itunes stuck on "preparing to update" when I try to transfer music?

None of the workarounds has worked for me. Does anyone remember the days when Apple "just worked"? Those days are getting fuzzy.

Pro Cylinder, MAC OS Sierra, Ipad Pro, both current updates. Trying to copy videos to a playlist (I KNOW!!! I'm asking a lot of you Apple - I want to play videos in a sequence!)

If anyone else has found a way to do this, please post. Thanks.

I manually manage music and had a similar issue...don't know if it's exactly the same: when trying to transfer an album to ipad I would drag and drop album onto ipad icon...then it would start cycling through "preparing to update" ..."copying 1 of 300"..."cancelling sync"..."preparing to update"..."copying 1 of 299"...and on and on.

My album was only a dozen or so tracks, so clearly it was trying to do something I couldn't fathom. I discovered that "convert higher bit rate songs to AAC" had become mysteriously checked in ipad menu-options- on itunes. I unchecked it and tried again and it transferred album OK.

I'm off to Copy Trans.

This is exactly my problem too! and indeed it fills me with apoplectic rage towards iTunes and Apple for making it near impossible to listen to any of my old albums anymore, anything that is NOT bought from iTunes. In fact, this makes me so mad I could dump Apple entirely. Poor form, Apple!

Could someone please reply to this/ I've been having this issue periodically since buying an iPhone 5S.

I also have this problem, I've got around it in the past by playing around with manually manage music and sync settings. Basically, to put anything new on I need to erase all music off my iphone and then put it all back on again which takes forever and fills me with apoplectic rage towards iTunes and Apple - my dislike for iTunes is fast overtaking my enjoyment of Apple products. Sorry I can't be more specific I kind of figure it out as I go each time.

As the new songs I'm putting on weren't purchased through iTunes - they're burns from the extensive CD collection of my teenage years - I sort of suspect that this is some sort of covert anti piracy feature that Apple have put into iTunes. Anybody found a proper solution?

I have the exact same issue iPhone 5S iOS 7.0.1

I mean 7.1.1

Hello there, I'm just a newbie here so please bear with me. I'm 1000% sure it's a compatibility problem between iOS 7.11 and newer models of iphones plus ipod touches. I've encountered the same annoyance many times- ipod touch 5th gen syncs perfectly for an entire month then gets stuck on the dreaded "preparing to update". Please don't hit me for saying this, but the best option is to wait: it once took me literally 15 minutes to get 2 bloody songs on my device- it WILL update eventually. Still, if you (as a perfectly reasonable human being) can't accept that, try re-installing itunes- this has worked for me in the past, but is fairly sporadic, only effective 60% of the time. Finally, I have a hypothesis that has to do with album art- I once sat my arse down and noticed that the "updates" usually ends with a painfully slow "updating files". I also noticed after running some experiments that songs WITHOUT album art sync much, much faster. I highly suggest you try syncing your tracks without the album art, then fixing it on your device, as inconvenient as it is.

I sincerely hope my advice would be of use. Sorry for the useless rambling.

Can someone at Apple please respond to this? I've just noticed this issue on my 4S last night. I just wanted to transfer an album to my iphone and it gets stuck forever on "Preparing to update". The songs appear greyed out on the Iphone. What is going on all of a sudden?

Try adding a single track (from another album and the track should not already exist on your iPhone) from your iTunes library to the iPhone. Click on the Sync button and let iTunes update the phone.

Then re-try the operation of adding the whole album.

SAd to say this is user to user forum. it rarely happens that apple respond here. Try calling apple support To get a direct response from apple

Thank you for the reply.

I tried adding a single track from another album and that just froze as well. I haven't tried hitting the SYNC button yet, as I am afraid it will try and update all my

apps and I will be sitting there for hours. I will try that tonight when I get home.

Somebody on twitter mentioned temporarily turning off their passcode before syncing and that seemed to help. I will try later on when I get home.

I have a solution (iOS 8, iphone 4s).

If you look under the music on your phone for any new songs, you'll notice a greyed out song and circle next to it. Just click the eject button in iTunes for your phone, iPod, or iPad (wtv decide it is), and continue when a popup asks you if you're sure. (this should not harm your phone in any way, so long as there is no syncing icon on your decide at the top). Then just unplug and re-connect your device and wait. After syncing or wtv it wants to do, iTunes will automatically add the songs you were trying to add. If you want to be sure, there's up/down arrows on the top of iTunes you can click to see what it's doing. My iTunes is setup to add music manually. The only time this does not work is when the greyed-out music files do not appear.

have a good day 🙂

Wow. This worked for me! Thank you so much!

I followed your instructions. When I plugged the phone back in i hit Sync. It ran thru the whole 6 sync steps (backup, etc) and then on step 6 it started loading all the songs that had grey circles!

Apple really needs to fix this. Its a major PITA with iTunes and its been going on for years now. Some people still want to manually manage music on their devices and iTunes needs to be better at doing it than it is now. Not a great first experience with a new iPhone 6+ trying to load up music. But the same thing was happening on my iPhone 5 too.

Thanks again for helping with this!