Waiting for changes to be applied - iPhone Sync Issue

Any luck anyone? ... I have the iPhone 5, 16gb ... before the iOS 7 update my phone had no issues syncing with my (Not an awful lot of music on it) iTunes. I updated, and it completely wiped all of music off the phone and now when I try to sync it gets stuck on step 6 of 6 (waiting for changes to be applied) for hours and then just closes itself out of the process - I have tried all the suggested fixes and nothing is coming right? I'm not the most tech savvy so I'm now completely out of ideas. Gutted as I literally have no music on my phone! Please, if anyone can talk me through a process that actually worked, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

I have read every post everywhere. I have the same problem-several times. Each time I try to stop/cancel/interrupt I get a GBs of "Other" space used up and I cannot sync again anyway. There is only one solution. Stop any syncing, uncheck syncing music, and select "Restore iPhone". I have done this several times successfully. I lose all my music on my iPhone but everything else is OK except a few Preferences. That is, all my apps come back (give it an hour or so), and basically everything is back to normal with only 5 GB used and no music. Then I resync over wifi over night with "Entire Music Library" but converted to 128 kps to fit all my music. Given that I have restored a few times and still get "Other" filling things up, I don't think it is related to Voice Memos, at least not for me. I have converted all my songs to highest quality MP3 and copied to a 1 TB disk (WD 1TB $69 in lieu of a thumb drive) for use in my car stereo. I think the hang up iTunes has is trying to down sample one of the MP3 files to 128 kps and you get a little warning near the iPhone entry on the left of iTunes...you need to click it...quickly. If it hangs there for a while, that seems to make iTunes hang. Also, don't let your computer sleep! Restore, resync. Oh well. Oh, I have iTunes 11.2.2, iPhone 5 64 GB, Mac OS X Mavericks, if it matters.

I found my root cause to this identical symptom on my iPhone 5/iTunes 11.3 syncing to be Smart Playlists.

I was syncing to iOS some Smart Playlists which had rules referring to other playlists which were NOT being synced to iOS, causing the endless loop. I believe iTunes/iOS apps were both updated recently and no longer just sync the songs in a smart playlist, but now to also include the logic which is not valid if all playlists were not present on both devices that were referred to within a smart playlist. DUMB.

You'd know if this is your current issue if you expand in iTunes the iPhone in question (click on the triangle in the left pane) and you would see ! warnings under the suspect playlists. If you click on the ! they'll tell you what the issues is, but unfortunately they never actually warned you during sync other than it going on endlessly or in some cases warning me that the sync could not complete.

Once I eliminated the Smart Playlist rule that had the reference to a non-synced playlist, it immediately started syncing properly again, was this way for months previously without syncing.

This problem seems to happen to me every couple of months. I am running iTunes 11.3 on Mac and iOS 7.1.2 on iPhone 5. Sometimes it ends with my entire library being recopied to my iPhone. I have never had the problem when syncing my iPad Air.

This afternoon iTunes kept hanging on "Waiting for changes to be applied" (step 6). I tried various things like cancelling the sync, deleting the backup, restarting iTunes, restarting my MacBook, and restarting my iPhone. Every time it always hung on "Waiting for changes to be applied." Finally, I just left it. iTunes eventually threw an error that the sync could not be completed. Now, however, I can sync normally and quickly.

So the solution was to let it just take forever to sync and now it syncs quickly each time???

Thanks for the note. Sad that one has to scroll through so many messages and such to get the answer.

I verified this. My iPhone 4s took over one hour to sync and then was fine. Makes me wonder what was put on my phone........

Good luck to all with this ridiculous problem.

It is happening to me again right now. Sync is stuck on step 7 of 7: "Waiting for items to copy."

For anyone still having this issue, After trying many different solutions with no luck, I stumbled upon a fix that seems to have worked for me. I simply backed my phone up to iCloud whilst it was connected to my laptop, easy as that. I've got a 32GB iPhone 5 so I can't guarantee it'll work for everyone but it might be worth a try.

Good luck,

This problem continues - ipod touch 5th generation. ios 8.1.2, itunes 12.0.1.26.

Hangs for not hours - wait for it - DAYS - and won't sync. Hangs on waiting for changes. This has been going on for months. Apple store told me to reinstall itunes. Did. More time wasted. Didn't work. Folks at Apple Store said they keep telling Apple to FIX itunes. LOTS of people, including the techs at Apple store have the same problem. They talked specifically about iphone 6.

I can't think of anything I haven't tried (restarted, rebooted, reinstalled) bought new cord (even though nothing appeared wrong w/ two previous cords) BUT, would be curious about any suggestions. I've moved everything over to Android (google play) and that's ok. Not perfect. But, at least I can access my music on a mobile device.

My iPhone 4s / iTunes 12.3.2.35 stuck "waiting for changes to be applied" step 7 was fixed by deselecting all of the smart playlists being synced as recommended by jaime72. Syncing completed and works fine now. I haven't experimented with different smart list rules yet to narrow down the exact problem.