sync session failed to finish

Hello,

I have tried all the solutions stated above including your method of "activate COMPATIBILITY of ITUNES for win7" but all failed to fix my problem 😟

The only way I fixed this issue is by the following :

1. Backup the IPhone.

2. Go to Settings/General/Reset/"Erase All Content and Settings".

3. Set the IPhone as "New Phone" and complete all the steps.

4. Restore from the backup.

5. WALLLLLLLLLAAAA, it worked and everything went smooth.

I hope it works for you also.

OK! I got my iPhone 8 to sync again!!! This is what I did...I backed up my iPhone to iCloud from iTunes....Then I did a complete restore from iTunes....after software was extracted from my iPhone and new restored software was put on...I used option "set up as new iPhone". My phone started syncing photos again immediately....NOW on my phone itself...no apps or nothing was on there....I went through the process of connecting to my wiif, etc. but on phone itself - it asks if you want to restore from a backup...here I selected yes and restored from iCloud backup which put my apps back, etc... That was last night & my iPhone is still syncing today so...TAADAAAAA! All in all it wasn't too bad. You can do all of this from your phone itself too w/o using iTunes at all also. Just make sure you do that back up to iCloud first & remember to restore as a new phone NOT restore from backup initially! Good Luck!

Guys - just wanted to continue this discussion of “could not be synced because the sync session failed to finish”.

I had it too and was trying all different suggestions I found here and elsewhere. Well I finally solved it very simply in my case. I had the iCloud drive sync on! You cannot have this on if you want to sync your fotos from your Mac. So go to your iCloud account in settings and switch it off. All photo synchronizing from Photos/iTunes now works again. Maybe this could be mentioned somewhere more explicitly by Apple ...

I hope I understand your question right.

First setup as a new phone without using any backups.

Then go for restoring from the backup.

You may try to erase the IPone then restore from backup directly and tell us what happens with you, It could work.

I chose the long way to make sure that the issue disappeared before I restore the backup.

Good luck.

I tried EVERYTHING else...nothing worked except restore then to set up as new phone...had to do the same thing with my iPad too!

Factory Reset did, but now the pain to re-do certificates for various apps what a pain!! But yes this resolved the sync issue.

Apple remember us your customer!!!

Well, even trying to remove all photos didn't work for me. No, I was speaking about reseting the phone to "zero" , so it would be as when you bought it; only original basic apps present...and empty, and purchased apps absent...

I had the same problem, and unfortunately the Apple sync software seem now only to be able to add and not delete. I believe that Apple has designed updates that can not do the job you (and I ) wished to do. The answer is to reset (= erase) your iPhone and restart from new (with need to reload all the apps, even the ones you purchased). I guess, Apple thinks that by now you have a new iPhone, and therefore, wouldn't have this problem 🙂.

I have been battling "sync session failed to finish" for over a month now....I can't seem to figure it out except for the fact that it revolves around photos somehow. Yes you are right...if you uncheck the photos box and then sync you will remove photos from your device (except it will remove ALL photos & not just a few to save disk space). I wonder if Apple is somehow trying to corral all of us into using their "iCloud Photos" application where ALL your photos are stored in the cloud and available for any device? Syncing would not be necessary then. I have over 48,000 photos though & uploading them to the cloud would take forever! I do not think they are put into albums too when you use this also, but I am not sure. I think it has something to do with permissions/sharing on the photo files somehow...something that got changed in the property values of either the photo album file folder or the individual file properties of the photo files themselves. This could have happened with either a Windows update or an Apple one! It's making me nuts!! =)

Ah ok...I already tried a regular restore from backup & it didn't work. Still got that **** "sync session failed to finish. This is on my iPhone 8. From what I've heard through the grapevine...you need to do a restore then set it up as a new iPhone. Seems like a severe method but I have tried EVERYTHING else and nothing seems to work. My iPad 4th gen used to sync but just tried to sync that & now I am getting that error message on that too (and that's even on a different computer!). Good Luck Buddy!!!

Same here: Factory reset; only solution, spend huge amount of time on it with an iPhone 6 with latest iOS and new iMacs (2x 2017 versions!) and High Sierra. I don't think Apple pays attention to customers who don't buy their new hardware (i.e. iPhone) to replace suboptimal software on older (> 2-3years) hardware.

If it's anything the same with my situation...the photos ARE in fact still there...(just not in albums). If you go to "Photos" which is all the way to the bottom left in the Photos App ( left of the "albums" icon ) you will find your photos I bet....

I am trying to sync my photos ONTO my iPhone though... To remove your photos you could always do a restore though - couldn't you?

my problem is to free up space in the iphone without loosing the photos. therefore I'm assuming that PC Mac photos and videos in the folders are there and no synch will move them, but to remove them from the iPhone I see that I have to perform a synch with no longer the folders synched. But anyway whatever synch I try to launch it always ends up with a failure in finishing synching

Yes, that's what I plan to do. However, beside the fact that one will have to repack the iphone will all the lost apps, my phone can't even be backed up anymore with iTune, after having tried many methods to add photos from my imac to my iphone...

No, but I haven't had time to do the restore, knowing that I will lose many apps that will need time to reorganize...And also being nervous that a restore will cause new unexpected problems, considering how amateurish Apple's iTune software is....