iTunes wireless sync not working

G-Money

Has anyone else had issues with the iTunes wireless syncing?

It worked initially for me after upgrading to iOS 5 but over the last few weeks it's not really worked at all. When I open iTunes, the iPhone will appear for a few seconds in iTunes then disappear. I found that by going to the WiFi sync menu in the iPhone it would make it appear in iTunes but now when I do that, it just disappears again too.

I have an iPhone 3GS running the latest version of iOS.

Anyone else had this problem?

guil

are you leaving the phone unlocked while trying

G-Money

Sometimes it's locked, other times it's not. That shouldn't really make much of a difference though should it?

ashleey

It's a bit temperamental. Reset your router and or switch everything of and on normally gets it back. It drives me mad too even with a mac and an airport extreme so I can't blame anyone but apple. It seems that there is a timeout issue with iTunes.

guil

wifi doesn't work when the phone is locked

ashleey

If the phone is locked and then you plug the charger in then the phone should wake your mac to sync with iTunes. It will do this correctly as long as both are on the same wifi network and iTunes is running on your sleeping mac and you have enabled wake on demand in energy preferences. This works but sometimes iTunes gives an error related to a timeout

ashleey

Wifi sync would not always wake my mac mini and it was driving me mad. I swapped my time machine backup external hd from FireWire 800 to USB. Now it wakes up perfectly. I'll monitor it over the next week.

TBi

I couldn't get wifi sync to work reliably either. I even tried some tricks to get it working again (found on google somewhere).

I just gave up on it. It's not reliable enough yet.

jester77

Mine was working until the last iTunes update. I would get home from work and iTunes would sync my iPad from my work bag straight away. Now it can't find it at all, same for iphone. Something in the last update has messed it up.

ashleey

I've tried everything and it's reliability isn't great. It's the same with the remote app and shared library loading on my iPhone and iPad. If my mac is asleep it will wake on network access but the iPhone and iPad won't always load the library and then they time out. If I eject my backup hd and then switch it off then the mac will wake and the library loads fine on my gadgets. I think a time machine backup is more important though so I'm not going to do this in case I forget to switch it back on. Maybe a time capsule would have been the better choice as it eliminates a no apple peripheral from the setup

TBi

Just a thought. My friend had major problems with iTunes remote when using the standard wireless modem that eircom give out (i don't remember the exact model). Maybe this is the source of the issue?

ashleey

I've got an apple airport extreme and it works better than my old d link dsl 2740 r that just acts as the modem now. I've even given all my apple stuff fixed ips on my home network with dhcp reservations. I'm leaning towards a timeout problem related to hard discs switching off when possible and then not starting up in time when waking the mac. Apple need to give iTunes a longer wait period. Also a sleeping apple tv or iPhone or iPad still shows as a connected client in the airport utility but a sleeping mac wont. Bonjour sleep proxy seems to have some issue

TBi

Look for the post by maclombie

ashleey

I appreciate the link. My devices are recognized by iTunes without problem when the mac is awake, it's just that the auto wifi sync when i plug them in to recharge overnight won't work unless i leave my mac mini awake at the same time. I've also tried getting the mini to wake on schedule at say 3am, but the iPad and iPhone need to be plugged in shortly before for this to work otherwise they give up trying to auto sync within about 30 mins of first connecting to the charger. That's what wake on network is supposed to solve.

TBi

Sorry about that. I read your post wrong.

I was reading about wake on demand and most posts say that 'wireless sync' won't trigger a wake on demand, you'd have to leave your mini on.

ashleey

indeed. I wonder what the difference in power consumption would be, to maybe leave it on overnight for a few hours and then sleep and disable the sleep in energy saver, so that I have to manually put the mini to sleep? It's a pain because I can see the mini wake up but sometimes the iTunes sync won't happen. I feel tantalizingly close to a solution!

ashleey

Changing the external hd from FireWire to USB seems to be working with no other changes. I would love to know if it's the FireWire controller of the mac or the external with the wake issue. Probably explains apple's move to thunderbolt.