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"Waiting for changes to be applied."

Q

quikrick11

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2014
20
9
Anyone have a fix for this?

Little background. I recently sent my iPhone 5 off for the Sleep/Wake button recall. Got it back a week later and it was obviously wiped. I restore from iCloud and a random 758 songs show up in my music. I haven't used iTunes Match in over a year so I'm not sure where these songs came from. I delete the entire music folder and do a wired sync with iTunes. Everything seems to transfer fine (about 45GB of music) and I was on my way. After using my device I notice a lot of my album artwork is missing and I have duplicates everywhere. Not sure what happened because I'm pretty anal about keeping my library nice and tidy. I decide it must of been a wonky sync and so I delete the music folder again and try to re-sync my library (this is now on iOS 8). Now every time I try to sync I get stuck on step 4 of 4, "Waiting For Changes to be Applied." I thought it might need a minute or two to work through my library so I let it run FOR 8 HOURS. Nothing. Still "Waiting..."

I've done my research and see a lot of anecdotal remedies regarding voice memos, voicemails, etc. Nothing is working for me.

Anyone have a legit fix?

(I'm running iOS 8 on an iPhone 5 with the newest version of iTunes that was updated a few days ago on a Mac.)
 
I feel sorry for you posting this during the iPhone 6 rush. You're lucky if anyone else sees it!

I had this issue! The fix is annoying, but it worked for me.

You probably have at least one track that is not syncing for some reason. Here's how to find it:

1) Go to settings -> general -> Usage -> Music and delete all the music from your phone.

2) Reboot the phone. This is important because the state of the phone is messed up and only a reboot fixes it.

3) Connect the phone. In iTunes preferences, select "Manually manage music". Open the phone using the little arrow and click music. Select any music you see (cmd-a) and delete it.

4) Wait until it finishes, then disconnect the phone and reboot it again.

5) Reconnect, turn OFF manually manage music, and sync. Wait until the entire sync completes.

6) Look at the music on the phone again. Scroll down and you will probably find one or more tracks that are greyed out with a dotted circle in the left hand column. THESE ARE THE TRACKS FAILING TO SYNC. Remove them from your library.

7) Repeat steps 1 through 5 to reset everything. Sync again, and everything should be fine.

I know it's convoluted, but this is the only way to find out which tracks are messing up the sync. For me it was ONE track out of over 5000! But my phone and ipad sync great now and I was able to replace the (iTunes store downloaded, oddly!) track with a pirated copy off the Internet. (I paid for it already!)
 
I really appreciate the thoughtful answer. I will definitely give this a shot when I get home tonight. Much appreciated.

The only reason I'm not losing my mind right now (I love my music) is I also plan on joining the iPhone 6 craze in the next few days and :fingers crossed: there won't be any syncing issues.
 
quikrick11 said:
I really appreciate the thoughtful answer. I will definitely give this a shot when I get home tonight. Much appreciated.

The only reason I'm not losing my mind right now (I love my music) is I also plan on joining the iPhone 6 craze in the next few days and :fingers crossed: there won't be any syncing issues.
Click to expand...

If there are tracks that fail to sync to your current phone, they will fail to sync to the iPhone 6 too. This is a bug in iOS, not an issue with the phone.

So, best you track down the songs that aren't syncing and nuke them before you get your 6 so you don't have to deal with it then. :)
 
ok I take that back

It appeared that all the songs synced but if i try to play them they don't work. i get the dreaded red circle. *sigh*
 
don't you think its strange that apple has never addressed this? I mean it wasn't posted by them. countless threads with pages and pages of tips and tricks none of which got to the root of the problem! Anyway Im just relieved to have fixed this. It has affected so many of my iDevices. Now all is well.
 
elg67 said:
hi, just wanted to share the solution that worked for me, after hours of frustration...

see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3909940?start=0&tstart=0
Click to expand...

Thank you for the link. Unfortunately my issues persist. I'm on my 6 now and get hung up at "Preparing for Sync."

I should say it worked after my initial iCloud restore. At least the 5K songs I had checked worked. When I went back a day later to sync the rest (another 5K) it got hung up. Followed some online troubleshooting and restored the phone. Now I still get hung up and no longer have my original 5K songs. UGH.

I will try this fix tonight. I fall into the category of "or has an empty library but iTunes reports that music is present on the device and taking up space;"
 
do you have any Voice Memos by any chance? that can be an issue for many people. delete them. hard reset and sync. good luck!
 
jessedholm said:
do you have any Voice Memos by any chance? that can be an issue for many people. delete them. hard reset and sync. good luck!
Click to expand...

I've seen this as well. I had one in the early stages of the issue. It has since been deleted and I've had multiple hard resets and even restores since. The issue continues.
 
what a pain right? I still get the waiting for changes to be applied occasionally but i don't touch it and eventually it syncs--takes about about 10 minutes usually. I blame my slow mac mini. Ordered more ram for it. I turned off find my iPhone as well as cloud drive. you never know what the culprit is. I wish iTunes told you what its doing exactly during syncing. needless to say i don't sync too often for fear of messing anything up!
 
jessedholm said:
what a pain right? I still get the waiting for changes to be applied occasionally but i don't touch it and eventually it syncs--takes about about 10 minutes usually. I blame my slow mac mini. Ordered more ram for it. I turned off find my iPhone as well as cloud drive. you never know what the culprit is. I wish iTunes told you what its doing exactly during syncing. needless to say i don't sync too often for fear of messing anything up!
Click to expand...

Exactly. Even though I love my iPhone the syncing process has me missing the days of my iPod Classic (RIP). True definition of "It just works."
 
elg67 said:
hi, just wanted to share the solution that worked for me, after hours of frustration...

see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3909940?start=0&tstart=0
Click to expand...

So I somehow got it to sync using this method. I've done something similar in the past using phone view that didn't work.

What I did:
1. I recently had a loaner phone and somehow everyone who's ever used that phone was attached to my Apple ID. I'd constantly receive pop up sign in notices for 12 email addresses I've never seen before. My phone also said "Restoring from iCloud" at the bottom of the lock screen. I ended the restore early and then backed up to iCloud. I haven't had a random email since.
2. I backed my phone up to my iMac.
3. I unclicked "Lyrics & Podcast Info" in my music settings on my phone. Seemed unnecessary.
4. I followed the instructions in the link above at this point.
5. I synced with all of my music checked and "Only sync music that is checked."
6. Went to the music tab checked and unchecked the music option a few times. Not sure why I did this. Haha.
7. Hit sync and walked away. I couldn't take the frustration of watching it fail again and it was close to midnight at this point. I went to bed and when I awoke I was astonished my phone had 10,128 songs on it.

I am not sure if I got lucky or what. You've all been very helpful so I wanted to update you. In not sure I'll sync again until an iTunes update comes out. Presumably around the launch of Yosemite.
 
Update. Tried to add Childish Gambino's new mixtape. Entire library was deleted during sync. Back to square one. Is this Apple's way forcing me on to Beats/iTunes Streaming?
 
Very large thread over on the Apple boards regarding this very issue. If you read through you will see some have taken in their devices/Macs into the Genius Bar to no avail. One person has been on the phone multiple times for hours on end with a Senior Manager with Tech Support. It seems this has been "elevated" in their bug department, whatever that means. Bendgate and Hairgate are ridiculous. This, on the other hand, should be getting the traction. It seems that thousands of people are no longer able to sync their music which is the very thing that resurrected Apple from the dead back in the iPod days. This is the story that should be getting coverage from all the blogs/sites.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6541755?tstart=0
 
zorinlynx said:
I feel sorry for you posting this during the iPhone 6 rush. You're lucky if anyone else sees it!

I had this issue! The fix is annoying, but it worked for me.

You probably have at least one track that is not syncing for some reason. Here's how to find it:

1) Go to settings -> general -> Usage -> Music and delete all the music from your phone.

2) Reboot the phone. This is important because the state of the phone is messed up and only a reboot fixes it.

3) Connect the phone. In iTunes preferences, select "Manually manage music". Open the phone using the little arrow and click music. Select any music you see (cmd-a) and delete it.

4) Wait until it finishes, then disconnect the phone and reboot it again.

5) Reconnect, turn OFF manually manage music, and sync. Wait until the entire sync completes.

6) Look at the music on the phone again. Scroll down and you will probably find one or more tracks that are greyed out with a dotted circle in the left hand column. THESE ARE THE TRACKS FAILING TO SYNC. Remove them from your library.

7) Repeat steps 1 through 5 to reset everything. Sync again, and everything should be fine.
Click to expand...

I am trying this on an iPhone6 after having multiple problems with trying to sync my phone.

On Step 3 how do you delete the files in Yosemite?
 
zorinlynx said:
I know it's convoluted, but this is the only way to find out which tracks are messing up the sync. For me it was ONE track out of over 5000! But my phone and ipad sync great now and I was able to replace the (iTunes store downloaded, oddly!) track with a pirated copy off the Internet. (I paid for it already!)
Click to expand...

You fixed mine. THANK YOU.

It started working perfectly at about step five, apparently I had "general" issues rather than a specific track or tracks.

Thank you. I was frustrated for over a week.
 
I have the same issue here, but now, when I chose to unsync my music, it left 50gb of "other" space and now I can't reclaim that for some reason...is my only solution to reboot the phone and restore from an iCloud backup before the sync issue?:mad:
 
Please help me!!

I have an iPhone 5s grey
I have connected to iTunes and I added music to my phone before on week
Yesterday I changed windows but I didn't do anything to iTunes I delete the windows and installed new windows
And I have signed in on old windows too and now I deleted it also but if I connect to iTunes in my new windows
I can't connect if I connect ITunes it is getting five minutes to backup after backing up it is showing "Waiting for changes to be applied
But nothing happening
Kindly please help me!
 
Unfortunately this is the reason I now have and rely upon my Android devices. Drag and drop, done. I hate iTunes but it's what makes Apple $$$$ and won't change. The Apple upsell in the OS upgrade worked. But now I'm stuck again in this dreaded loop. Have lots of files dragged from various places. Now I have to troubleshoot everything just to deal with a sync problem which is all or nothing. One bad file takes it all down. There is no consistent solution, unfortunately.

Minhaj0624 said:
Please help me!!
I have an iPhone 5s grey
I have connected to iTunes and I added music to my phone before on week
Yesterday I changed windows but I didn't do anything to iTunes I delete the windows and installed new windows
And I have signed in on old windows too and now I deleted it also but if I connect to iTunes in my new windows
I can't connect if I connect ITunes it is getting five minutes to backup after backing up it is showing "Waiting for changes to be applied
But nothing happening
Kindly please help me!
Click to expand...
 
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