Temporarily fixing problems with iTunes 11 Wi-Fi sync with an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch
I decided iTunes 10 was a big pile of junk, in part because it regularly couldn’t see iOS devices on the network over Wi-Fi. The devices weren’t especially hidden, given that other apps and services could see them—it was just iTunes that was being stupid. Well, iTunes 11 arrived today and it’s same-old, same-old. The two iPads in the house were picked up, but the iPhone was not, which was just great. And by ‘great’, I mean ‘good grief, Apple, is it really that difficult to get this rather important aspect of your software right?’
Anyway, the old tried-and-tested means of getting Wi-Fi sync working again, at least temporarily, seemed to do the job. The method is as follows:
- Connect your device to your Mac, like some kind of idiot living in 2005.
- Hope that iTunes at this point actually recognises the damn thing.
- Uncheck ‘Sync with this [device] over Wi-Fi’.
- Click Apply.
- Check ‘Sync with this [device] over Wi-Fi’, laughing internally and ironically about all those old ‘Microsoft car’ jokes.
- Click Apply.
- Unplug your device, while hoping iTunes won’t immediately forget it exists.
If the second step doesn’t work for you, try rebooting everything. If that doesn’t work for you, I strongly recommend making voodoo dolls of the iTunes engineering team and stabbing them with pins. There’s only a very remote chance this will have the desired effect of them feeling your tech pain first-hand, but it’s got to be worth a go.
Wow, you learn something new every day. I didn’t even know iTunes had a Wi-Fi sync feature. I assumed you were expected to use iCloud if you wanted to sync wirelessly. Oh well, that’s what I get for being idiot living in 2005. 🙂
Please tell me a online shop where i can buy voodoo dolls. 🙂
Since update to iTunes 11 iPhone and iPad icon do not appear on my mac. If i do a cable sync and diss/re-enablle WLAN Sync i have still the problem that itunes forget immediately my iPhone if unplug it-
Michael: You are applying the change, right, and not just checking/unchecking the checkbox?
I don’t know you from Adam but I found your site while searching for answers to my iTunes/iCloud dilemma. It made me laugh from my belly. And , considering the day I had today here at technology-wise, that was a tall order to fill. Thanks for the tip. The nightmare continues. Will I ever see my music again? On my iPad? We shall see.
The only way it works for me is to restart the iDevice.
With iTunes 11 I cannot count the number of times each music is played on. Is there anybody who tell me the “secret” please?
@Pedro: In list view, control-click the list headings and ensure ‘Plays’ is turned on.
Worked for me today. Tomorrow we will see. Thanks
All I can say is apple is lame.
For some reason, I never learn my lesson. Never EVER upgrade to latest software version in the first 4 months. There’s always a bug. Last year, it was the iphone that stopped working after an upgrade. This year iTunes 11.
Yuck!!!!!!!!!!!
I found this very comical and I completely agree with you. I’m going to send some severed fingers to the engineers at Apple. How can they muck up such an important and awesome feature.
Upgrading to iTunes 11 was my biggest mistake of 2012… made worse by the fact that I can’t revert back to the earlier version. I use Apple TV to watch movies and tv shows on my big screen HD tv, and on my iPad when I’m on the go, so having iTunes that work, is quite simply- mandatory
Hm, I may have a partial answer to this issue. Maybe. 🙂
I noticed that if you physically plug in an iDevice (iOS device) to your computer and eventually click on the eject icon for that iDevice in iTunes (like a good Mac or PC user would before yanking a device physically connected to their computer with a cable) that the iDevice will then not only disappear from iTunes’ side bar (like it should) but that it will stay “disappeared” even after you physically disconnect it from your computer.
That would be great except both the iDevice and the computer should theoretically still be connected to the same Wi-Fi network (if they were connected to the same Wi-Fi network in the first place), and because of that it’s also likely that at some point in the near future you would think iTunes should be able to see your iDevice so you can later sync via Wi-Fi. But when you take another look at iTunes you discover you can’t sync because the iDevice has continued to stay “disappeared”, even if it’s on the same Wi-Fi network.
Maybe a solution would be to turn Wi-Fi on and off on the iDevice (or the computer…or possibly both) to make the iDevice re-establish an “intentional connection activity” with iTunes.
Another thought as to what might be the problem for some users. If either the computer running iTunes or any of the iDevices automatically jump on different networks then they can’t talk to each other.
Maybe some of people’s iDevices and or Macs and PCs containing iTunes are automatically connecting to “Guest” networks that are named similarly to the “real/primary” networks that the users assumes they are connecting too. Apple’s Airport Extreme routers, for example, frequently have “Guest” networks set up that are named the same as the primary network with “Guest” listed at the end of the name.
I’ve found that on iOS devices you normally wouldn’t notice that you’re on the “Guest” network instead of the primary network, even if you look at the Wi-Fi screen, because the space available to list the router names isn’t long enough to show the typical full router name. You might think one of your devices is on “My Fancy Router Name’s Network” when in fact it is on “My Fancy Router Name’s Guest Network”…and you wouldn’t be able to see the difference because the end of the network names are being truncated in the list.
Cheers,
Lewis
I had problem getting my ipad to sync. After not being able to fix it, I followed the instructions here and figured it out. http://appducate.com/2012/12/sync-your-ios-device-with-itunes-over-wi-fi/
My box of collectable iTunes Voodoo dolls has arrived….
engineers are gonna need a lot of Tylenol