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waiting for changes to be applied/waiting for items to copy stuck during sync

Updated to ios 8 and during installation on my phone (via wi-fi) it got stuck so re-did it via itunes on my computer.


Ever since the update finished my iPhone 5 is stuck either on waiting for changes to be applied or waiting for items to copy. I did give it more than 4 hours to complete so I don't think that is an issue. I'm using an iMac to sync btw...

Also the little circle with arrows indicating that the phone is syncing doesn't go away at all.



Here's what I have done so far to try to fix it but without any luck :


Sign out of iCloud on my phone and out of my account on iTunes


Restore my iphone again ( 7 or 8 times )


Tried restoring 2 older back ups


Unchecked all of my music / apps etc etc for the sync thinking that one of the items is causing issues


Tried 2 different cables for sync


Tried doing sync over wi-fi rather than cable


Re- downloaded and re- installed iTunes



I'm very very frustrated with this issue and completely out of ideas as to what to try next.


I'm attaching a screenshot of one of my folders on the phone where apps DO show up but it just keeps on saying waiting and they are grayed out


User uploaded file

PLEASE HELP!!!

iPhone 5, iOS 8

Posted on Sep 19, 2014 6:40 AM

Reply
85 replies

Feb 16, 2015 6:24 AM in response to oitonodoubt

Here's my version of this problem. First the symptoms.


I start a Sync on my iPad Mini. Everything goes along fine until I get the message "Attempting to copy to the disk "My Disk" failed. An unknown error occurred (-4)." Once I click OK I get the message "Waiting for items to copy."


Now I noticed that it had finished syncing everything except books and had started syncing an updated book. I do not use iBooks on my Mac but I do use it on my iPad. To get books into iBooks, I mail the book to myself in epub format and Open In iBooks. I've been doing this since Mavericks introduced iBooks on the Mac. But we won't get into that here. There are lots of other threads on that.


I had recently loaded a new book and sure enough, when I removed that book from iBooks on my iPad, the problem disappeared. Maybe something changed in 10.10.2. I'm sure that if I reported it to Apple, they'd just tell me that I should be using iBooks on my Mac to handle books.


I don't have a solution other than removing the book from iBooks on my iPad and possibly moving to a new book reader. Haven't decided.

Mar 9, 2015 12:36 AM in response to oitonodoubt

After a hear and a half struggling with this issue and having to restore my phone countless times and being afraid that the next sync is going to be the one to get stuck and erase all of my music I am finally pleased with the outcome of a suggestion on this forum. After deleting over 500 songs that were duplicates, I tried syncing. SUCESS! I didn't even have to restore my phone. The 70+GB of mysterious "other" data returned to its normal 1.75GB size and I have every single song from my iTunes on my iPhone. Thank you so much for suggesting this. Hopefully it solves the issue once and for all. -Jeff (iPhone 6, Yosemite)

Oct 7, 2015 8:04 AM in response to nottooloud

This thread has helped a lot with my Apple issues. Ive had this problem since iPhone 4. This is what solved it for me:


Turn off iCloud Drive

Uncheck sync over wifi

Check manage music manually

Put device in airplane mode

Restart iTunes

Connect device with a lightning cable (I used a non Apple one)

Drag any album from iTunes to the device

Click sync


It took an hour or so for a 128gb iPhone 6 but it worked a treat and worked on a 64gb iPhone 5 too.

Dec 10, 2015 2:34 PM in response to kamilskii

I had this problem along with another one in iTunes, and I think they were related. My setup is Macbook Air on OS X Yosemite and iPad Air which started out on iOS 9.1. When I started iTunes on the Macbook it started displaying a message about not being able to connect to Store Purchases along with the need to open port 443 in Firewall. I did the iOS update to 9.2. When I started iTunes again I again got the alert message about Firewall. So I deleted, and added back, iTunes App in Firewall. That seems to have fixed the "waiting for changes" problem for me - I'm guessing the inability to connect to the store was because of the Firewall was my issue.

waiting for changes to be applied/waiting for items to copy stuck during sync

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