Devices not showing in iTunes for wifi sync

Plug the phone into your computer with USB. On the summary page click sync this phone over wifi. Hit apply. It will now work.

BCurry1 said:

Plug the phone into your computer with USB. On the summary page click sync this phone over wifi. Hit apply. It will now work.

Click to expand...

That's required, but isn't always enough. Wi-fi syncing with my iPhone and iPad is pretty unreliable:

• The iPhone and/or iPad don't always show up in iTunes.
• If you initiate a sync from a device, iTunes may pop up a dialog saying something like "searching for device", and then give up. The sync on the device will then suspend, saying that, "Sync will resume when XXX is available".

Digging around, this appears to be some kind of Bonjour issue. When the devices aren't found, they're not listed in Bonjour. When the sync fails, the device suddenly vanishes from Bonjour.

Turning wi-fi off and then back on seems to work, but that's a pretty unfriendly workaround.

solved my iphone 4s sync problem

perhaps someone has already posted this solution, i found this thread while trying to figure out why my iphone 4s stopped showing in iTunes after the ios6 update.

Today I followed a suggestion in another forum and it seems to have fixed the problem.

I turned off "Cellular Data" on my phone, after having done a wired sync. Then I did another sync, with wi-fi sync checked. Still plugged in, I turned cellular data back on on my 4s. Then I disconnected the phone from the sync cable. Voila, iTunes still saw my phone! Closed iTunes and reopened it to test, and phone showed up immediately, and I did a wi-fi sync with no problem.

Hope this helps someone else.

found a fix for me

It's 2013 and I am still running into this problem. Here's what works for me.

1. Turn off wifi on computer and shut down itunes.
2. turn off wifi on ipad.
3. turn on wifi on computer and open itunes.
4. turn on wifi on ipad.
5. itunes now finds my ipad again.

javelin200 said:

It's 2013 and I am still running into this problem. Here's what works for me.

1. Turn off wifi on computer and shut down itunes.
2. turn off wifi on ipad.
3. turn on wifi on computer and open itunes.
4. turn on wifi on ipad.
5. itunes now finds my ipad again.

Click to expand...

This is a problem for me too -- mainly with iPhone 5. iPad 3 is always detected. My solution has only been to restart iTunes. I haven't found another work around. Why can't Apple just add a menu option 'Search for Devices'? That would solve everything, no?

javelin200 said:

It's 2013 and I am still running into this problem. Here's what works for me.

1. Turn off wifi on computer and shut down itunes.
2. turn off wifi on ipad.
3. turn on wifi on computer and open itunes.
4. turn on wifi on ipad.
5. itunes now finds my ipad again.

Click to expand...

After trying many troubleshooting sequences published on the web, including some that required power cycling the computer and the iPhone/iPad and the router, Javelin's is the one that worked for me -- with one modification...

The computer that I have running iTunes is connected to the network using Ethernet, not WiFi. So in the first step, instead of turning off WiFi, I unplugged the Ethernet cable. I followed the rest of his procedure, and lo and behold, my iPhone was again showing in the list of "Device" in iTunes.

So the solution to the WiFi problem is just to always sync with a USB cable? Why didn't I think of that!?

PBCC said:

Kindly go with these steps, these may help you...
-First of all make sure that your device strongly connected with system.
-Remove your device from USB port and restart your device.
-Now re-connect your device with the system via USB port.
-Now launch the iTunes on your system.
-After that connecting message will be shown on your device screen.
-Now select the iTunes on the device screen.
-After that your device will connect with the system.

Click to expand...