up on terminal hold (about an hour!) then got disconnected and of course, they never called back. Although there was no charge other than my own lost time, I'm not likely to try that route again. Besides, he was wanting me to rebuild the library file on my computer from scratch, and I did NOT want to go there.

Something as basic as syncing should not be this hard.

Well, disgregard averything I previously said: my phone was stuck again!

Eventuually it does pull through, but it takes 15-20 minutes.

Of course, no word from Apple about this, just pretend it's not there... 😠

p.s. very annoying as well is that the App Store app on the iPhone will continue to show that "updates are available" despite having just finished a sync with the latest updates. 😕

My iPhone 5 is also getting stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied" when I try to sync over USB. It does not pull through after 15-20 mins. The phone doesn't seem to be aware anything is happening - the spinning sync icon at the top disappears when it gets to this step.

I'm running iOS 7.0.3 and iTunes 11.1.2.32 on Windows 7. None of the fixes in this thread worked for me.

Extremely annoying. I hope Apple release a fix soon.

PS sometimes it gets stuck on "waiting for sync to start" too.

Yep, looks like I'm another one in the list of those for whom this is proving a problem. I'm now running 11.1.3 on Mavericks with a 5s running 7.0.3 and cannot get music to update through iTunes. Photos seem to be working, at least sometimes. It is starting to become majorly frustrating.

Making changes to local playlists on the Mac, then attmpting to sync merely results in no changes to the iphone playlists. There is a fairly long last pass of the sync with the standard "Waiting for changes to be applied" phase before...nothing. And this is the case for both wired and wifi syncs too.

Had the same problem as many of you (music app crashes on load, spotlight fails to search, unable to back up, settings crashes in the General > About window). I resolved all of these problems by deleting some files on my iPad, which are accessible via a 3rd party desktop app and not from within the iPad (except, presumably, when deleting all settings and content). I'm an amateur when it comes to everything I discuss in this post, so proceed at your own risk.

I had iTunes Match disabled and no music on the iPad when I did all of this. If you have music stored on your iPad, these instructions might result in deleting it.

Each of our problems may stem from a different cause. First, I looked up whether my iPad was reporting any errors. I opened Xcode (a free 2GB download from the mac app store), clicked the devices tab in the Organizer, selected the Console beneath my device (which was plugged into the desktop).

I noticed a series of error messages that resulted from a failure to load an iTunes library file on the iPad itself. (I believe it was MediaLibrary.sqlitedb, but I don't have the logs anymore).

I used iFunBox (a desktop app that allows viewing and editing of some of the files on an iOS device,

http://www.i-funbox.com) to backup and delete the iPad iTunes library. I navigated to Raw File System > iTunes_Control. I backed up the iTunes folder to my desktop. I opened the iTunes folder, selected all of the files (which included the MediaLibrary.sqlitedb file) and deleted them. I restarted the iPad. iTunes on my desktop recognized it as a new iPad and immediately backed it up and synced it. This completed normally for the first time in months. The rest of my data appears to be the same as it was before deleting the iPad iTunes library.

If you feel confident enough to muck around in Xcode and delete some files on your iPad, this might help resolve your problem. But I never (except this one time) edit files on the iPad in the way I described above. I don't know what is potentially harmful to delete and what is not, so please do some research before deleting anything other than the iTunes library.

I have tried every trouble shooting step for this issue. NONE ARE WORKING! I have had apple support on the phone several times, restored my music library twice, reset my phone to factory settings twice, removed every possible piece of software that could be conflicting, done every trouble shooting step on this...... still cannot get past the error.... I'm so over Apple. This sickens me. I have spent a solid week on this! I have even waited for this latest iTunes update, AND IT STILL IS BROKEN. I'm done. Just so freakn' done with Apple products unless someone can help me fix this POS software.

It's like, a lot of these issues have been around forever(smart playlists don't update automatically, waiting for changes to be applied and preparing to update taking forever), and Apple does not address them at all. Most updates seem to be cosmetic at the most. Can't hold our breaths waiting for Apple to push out fast updates that fix these things.

I have a iphone 4s (7.0.3) and macbook air (OS X 10.9), never had any issues with doing sync between macbook air and iphone. About a week ago I noticed that some photos were not syncing. Since then I've restored my phone 4 times, but can't even get one song or video to sync. Voice memos sync without issue but if I add a playlist or single song (or single song in a new playlist) I get the dreaded "waiting for changes to be applied". I've tried all the tricks turning off wifi, bluetooth, find my phone, deleting icloud account, reinstalling iTunes and even rebuilding my itunes library from scratch (twice). Spinning arrows stop on the phone but itunes (11.1.3) never completes. On accaision it will sync some songs but they are empty. I have no idea what to do next... this bites!!!

This is idiotic.

Fix the bug. I should not have to spend hours researching an issue, then re-build my library because of programming incompetence.

I hate to say it but Apple is becoming more like MS every day.

What a disgrace.