iPhone Sync Issue

[Danorak81]

Hi all,

I have (finally!) set up my new M2 Mac mini, and have spent the last few days shuffling things about etc. I couldn't migrate from my iMac because it was a late 2013 and on Catalina with a nearly full 1TB Fusion Drive (Mini is entry level 250GB). So I took the opportunity to set everything up afresh, which was nice (not done that since my 20" iMac back in 2006!)

Anyway, now everything was finally in place, I decided to Sync my iPhone (15 Pro Max). It is running the latest beta FYI. Music and info (Calendar, Contacts, Mail etc) are managed via the cloud, but my photo albums are managed manually. This setup was working fine on my iMac, right up to it's shut-down 3 or 4 days ago on Catalina (I used to Sync about once a week).

However, I now seem to have a 'Sync' issue on Sonoma (14.2.1). The phone appears in Finder, all the settings are as they were on Catalina. I hit Sync. Step 1 of 4 completes within a matter of seconds, but step 2 of 4 is a problem. This is my third attempt, and each time it just hangs on step 2, with the animated horizontal bar just constantly spinning, with the message underneath saying 'Preparing to Sync'. This time, I have left it at stage 2 incase it's doing something 'under the hood', but I'm now 3 hours in and it's still hanging.

Helpfully, I didn't realise that I have wiped my pre-Beta backup of my iPhone when I erased my iMac. I thought I had a copy of *everything*, but it appears I don't (I'm sure I'll find more along the way). I did wonder if restoring to a non-beta version of iOS might help out. I don't really want to erase the entire phone and set up again from scratch just to see if the Sync issue is resolved. It's not a huge issue that I can't Sync right now, but I'd like to resolve it if I can.

Anybody else experienced this or any tips on resolutions? It's the only hiccup I've encountered so far.

Thanks in advance!
Dan

NB: Even Force Ejecting the iPhone behaves the same way-finder Staes 'Cancelling Sync', and does nothing.

 

[Danorak81]

So, I have made a little progress. I stumbled across THIS thread on the Apple Community forums. In the thread where others had experienced similar, it was suggested opening Activity Log and Force Quitting 'MDCrashReporterTool' would resolve the issue. I did as was suggested, hit Sync again, but noticed it was still hanging. I left Activity Monitor open, only to see the log appeared again, so I Force Quit the same thing, left it a minute, and it finally progressed to step 3 of 4, Reading Photos Library.

It's now slowly progressed to Step 4, 'Waiting for Changes to be applied', but isn't doing much. I manage my photos on my iPhone through Sync in Finder, and even checking one of my albums whilst it's still Syncing, I can see some photos have been removed (as they have in my Photos library), but it hasn't added the new photos to the same album yet. I'll leave it a bit longer and see how it goes-it is the first Sync it's performed since setting the Mac up so I am ok with it taking a little bit longer.

 

[Imac Sam]

This may sound odd, but we had the same problem. Our solution was using an official apple lightening usb cable plugged directly into the mac. Before we had used an aftermarket apple certified cable. SO go figure.

 

[Danorak81]

It was something a friend suggested too, but I am using the cable that came with the iPhone.

It did finally complete its Sync, and whilst it removed the photos it was supposed to, it didn’t successfully complete the Sync because it didn’t add the photos I’d added to the albums on the Mac.

Frustrating!

 

[Danorak81]

Just as a small update, I did manage to get the phone to update the albums. I connected the phone, and then deselected all the albums in the iPhone Finder window, hit Sync. Left it to remove the photos/do it's thing.

Came back, disconnected, and then re-connected the phone tot he Mac. Went back into the Finder phone management, re-selected the the albums I wanted Sync'd. Hit Sync, let it do its thing. Had success, in that it updated the albums with the additional photos, but, I still had to use Activity Monitor to quit the Crashreporter file to get it to progress to Step 2.

Not ideal, but it did work. Not sure if when I update the albums on my Mac again, whether I'll have to remove/Sync, re-select/sync again to get it to update them.

 

[HDFan]

Hope you have a 3-2-1 backup plan in place for your photos and any critical data.

 

[Danorak81]

Everything is backed up.

 

[gwang73]

We've been tracking this issue in the iOS 17 forum. Seems to be an issue between the Apple Watch and MDCrashReportTool process.

Syncing Stuck on Step 2 On Mac (MERGED)

Syncing Stuck on Step 2 On Mac (MERGED)

Have any with the new phones seen an issue with this? The phone is seen by the MBA on Sonoma both by cable and over wifi. However the first issue is that even though the "automatically sync when connected" box is checked this never happens when I use a cable to connect them. My phone is on the...

r.tapatalk.com

 

[Danorak81]

Ah, ok. There is an Apple communities thread which is quite comprehensive, looks like it has been going on since 2009, I don't follow it because it doesn't seem to progress much. 'Nice' to see there is a thread here too. Next time I perform a Sync, I'll power off my Watch as I'd not tried that, although reading your thread, it's not the first time I've read that there may be an issue linked to an Apple Watch. Thanks for sharing the link 👍