iPhone not showing up in iTunes via WiFi

[mcaswell]

Over the past year or two I've had an occasional problem where my iPhone and/or iPad will not show up in iTunes via WiFi. Quitting/reopening iTunes generally doesn't help, nor does disabling/enabling WiFi on the iOS device. I can sync when plugged in via USB, but the only way to re-establish WiFi connectivity is to restart the device(s).

This only happened maybe once every month or two previously, but ever since upgrading to iOS8, my iPhone and iPad exhibit this behavior much more frequently. I restart the device, which temporarily gives me the ability to sync via WiFi, but then the next day the devices vanish from iTunes (until I restart them again, then they disappear the next day, etc.).

Anyone found a solution to this problem?

 

[mcaswell]

Anyone else having this problem, and/or have any possible solutions? I've found some threads on Apple's forum, but in general they say "hey, I found a solution... just restart your iPhone, and it will appear again in iTunes." Sorry, but having to restart your iPhone every time you want to sync/backup is not a solution!

 

[NoBoMac]

I had the problem with my iPad. What seems to be working:

• Took down firewall one notch. Was at most strict setting ("Block all incoming connections").
• iTunes is in the the list of apps with "allow incoming connections" set (been that way for a number of years)
• Probably incidental: turned on encryption of my backups (now have an explicit key swap between Mac and device)

Recently, I was at a locale with flakey wifi, so iPad got dropped from wifi on occasion. Would need to unlock the device temporarily to get he wifi to reconnect and then iTunes would see again.