iTunes Not Showing any iPhones After 10.0.1.26 Update

For the past two mornings, I've woken up to find that none of my iPhones, iPads, or iPod Touches will appear in iTunes on my Mavericks iMac anymore. Restarting will solve the problem, but restarting is a pain, and doesn't really tell me anything about the problem.

Here's what I know so far about the issue, and what I do to fix it. (The better I get at fixing it, the more we will learn about what is causing the problem!)

• In Spotlight search (the magnifying glass in the upper right,) type Terminal and click on the application Terminal to open it.

• Restart the service usbmuxd which handles dispatching messages via usb. This is what iTunes uses to connect to your devices via USB. Copy paste the following two lines (one line at a time) into Terminal:

(The very first sudo command you do here will prompt you for your OSX password. It's ok to enter it, and you won't see anything in the terminal while you type it.)

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.usbmuxd.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.usbmuxd.plist

• Restart the service mdns which handles unicast DNS as well as Bonjour. Bonjour is what iTunes uses to find your devices via wifi. Unicast DNS is how your computer knows how to resolve domain names (aka translate www.apple.com to an address) so definitely be sure to do the second load command here to start mdns back up! Copy the following into Terminal:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Unplug your iPhone if it's still plugged in, and then plug it back in. The device should appear in iTunes now. I'm going to continue monitoring my machine and see if I can find the source of the problem to get a better solution. Restarting a few services is a bit better than restarting the whole iMac at least.

If you're experiencing similar problems, leave us a comment! We'd love to help get it solved for you!