Waiting for items to copy stuck iOS 7

Yeah, this is clearly a problem with iTunes just being a pile of crap when it comes to syncing.

If I change *one* song on one playlist, my sync can take up to an hour. It's insane. It's just bad software, and Apple does not care. I literally report this bug on a daily basis, and have opened a bug through the Apple bug reporter, and have never heard a word from Apple.

I just report it to make myself feel better, I guess, but I have no hope that the programmers on iTunes will suddenly start caring that their software is so bad. If the did, they would have fixed this literally years ago.

Same. I don't know what to do. My iPad syncs perfectly. You can't even trip it up by cancelling and whatever. But my iPhone 4S? It hasn't done a full sync in a year. I haven't listened to music on it for such a long time that I'm inches from abandoning the iPhone and moving to a device that will sync files and music. I don't want to but I'll have to.

It feels as if this has been a problem for as long as I can remember, and like me you will quite simply stop syncing and wonder if there is a phone on the market better suited for your needs, I for one am pretty sure I wont be buying an iPhone again.

You´d think that Apple would take this issue pretty serious considering that syncing is key to owning an iPhone, but they don't! I wonder if being an idiot is a requirement for Apple empoyees, it seems so.

Best wishes

Lassesor

This worked for me:

Download a third party application on your device which you can use for file sharing. "O Player" is an example.

Connect your device to your computer and click on your device and go to the menu that says "Apps".

At the bottom of the page you should see the "File Sharing Tab" and with in there the application.

Click on the application beside it click on "add"

If on Mac go to "Media" then "Music" And then "iTunes".

Select the files you want and click on "add".

I hope this works 😉

R.Flo

iphoto app problem, try download from iphone,

Still busted in iOS 8. In fact, syncing somehow got worse: wifi sync is broken for a lot of people (threads are already popping up about it). Unreal. How can Apple screw up such core functionality so badly?

I had the same symptom of "Waiting for items to sync..." never clearing with a new iPhone 6 running iOS 8.0 (12A365) syncing via USB with iTunes 11.4. Thanks to some of the ideas above I was able to clear the issue without rebooting the phone or my Mac by doing the following:

In iTunes:

1. Unchecked Summary > "Sync with this phone over Wi-Fi"
2. Made sure Summary > "Manually manage music and videos" was unchecked
3. Unchecked Music > "Sync Music" (I wasn't trying to sync Videos or Photos before. If you were, I'd suggest unchecking those two as well here.)
4. Clicked the "Sync" button
5. Let the sync complete. It had to copy a couple Tones files, but that seemed to work.

Then the following right after it finished that first sync completely:

1. Checked Music > "Sync Music"
2. Checked Summary > "Manually manage music and videos"
3. Clicked the "Sync" button

This time iTunes did actually start and finish copying all the playlists of music I had previously selected over to the iPhone6.

Hopefully these crazy steps work for a few other folks as well. -- tedisonwa

I also tried it in stages. With the latest iTunes/iOS8/iPhone6 combo, the sync is even more excruciating than it was before. Even when everything is synced it, I would sync it again to make sure everything went through correctly.... and THAT would take me almost 10 minutes (yes, with nothing to sync).

Its unreal to me that Apple has yet to fix this horrible syncing experience. I already had to restore my new iPhone as new, as my backup would not work. Then when syncing apps, it just gets stuck on an app and I have to redo the whole thing again... Until I read on another thread to use wi-fi syncing, and that fixed that problem at least (although much slower than lightning cable).

So Im stuck on "Waiting for items to copy" for 4 hours now. Granted, I have almost 20K songs going over, but still... if it hasn't crashed, Apple should let us know what is really going on during this process instead of the dumbed down "idiot light" we get. I guess Ill just let it go for the day and see what happens. If I pull it now, I dont want to spend another day uploading music again.

Running into the same issues on iOS 8.

Have tried all the options and synching is still hit or miss without a good reason.

Also of interesting note, when installing iOS 8 on two different devices (iPhone 6, yes I got mine!, and iPhone 5), it defaults to turning iTunes Match to "On" which the senior advisor I am speaking with is "not supposed to happen" per an internal memo.

Of note, I have an older iPod touch synching the same music library to iOS 6 I do not have this issue.

Quick update - my music is now synching. I am not sure which of the steps are needed, but here is what I did to get me entire music library synched with iOS8 -

1) Select manually manage music

2) Remove all music from the phone - I have about 10 "phantom" songs on there

3) Synch the phone

4) Sign out of iTunes store and sign back in again

5) Try to import a couple of playlists. Previously the playlists would not import songs listed as "protected AAC" - even though it was the same iTunes account on the phone and the computer/itunes. After signing in/out of the iTunes store, all music items synched.

6) Turn off manually manage music and re-attempt to synch the entire library.

VIOLA! it worked.

I suspect that by having been signed into iTunes Match by default, then signing out, it "signed me out" of my iTunes account, even though it still appeared that I was signed it. Of note, iTunes Match has been turned off on my computer... Whether or not it works when iTunes match is turned back on remains to be seen...

I'm having the same issue(s). However, this has been going on for me since iOS 7. I get stuck at "Waiting for items to copy". I've pulled the plug before when this message appeared for more than 15 minutes, but, that totally screws up my iPhone. Missing songs, missing apps, etc. So, now I just wait it out.

I had to basically rebuild my iPhone 5s from scratch last week because I became impatient and cancelled the sync too early. It's taken me an entire week to move songs over (playlist by playlist). I sync a playlist folder, disconnect the iPhone, reset the iPhone (since I will often get stuck in the "Waiting for sync to start" phase if I don't reset), sync another playlist folder, etc., etc.

Entirely frustrating.

It's probably because I have a huge library, but, really, if they're going to release iPhones with 64 GB and now 128 GB storage capacity, they have to expect that some people have huge music libraries??

While syncing one playlist folder (that had a lot of songs on it), I literally left my iPhone in the syncing stage for over 12 hours. I left for work, came back, and it was done. Everything copied over fine, but, seriously??? 12 hours? That is ludicrous.

Well there is hope (sort of). Good news is, if you are patient it will work. The bad news is... my nearly 20,000 songs took almost 2 full days to sync! To fit that many, you obviously need to convert to 128kbs, and that is where the trouble starts. It's just a lot of processing.

Yes, I agree... Apple should expect this if their business model relies on music and portable devices. The sad part is, when my first attempt at syncing was almost at 24 hours, I called AppleCare. They both scratched their heads and the upper tier guy told me he never heard of anyone syncing that much music and maybe it was just too much for the iPhone. His solution?? I should convert my entire iTunes library to 128kbps! Like a guy who takes his music selection seriously enough to have 20K songs in the first place is going to keep his music at 128. That was not an option (neither was his original option of my subscribing to iTunes Match!). We left it that I should stop the sync and restart it in phases so it taxes the system less. That did NOT work. It created an irreversible "Other" data section of 70GB and left me no option but to restore the phone as new). So in total, my new iPhone had been tethered to my iMac for 3 full days. Unreal.

That said.. have patience... As infuriating as the song itself, you need to "Let It Go"... It will eventually sync. Mine is perfect now and Im so happy now that the library has been transferred. I just pray I never need a replacement phone.

Hope this helps.

I never had this problem, but just noticed it happening.. Please note it's a BUG. I went out and bought a 128GB iPhone just to hold all my songs. It wouldn't work. This never happened with the iPhone 3/3s/4/5/5s but started happening with the iPhone 6. After 40 hours of working through all possible solutions on the web and with Apple cares support (supposedly senior level) They finally suggested what the problem was. I had "Convert higher bit songs to 128 aac" Checked. This does not work One more thing when I unchecked that, the sync took like 3.5 hours instead of the 9-12 hours is usually took even on the smaller iphones. I have 98.7GB of music. Before I was just syncing a list of specific songs.

The syncing seems to be random when it has the problem though.

Well since you are able to uncheck "Convert to 128K", then yes, that tis an option for you to transfer your entire library. Is the conversion to 128K that is taking forever. I can't tell if it is a bug... it may have always been this way--I just never had to sync 20K songs to my iPhone before (because we only now have 128BG iPhones). For me, I dont have the option to turn off the 128K conversion if I want to transfer my full library.

Id like to hope it is a bug because that means it can be fixed.

Ok guys, this is probably old tread, but i had the same problem, stopped copy, then continue and everything went ****:), so i found out what helped me, i had passcode and fingerprint lock, so i unlocked iP, disabled auto lock and everything went fine... in case somebody else have same problem...