‘finishing sync’ just hangs?

I have the exact same issue. What I have observed, if you watch the "Sync" button it's greyed out during the sync process, then right when it appears to hang, the button becomes clickable again. Just a theory, but I think the sync process actually completes ok, but iTunes fails to remove the message at the top of the window. My guess is a bug in iTunes.

It just did it to me again, sync'd an app update. I hit Quit after starting some song and iTunes crashed. It sent a crash report to Apple, so hopefully they can resolve it. It's a bit unsettling as I never had this issue until yesterday when I installed the latest iTunes.

Couple of things ...

While the iPhone is actually syncing, you see something like this:

(note the spinning "syncing" wheel)

You'll notice when it's done, it seems to be hanging and you get something like this - indefinitely:

But, if you look again, you'll see the "eject" button has replaced the "syncing wheel":

So, at this point, just eject it and you're fine -- really.

And, if you don't trust that, then do this:

Go to the Music tab of iTunes and add or remove just one song or one artist or one playlist.

Then, click the Apply button in the lower right corner.

You will notice that THIS way the Sync Process finishes cleanly.

Hope this helps!!

Keen observations APB1966, thanks! I didn't think to try eject. 😉

I have a I-Pod Touch, 5th gen and a I-Phone 5. Both worked properly with the latest I-Tunes software; 11-1-2-31. Yesterday I installed the latest firmware and now both units never finish synching. The "Geniuses at my local Apple store believe the problem is with my computer, even after I explained that there was nothing wrong until I updated the firmware and that I used different methods to download the update (one via I-Tunes using a USB cable and the other over wi-fi.) His response was that no one else has had these problems. He suggested that I bring my computer in. First; I have a windows 7 machine. Second: it's a very large Desktop unit which would take nearly an hour to disassemble and there's no way I'm taking a $2,000 plus Windows machine to Apple when there is nothing wrong with my desktop in the first place. I've seen Apple screw up Windows based I-Tunes software before. I guess I'll just have to be patient until they fix this problem. It's really my fault, I shouldn't do their updates. There are too many issues with their updates which is why they have to do further updates to fix their errors and on and on. They suggested I reload my I-Pod/Phone software.These are two 64 G units. I have nearly 6,000 songs each on them, movies/videos and maybe 30 or 40 apps. I left the store because they were obviously lost.

I had problems doing their iOS updates via iTunes in the past. Here's what I do,now:

* Hook iPhone to iTunes and sync to get a good backup

* After that sync completes, I go to my Music and uninstall about 4Gig of music to make plenty of room on the iPhone and apply

* I then eject my iPhone from iTunes

* Connect the iPhone to a wall charger

* Run the iOS update from the iPhone itself 'til it completes

* Reconnect to iTunes and Sync for a good, new backup

* Re-visit the Music tab and re-install the 4Gig of music I previously deinstalled - and apply

I have done this twice now and it has worked like a charm

I do NOT trust the update via iTunes anymore.

Same issue here, iTunes won't stop displaying the "finishing sync" status, but i'm with APB1966 here - the sync is actually already finished on that stage. If you watch your iPhone display the rotating sync arrows also disappear by then, so: sync complete! So we don't have a major problem here, just an annoying rather harmless bug.

But since this issue is discussed in many other threats as well and people give the wildest suggestions about rebooting, restoring, firmware-updating etc. (which all seem not to fix the problem for most of the users), I recommend to be patient and wait for another iTunes update rather than spending hours on those workarounds with very low chance of success.

Thanks for catching this. I'm having the same problem but didn't notice that the button had become clickable again. Now, I click it a second time and the sync finishes without problem. Excellent!

How does a brother get a "this helped me" thingy on my post so I earn some **** points around here? 😝

The new iTunes 11.1.3 "seems" to fix this issue but as it's new I haven't done a lot of testing only 3 Idevices few times

update itunes remove device and connect again after itunes update

Excellent! thank you. The suggestion to delete one song worked!