iOS 8 WiFi sync is broken

Yes all wifi passwords

Miraculously and after literally every attempt to fix via reset networks, hard starts, etc., both of my devices are showing in my iTunes. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts. I'm not going to hold my breath but at the moment, life is good.

Nothing new here. My iPad was showing in iTunes for 10 hours or so today, but has now disappeared. My iPhone 6 hasn't been in the list all day.

However, I see reports that Apple's at work with revisions of iOS 8.

Why such a buggy rollout of a os this time around???

iTunes WiFi sync has always been hit and miss for me over several generations of iPhones and iPads. I thought I'd give it another try with my new iPhone 6+ (iTunes 11.4.0.18 running on Win7 x64) but - as I've sadly come to expect - it seems to be broken out of the box. Great experience...

iTunes WiFi sync is such a useful feature in theory but it never worked properly for me, to the point where I had identified that its unreliable behaviour was causing corruption in my library and devices so switched it off and went back to 20th century wires... Though it's true that it seems to have regressed even further in iOS8 (ie: no connectivity at all).

I'm lucky enough that AirPlay appears to work ok - after some initial iOS8 instabilities. This kind of suggests my network is OK for Bonjour etc. Could the fact that my router provides simultaneous 2.4 & 5Ghz WiFi networks (different names) be an issue? I have both the iPhone and the laptop on the same 5Ghz network though.

One wishes Apple would be true to its mantra of providing stuff that "just works" for the masses. Sadly they seem to be sliding M$' direction ever faster...

wifi sync was always hit or miss on my side too when I was was using windows based pc. Now I'm using an iMac and iOS 8 ruined wifi sync, its as if I'm using my old windows based computer.

I wonder if this is a Trust issue.
When I reset the network I had to plug the iPhone 5S and the iPad 4 into the USB cable to establish the Trust between the computer and the idevices.

Since then it seems to work again!

iMac 2008, 10.9.5 (13F34)

iPad 4 Retina Display IOS 8.0.2

iPad 5S Retina Display IOS 8.0.2

Doubt it - more likely you're being temporarily lucky as reported by others. I've tried this with my iPhone 6+ and it has made no difference...

Yep, spoke too soon. 24 hours later when I open iTunes, no devices will show at all. Tried to restart everything but no joy! Hopefully, the Apple Engineers will get a patch to take care of this soon. I did enter a ticket with them early last week.

This procedure worked for me (MBP OS X 10.9.5 – iPhone 4s – iPad mini / iOS 8.0.2):

1. Sync each device once using USB cable
2. Disconnect device – device gets delisted in iTunes
3. Reboot device

That works for everyone, but fails again after a period of time. For me it is always the next morning that the device is no longer seen by iTunes. Connecting with the cord is the only way to synchronize until Apple fixes this problem.

Yep...You were right!

I wouldn't call iOS 8 buggy--well, except for iOS 8.0.1. With the exception of the WiFi syncing problem discussed here, it's been fine for me.

Here's a shot in the dark. I noticed this on the Macintouch security discussion yesterday.

"In June of this year, at WWDC#14, Apple announced that the Wi-Fi scanning behavior of their devices would change starting with iOS8. They would start using randomized and locally administrated Wi-Fi MAC addresses in the probing state."

Maybe iTunes is expecting a consistent MAC address.

Expecting a consistent MAC address is fine, that's the hardware ID of the device itself, not the IP address. In fact, the consistent MAC address would in theory reduce these issues an awful lot! If iTunes knows to look for a specific MAC on the network, it'll then say "Right, this phone gets this content, regardless of its IP address"

Edit, I'm an idiot and didn't fully read stuff. Randomizing MAC addresses is very strange behaviour.

My point was that iTunes may expect a consistent MAC address, but iOS is hiding the MAC address for security purposes. It's a feature, not a bug. But iTunes is just behind the times.

This is just a guess, mind you.