My 110k word from scrivener on MacBook, with photos, will it choke my new 128 gb a12 iPad?
Hello Vfrailing, welcome to the forum.
A 110,000-word Scrivener project should not overwhelm an iPad with 128 GB of storage and an A12 processor.
The text itself is very small in terms of file size — even a manuscript of that length only amounts to a few megabytes. Scrivener projects are made up of many small text files rather than one large document, which makes them quite lightweight.
Images are the main factor that can increase a project’s size, but even with a reasonable number of photos included, a project like this is still within what an iPad with 128 GB of storage and an A12 processor can handle. Scrivener for iOS is designed to work comfortably with projects of this scale, and many users run similar or larger projects without issue.
As with any mobile workflow, it helps to follow best practices: avoid embedding unnecessarily large, high-resolution images in the editor, and always make sure any Dropbox sync has fully completed before opening the project on the iPad.
2 Likes
Thank you, Kazz. I checked, my file is around 800 mb, a lot of photos.
Still good?
Yes — still good, with one small caveat.
An ~800 MB Scrivener project is within what a 128 GB iPad can handle, and the A12 has more than enough processing power to work with it. From a storage and performance point of view, that size alone isn’t a problem.
Where photo-heavy projects can trip people up is syncing, not capacity. Large projects take longer to download and upload, so it’s important to let the sync fully complete before opening the project on the iPad, and never attempt to edit while it’s still syncing.
As long as you’re patient with syncs, and ideally keep very large images as references rather than embedded directly in the text where possible, you shouldn’t run into any issues.
In short: 800 MB is fine — it just needs a bit more care around syncing.
2 Likes
I would have to agree with Kazz here. The only hiccup is syncing. I have all my Scrivener projects synced between my MacBook ( main working place) and my iPad ( when I’m out and about). No issue size-wise. I have 15 projects totalling a Terabit and no problem. Except!
There is always an “except”. Who or what is doing the syncing? If I wait a minute and make sure everything is being saved to the cloud (whatever service you are using). But - if your iPad is your only device this should not be an issue because if it doesnt sync it will be saved to the iPad (maybe need to check I am accurate on that - but pretty sure).
I see no issue with your setup. The iPad should cope well. The only issue is whether you are happy with the iPad version of Scrivener. I quite like it. But I haven’t tried to use it as my one and only version.
I’m probably stating the obvious, but a keyboard helps to make life easier. ESR have some good selections without paying the Apple price.
1 Like
Specifically to the matter of images, there are some important things to be aware of:
- If they are in your text editor, know that Apple’s text engine is not very good at handling images in the text editor. It will put them there, you will see them, but they likely get “damaged” to some degree, such as having their DPI changed.
- But as storing graphics inside of text files is one of the worst places to put them anyway, maybe you were aware of that, and went about things the proper way in Scrivener, either by linking to images on the disk, or to the binder. Bad news there is that image linking of any kind isn’t something the iOS version of Scrivener supports. They will display as a placeholder icon until you get back home.
- If you are replacing your actual system with this basic portable device, then all binder linked images will stop working, and they will not compile. You will have to go through and manually “fix” them all, remembering what each placeholder graphic stood for, and relegating to the above issues.
- Disk linked images, well at least those are on your disk, and easily accessible, but iOS software is not allowed to open files off of your disk and just use them like that, so they won’t work either.
- That leaves images in the binder, not in text files. Images that, when loaded in the main editor, have the image footer bar, with buttons for loading it externally (also something you will lose the ability to do as iOS doesn’t allow the user to use software to multitask on the same data together). These work a bit better, so long as all you really ever do with them is look at them in Scrivener. If your workflow is to export the 800mb of images in bulk at the end of the process, when going into publication, then know there is no such thing in the iOS version. You will spending hours manually selecting one image after another and going through the multi-step export process on each one.
Overall I would not recommend an iPad-only approach if you are heavy into graphics that are intended to be a part of the work itself. There are no good workflows for handling books that have a lot of illustration. Unless your way of working keeps images very much separate from the writing process entirely (i.e. you hand in a bunch to production, and only indicate where they should go textually), I wouldn’t consider it viable. I would in that case migrate out of using Scrivener to handle images, exporting them in bulk for actual use, and I suppose leaving them in the project for convenience?
But again, if they are primarily just for your own reference while writing, it’s fine for that and little different (you can still take notes on them in the inspector, for example).
This is the most important question to my mind. Whether there is enough RAM or the chip is fast enough is almost an abstract question. The much bigger one is whether one could tolerate having nothing productive to work with for writing, than a portable screen with an ultra-basic OS that runs largely ultra-basic apps exclusively. It would drive me so bonkers to be that limited, that I would probably rather give up on computing entirely and just go back to using typewriters. At least those have the proper interface for writing!
As a portable tool to plunk down some ideas here and there while waiting for your number to get called at the fish monger? All right, I am on board with that, but to replace a laptop? That’s giving up a huge amount of agency and power, and not just in Scrivener.
2 Likes
I’ve done pretty extensive writing in iOS Scrivener, and my take is a little different. My iPad is my primary device when traveling, whether to a local coffee shop or on a business trip.
For basic typing and editing, including notetaking, it’s fine. Get an external keyboard and type away.
For large scale organization, at the level of moving chapters or scenes around, it’s fantastic. Touchscreen + Corkboard view is the next best thing to physical index cards. It’s somewhat less ideal at the level of smaller chunks of text: I much prefer desktop Scrivener’s ability to see several parts of the outline at once.
The Compile command is adequate for basic “get a draft out to look at it” tasks. I wouldn’t rely on it for more complex works, or to produce publication-ready documents. Desktop Scrivener is substantially more capable, especially when you consider its Markdown/LaTeX compatibility. (That’s doubly true if you use a lot of images, for all the reasons Ioa gave.)
DevonThink/DevonThink To Go are my primary research repositories, so I can’t really comment on iOS Scrivener’s research features. Note that iOS Scrivener does not support all the same metadata that desktop Scrivener does. If screen real estate permits, having DTTG and iOS Scrivener open side by side is an excellent alternative.
I would not personally be happy with an iPad exclusively. I rely too heavily on Mac only features of both Scrivener and other applications. But I also wouldn’t be happy if I had to give up my iPad. Its portability and simplicity are valuable, too.
3 Likes
Oh, to clarify the secondary (rant) bit above, I was speaking purely upon the notion of abandoning computers entirely and going mobile-only as a way forward. In general I would very cautious of doing so, not even upon the Scrivener aspect alone, but particularly so if image use is important enough to have 800mb of them in a project.
I’ve got nothing against the concept of mobile writing and editing as a general idea (and even in particular because a stripped down feature set and interface can be beneficial), though I’ve always preferred mobile devices that are more naturally suited to typing (sans peripherals), I’ll admit. The key thing is that whatever device I’m using, whether its a folding keyboard and an iPhone, or an Alphasmart, or scanned pieces of paper out of a notebook—at the end of the day/trip, it’s going into a regular old computer where I’m no longer stuck with the compromises and limitation of portability, or the stripped down OSs they run.
For that to be what you are coming home to as well, forever giving up styles, image use of any sophistication, the ability to make your own script formats, to compile to anything more than proofing quality in a tiny selection of formats, all of your snapshots forever lost (but still making the project bulky in a way you’ll never be able to fix), etc.—that would be a pretty big step backward, no matter how fast the chip is. I would want to do a lot of research and testing before making a decision like that.
1 Like