Q: Syncing Apps to iPhone 6 / 6 Plus Stuck

Same problems as everyone however my Devices won't allow me to select anything.  All the labels are gray.  Any ideas on how to resolve?

Well after many hours of trying all of the various workarounds to get my new iPhone 6 to restore apps from my old iPhone 5s backup I've finally thrown in the towel and  put it back in the box until Apple sort this out.

I tried it plugged in 5 times with the 6 cables (tried old ones also), to a USB port (no hubs) on a 2013 macpro system completely up to date and it would crash every time in different spots. It never got to a point of being able to plug it back in to make a backup.

So after about 6 erase and restores the solution I found was to not plug in the phone, go through it's welcomes and set up as a new device / goto settings general and itunes wifi sync / plug it in / restore from last device / change to wifi syncing, apply / unplug / it'll probably crash / but after a few times completing it finally copied everything over for me.

Wifi sync did complete each time and produced backups. The syncs were never 100% complete even through it said finished - sometimes it would copy 10 apps, next time 70 or so and i think the final sync it copied them all over. It never stalled on any of them

Historically i've only used wired mac backups, no wifi or icloud.

I've been using Apples/Macs in a professional capacity since '92 and a day one iPhone 1 purchaser - this has been the absolutely worst apple upgrade/launch I have ever experienced.

Agree totally - I have had a really horrible experience with this, my 5th iPhone (and have used only Apple devices for all my working life in the Arts at HE)

Oh my, Apple! I believe you have some fences to mend. . .

I FIGURED ONE SOLUTION OUT!  I have spent the better part of my Saturday trying to get my new iPhone 6 to sync with my gigantic iTunes library.  It also got stuck in the process no matter what solutions from this forum I tried.  Then I remembered an old work-around for missing album cover art and I tried it--voila!  All my music loaded on the iPhone 6.  Here's what you do:

1. remove ALL music from your new iPhone by unchecking "Sync Music" box.

2. Sync phone (it should remove all songs); even if it gets hung up on the last step, you should see all songs removed.

3. Restart iTunes and iPhone.

4. Select "Sync Music" box and songs/playlists etc you want.

5. Select "Sync."

This should do the trick.  Mine is loading 8K songs right now after nearly twelve hours of trying to get it to work.  Hope it works for you.

is anyone else having the same app syncing issues using a windows pc & itunes, or is it just me?

Jeffrey Cusick wrote:

 

I had the syncing problem with 2 new iPhones 6's. Had problems even with turning on Airplane mode with no WiFi. Here's what finally worked for me...

- Make sure you have a good backup of your old phone in iTunes.

- Put new phone in Airplane Mode and restart it and iTunes.

- Plug the phone into USB but stop any automatic syncing.

- In Summary Page "Restore iPhone" and let it do its thing.

- What is interesting about Restoring iPhone is that on both of my new iPhones I got a window to "Update Carrier Settings" and said yes (I'm on T-Mobile).

- Completed the Restore and used the old backup to restore from.

- While the backup was copying over, I completed the "Welcome" screens on the iPhone.

I'm using Mac OS X 10.9.5

Laltenburg wrote:
 
This worked for me:

Without your iPhone attached, ensure all apps on iTunes are updated to the most recent updates
Connect old iPhone and transfer all purchases from the iPhone to iTunes
Backup old phone locally to iTunes with encryption selected (this ensues that passwords and app data are saved)
Ensure the new iPhone 6 is reset to Factory Defaults
Only perform the initial setup on the phone and select "Restore from iTunes backup"
Connect the iPhone 6 to the computer and select the backup to use as the restore seed
Walk away - don't interfere with the process. When iTunes restore effort reaches the copy apps stage, watch carefully, but be patient. If there are many apps, iTunes will organize them in batches, so you may not see complete information in the status bar. iTunes may also look as though it is stuck, but watch carefully as it still may be processing the batches. iTunes should reach the point where it finishes batching and is only copying apps to the new iPhone. 
The process completed itself

 
I have an i7 iMac with OS 10.9.4. 
 

I combined these and it worked for me.   It did seem to hang at one point and complained about not being able to log in to the itunes store.  I have different acocunts for itunes and icloud and your passwords don't come over with the back up.  Once I logged into the itunes store, unplugged the iphone 6 and plugged it back in again (not airplane at this point, just no wireless or bluetooth) it started syncing properly.

I noticed that there seems to be added security when loading apps to your iphone.  Just side loading seems to require authentication it really shouldn't with IOS 8, so that may be the issue.  The restore from backup asks for your icloud password but not your itunes password. Doing the above method also caused it to asked to update my carrier settings which it hadn't done the first time as well.  So I think turning off wireless/bluetooth on both phones while doing all this helps the process.  You can just use the cell network for the authentication bits (icloud/itunes).

So ...

     1. put old phone in airplane mode and do a clean backup

     2. reset iphone 6 to factory settings removing all data

     3. restore iphone 6 from old iphone backup, if it complains about the itunes store put in that password, unplug and replug it in.

     4. After finishing asking questions on iphone during the synce after the device is restored, make sure wireless/bluetooth is turned off.

     5. Depending how much stuff you have it will take a long while.

I don't think the cables, wifi, or airplane mode matter.  I was determined to make this work with a 2m Apple Lightning cable plugged into a short USB 2.0 extender cable, so I wound up doing a DFU reset instead:

  http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/DFU_Mode

During the 1st DFU restore attempt, I got an error probably caused by a failure to contact an Apple server:

  Error 3194, Error 17, or "This device isn't eligible for the requested build"

but powering the iPhone 6 Pro off and back on while still plugged in prompted iTunes to successfully complete the DFU restore the 2nd time.

All my prior attempts, before the DFU restore, failed miserably.  iTunes hung several times, all requiring a hard reset of the iMac, and often said the 1st step of the restore from backup would take 20+ hours!

After the 2nd DFU restore attempt completed, restoring from an iPhone 5 (running iOS 8) encrypted backup completed in under 30 minutes.  I'm now watching it load apps at the expected rate.

So, if all your other rain dances fail, try a DFU restore!

Hello.

After many tries, turns out when i'm restoring from my wife's old phone backup (iphone 5s with IOS8), everything goes wrong and i'm unable to do a proper sync, when i have been able to put back the apps, then the music and sounds would not sync...

When i restored from the backup of my previous phone, everything went ok, just like it did for my new phone.

Hence, i noticed than when i restored from my wife's backup, after the restore process, the phone asked me to "slide to update", which if thought was odd, and when restoring from my phone's backup, it didn't ask for that and went to sync straight away.

So the trouble comes, as the genius at the Apple Store thought, from a sloppy backup or a sloppy update on the previous phone.

Erasing the backup and making a new one from the old phone didn't sort this out.

So, finally i configured the phone as a new one all the way, and had no problem at all. I'm able to sync apps, music... without any problem. The only real problem is I lost the text messages, but got all the rest back from iCloud sync (not backup).

So it does turn out, for me, as others thought, that the problem came from the update process from IOS7 to IOS8.

I tried option 2, and it looked like it was working, but then hung up after about 15 apps.  So then I ejected the iPhone by clicking on the sync wheel (which causes iTunes to hang up) and then unplugging the lightning cable.  Then I replugged it into the laptop, and then it started automatically resyncing, but then crashed.  So I clicked reopen and now its hung up again.

II'm not sure if anyone has read this thread

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6528204?start=0&tstart=0

This may or may not be of some use. The crashes seem to be due to itunes 11.4 and having media stored on a NAS.

FWIW, I've completely solved this issue and after solving it, the problem has not returned and I've synched my iPhone 6 many times. First, as someone already mentioned here, setup iTunes to sync via WiFi, and then when the WiFi sync has started (slow, of course), you'll notice at the top right of the iTunes summary page it says something like "For better results attach a USB cable when synching."

At this point, with the WiFi sync still working, I plugged my phone back into the cable and instantly the sync started flying. It synched 60 apps, 7000 photos, and about the same amount of songs in less than 40 minutes. From that point on, plugging my phone in with the cable, as normal, takes about 15 - 20 seconds to backup and sync.

ok... question. I'm upgrading my wife's iPhone 4s / os7 - using that backup to try to sync the iPhone 6. (so i didn't update date it to ios8) Has anybody upgraded their old phone to ios8 first, made a backup, then using an ios8 backup restored on new iphone 6?

I dont seem to have any issues syncing any of the other phones.

Im still having issues getting a complete restore, when i make a change it never happens.

Using wifi sync seem to be the only way for it not to stall, but i never get 100% . it ran all night. now itunes is crashing every once in a while. i restart the mac and iphone before every sync

Mike, I upgraded two older iPhones from iOS 7 to iOS 8 "first", then did a backup, and then restored the backup to the new iPhone 6's. My last post on this page tells how the sync problem was overcome on my iPhone 6. On my wife's iPhone 6 there was never this problem...everything went well.

ok, so you still had problems with your phone even though you upgraded your old phone to ios8 first. I haven't received mine yet, so...