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.

That was the only thing that worked for me - reset to factory, and restore from backup.

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!!!

It seems like a couple of people have this problem - I setup iTunes to sync my photos with my iPhone, and then tried to remove a folder from sync. iTunes then cannot complete the sync (I assume it times out trying to delete the folder from the phone). Now iTunes thinks the folder isn't there, the phone still has it, I can't delete it from the phone cos the delete is grayed out, and the iTunes sync always fails with "could not be synced because the sync session failed to finish".

I've done all the steps people have suggested, but nothing works.

(setting manually manage, playing with the usb cable, rebooting, upgrading, sync purchases, deleting all libraries from iTunes, hard-reset, shutting down apps, etc.)

NOTHING WORKS.

The only thing that worked was to reset to factory and restore from backup.

This is ridiculous.

The worst part is when you Google this and see how old some of these posts are...

This thread was started in 2014, there are posts here up to 2017, I found other posts in 2012...

This problem has been around FOREVER.

Maybe you should fix it Apple?

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.

I'm having the same problem: "Sync Session failed to finish..." ---when syncing photos to my phone. I'm trying to update my Mac Photos images to my iphone----and NO LUCK.

Now, I can't even unselect "Sync" in iTunes and remove photos from my phone.

VERY FRUSTRATING. I'm using a 2013 MacBook Air -- and iPhoneX

Tried all of this. It is scandalous that Apple has not been able to find a solution to this problem; there are thousands of users with the same problem, and all Apple can find is "connect and disconnect cables", or similar platitudes every user has obviously already done; really taking us for idiots.

Dieter Schifferli