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Wifi Sync Doesn't Work (iPhone 4/iPad 2)

I sort of take it back. It seems after a bit iTunes thinks my iPhone has gone away, and nothing brings it back until I restart iTunes. Methinks it's a bit buggy right now..

-HM
 
Is anyone else having issues with your phone not auto syncing when you plug it in to a power source?

Everything else works fine, and I can wifi sync just fine as well when I manually tell it to but it's not syncing on its own when I plug my phone into a charger.

Any ideas?
 
Tried everything mentioned in this thread so far with no luck.

I suspect this is related to the same issue that causes my itunes remote app to only work sometimes....

it actually stopped detecting my iphone in the middle of syncing over wifi... i can sometimes get it to work for 10-20 minutes but then i try to actually transfer something and i get "Looking for iPhone..." and then it disappears....
 
SufferingIdiots said:
i can sometimes get it to work for 10-20 minutes but then i try to actually transfer something and i get "Looking for iPhone..." and then it disappears....
Click to expand...

Yep, I get behavior like this. Usually restarting iTunes will do the trick. Or initiating the sync from both the phone AND iTunes. Clearly it's buggy, and it's going to be tough to figure out where the issue is when it's intermittent.

-HM
 
I found that if I plug in while my iPad is turn off and iTunes is on it works again only with windows firewall AVG will stay connected but drops when you try to sync. I still have not seen it sync when I plug into power..... In a word PC version is "buggy". I expect we will see an update soon pretty sure this is an iTunes issue not iOS.:rolleyes:
 
JohngPR said:
Is anyone else having issues with your phone not auto syncing when you plug it in to a power source?

Everything else works fine, and I can wifi sync just fine as well when I manually tell it to but it's not syncing on its own when I plug my phone into a charger.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

This is my problem as well. If I manually sync, it works fine. Plugging it in and charging to a power source does not work at all. I'd love for it to auto sync this way...
 
make sure "prevent [device] from syncing automatically" is not checked in iTunes pref

Zacasaur said:
I know this may sound dumb but for the life of me I couldn't figure out why wifi sync wasn't working with my iPad. Then I went to the device tab in preferences and saw that I had Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically checked once uncheck worked like a charm. I felt kinda dumb having over looked such a simple thing. Hope my mistake helps someone else
Click to expand...

This was my problem too. I had "Prevent from syncing automatically" turned on and it did exactly what it said it would; it prevented my iPhone from syncing automatically when plugged into a power outlet. Once I turned off that option and restarted iTunes, the auto sync began immediately.

I think this should be the answer for many folks. I don't really see how Bonjour for Windows has anything to do with it; it's a printing service. And it's certainly not needed; I don't have Bonjour installed on my Windows 7 x64 machine and the auto sync worked as soon as I turned off the prevent auto sync option.
 
ddarko said:
I don't really see how Bonjour for Windows has anything to do with it; it's a printing service.
Click to expand...
Bonjour does much more than printing - it's a network discovery service, which allows devices (e.g. your iPhone and your computer) to find each other on the network.

ddarko said:
And it's certainly not needed; I don't have Bonjour installed
Click to expand...
It absolutely is needed, and you do have it installed: it's installed silently as part of the iTunes installation. If you look at your Windows services you'll see Bonjour Service listed. If it wasn't there, your wi-fi sync wouldn't work - 100%.

This is one of those issues where there are several things that can go wrong, and any one of them will cause things to stop working. So just because one solution didn't work in one particular case doesn't mean it won't work for someone else. Some unlucky people will even suffer from multiple issues, and until all of them are fixed, wi-fi sync won't work, and if they do get it working, it will seem like whatever they fixed last was the magic bullet.

Installing the Bonjour "printing service" works for some people because it repairs a damaged/failed Bonjour installation.

For others (like me one of the times I installed), the installer messed up the firewall configuration (possibly because I was connected to a "public" network when I installed iTunes), so reconfiguring the firewall resolved that one.

Even after fixing my firewall, I was still getting the problem where my devices periodically disappeared from iTunes until I restarted iTunes. This was on iTunes beta 7.

I've now installed iTunes 10.5 release version, and wi-fi sync is mostly working, and the devices are visible whenever they're on the same network. However now I regularly get dialogs that say iTunes could not connect to the iPhone because as unknown error occurred. Cancelling the dialogs seem to make everything ok again, but my next step is going to be a complete uninstall of iTunes and everything else I can find that it might have installed and then a fresh install, in case anything is left over from the beta.
 
Great explanation

Network problems are not always just one fix I got mine fix by just disable my network card and enable wireless wifi card and sync worked

CupawnTae said:
Bonjour does much more than printing - it's a network discovery service, which allows devices (e.g. your iPhone and your computer) to find each other on the network.


It absolutely is needed, and you do have it installed: it's installed silently as part of the iTunes installation. If you look at your Windows services you'll see Bonjour Service listed. If it wasn't there, your wi-fi sync wouldn't work - 100%.

This is one of those issues where there are several things that can go wrong, and any one of them will cause things to stop working. So just because one solution didn't work in one particular case doesn't mean it won't work for someone else. Some unlucky people will even suffer from multiple issues, and until all of them are fixed, wi-fi sync won't work, and if they do get it working, it will seem like whatever they fixed last was the magic bullet.

Installing the Bonjour "printing service" works for some people because it repairs a damaged/failed Bonjour installation.

For others (like me one of the times I installed), the installer messed up the firewall configuration (possibly because I was connected to a "public" network when I installed iTunes), so reconfiguring the firewall resolved that one.

Even after fixing my firewall, I was still getting the problem where my devices periodically disappeared from iTunes until I restarted iTunes. This was on iTunes beta 7.

I've now installed iTunes 10.5 release version, and wi-fi sync is mostly working, and the devices are visible whenever they're on the same network. However now I regularly get dialogs that say iTunes could not connect to the iPhone because as unknown error occurred. Cancelling the dialogs seem to make everything ok again, but my next step is going to be a complete uninstall of iTunes and everything else I can find that it might have installed and then a fresh install, in case anything is left over from the beta.
Click to expand...
 
This was definitely a Windows Firewall issue for me. I allowed Bonjour and it works great now.
 
This will help i promise

Step 1: Connect your device via USB cable to the PC and launch the iTunes.


Step 2: In iTunes in summary tab, enable/checkmark “Sync over Wi-Fi connection”.

Step 3: Now sync your device as you normally do via the USB.


Step 4: Disconnect the iDevice from computer (USB connection) and you will notice that your device is still recognized by iTunes!


Step 5: Now you can Drag&Drop files in Tunes to your iDevice, and you will notice the Wi-fi sync working magically!


Step 6: Now Whenever you want to do a wireless sync with iTunes, go to Settings –> General -> iTunes Sync in iOS, and then just tap “Sync Now”

it should be working
 
besso05 said:
Step 1: Connect your device via USB cable to the PC and launch the iTunes.


Step 2: In iTunes in summary tab, enable/checkmark “Sync over Wi-Fi connection”.

Step 3: Now sync your device as you normally do via the USB.


Step 4: Disconnect the iDevice from computer (USB connection) and you will notice that your device is still recognized by iTunes!


Step 5: Now you can Drag&Drop files in Tunes to your iDevice, and you will notice the Wi-fi sync working magically!


Step 6: Now Whenever you want to do a wireless sync with iTunes, go to Settings –> General -> iTunes Sync in iOS, and then just tap “Sync Now”

it should be working
Click to expand...

Great advice, but I will add for those like me who like to press eject before disconnecting the device, do not do that part or it will not work. Just disconnect the device.
 
I also learned today that iTunes Wifi sync only works in 2.4GHz mode, not 5GHz - even though the devices can see each other in mixed mode. Had to switch my laptops down to the 2.4 band.
 
Nice to know: you also have to enable the option "Open iTunes when device is connected".
Rather ironical for a wireless sync, but once I had checked this option, my devices finally synced automatically!
 
im having trouble with my itunes..

when my iphone is connected.. itunes will sync it normally
but when i connect my ipad to itunes.. it will not sync. although it will detect ipad.. but the device screen only shows the word iPad..pls see image..

can anyone help me with this? please??

i.jpg
 
Last edited:
Any progress?

Hi,

I have an iPhone 4S with iOS 5.1 and am using a MBA (mid 2011) with Mac OS Lion 10.7.3 and iTunes 10.6 (40).

I am only able to sync my iphone via cable. As soon as I remove it it disappears from iTunes; I never got Wi-Fi Sync to work, I did follow the usual suggested steps.

My router runs a wifi with 2.4 GHz with WPA-Personal encryption - is there a specific setting I have to respect? I read that for some people WEP seems to work but I do not want to do this. WPA2 I cannot get to work with my MBA for some reason.

Are there any new ways to fix it?

PS: I went through these threats already:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1250381/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1252394/ - I did not follow the steps suggested on http://cnx.com/?p=1612, because to my understanding it is for Windows
 
This worked for me:

After checking bonjour was installed, current iTunes 10.6.1.7

1.) In iPhone/iPad Summary, Uncheck open iTunes when iPhone/iPad is connected
2.) also check sync this iPhone/iPad over wifi
3.) In Edit--> preferences--> devices uncheck Prevent iPhone/iPad/iPhone from syncing automatically
4.) restart PC
5.) plug iPhone/iPad to PC via USB
6.) run iTunes and sync iPad/iPhone
7.) goto settings--> general --> iTunes Wi-Fi sync on you iPhone/iPad
8.) after iTunes is done syncing disconnect USB cable iPhone/iPad and the Sync Now button should stay enabled and not be greyed out anymore.
 
I have a workaround, if you can call it that. It gives me what I want anyway- which is: I want my subscribed podcasts on my phone when I get up in the morning and head out to work. What I noticed is that on two Windows 7 computers and an iphone and two ipads- and with Norton on one, and Mcaffee on the other- wireless syncing is always reliable after itunes is first opened. After that, it may be hit or miss for a while, then completely useless after a period of a few hours or so. I cannot believe apple hasn't fixed this. So I took matters into my own hand by writing one batch file to close itunes if it's open, then open it again, and another that just closes it:

taskkill /fi "WindowTitle eq itunes" /f
"C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe" /MAX

and

taskkill /fi "WindowTitle eq itunes" /f

And run them in windows task scheduler. I'm my case I run the 1st at 1am, and the 2nd at 4am- giving it 3 hours to sync (hi Tomtom and Infinity Blade!). Then I run the 1st one again at 4:30am and the 2nd one again at 5am. I do the 2nd pass just in case I happen to be using my computer at 1am and don't want itunes interfering, or I'm using my iphone and it isn't docked by 1am. The other advantage is that the synching from the 1st pass will probably be done before Windows does it's "emergency" security updates and restarts my computer. So both ways I'm covered, and my podcasts are always waiting for me in the morning. Whatever your situation, this approach should give you wireless syncing everyday without ever having to concern yourself if it will work or not- ASSUMING your devices are docked when itunes opens (thus two passes just to make sure).
 
Last edited:
I know that this is an old thread that I found when searching to resolve this issue myself, nothing in this thread actually helped me, however after more poking around on Google, I found this.

Open the windows firewall settings, and look if "SyncServer.exe" is allowed. I'm gonna guess it isn't even listed.

Instructions (Windows 7 x64 - Vista is probably similar):
Open "Control Panel"
Select "Windows Firewall"
Click "Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall"
Look for "SyncServer" in the list. It won't be there.
Click "Change Settings" then "Allow another program"
Click "Browse..."
Find "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\SyncServer.exe"

Restart iTunes and your iPod/Phone/Pad should appear in iTunes even when disconnected. If not, try rebooting to make sure everything is reloaded properly.
Click to expand...

I rebooted my PC and upon opening iTunes, it detected my 4s and did the sync with no issues.

Hopefully this will help out anyone else searching in future!
 
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