That’s true, i cant explain that. Updating to iOS 13.1 didn’t change my situation at all.
I’ve been troubleshooting this for hours today and I’m not sure what happened or how to fix it. It’s terrifying to have years of work on the line or even just lose access to it, so hopefully I can try and find a work-around fix for those of us who are still affected - but so far it’s looking grim.
I don’t know about terrifying but it’s a pain in the bum. I’ve also spent hours on it today, trying to figure out why it works fine on the 10.5 and not on the 12.9 or the iPhone X. I thought it might have been different versions of iPad OS 13.1, but both are running the same version now. I got the 12.9 running Scrivener fine for a while by copying projects over to the sync file one at a time — it crapped out at five projects and wouldn’t sync again. Scrivener on the 12.9 is my go-to, so this is quite disruptive.
I’m getting the feeling that everyone with the crash has newer devices like iPad Pro or iPhone XS. Anybody here with an older device that crashes?
Oh, and another thing I noticed, which might speak for a memory issue: I have the feeling that some apps like Friendly (a Facebook client) or the Discourse app reload their content far more often when I return to them after a little while. As if they had to clean their cache in the meantime. Maybe something within iOS 13 eats away memory?
I have tried different things today like syncing smaller projects only, setting up the sync chain new, etc. It crashes each time.
Actually it doesn’t crash, to describe it correctly. The app is being moved off screen into the background, but without syncing and it is still active.
See screenshot.
I do not think it makes sense to play around further. I wonder if L&L has any news about it. Are they looking after it? Can they reproduce the issue? I have a bunch of writers in my forum who have exactly the same issue, so it’s not a single or isolated issue but a systematic problem.
Thanks for posting that. It almost looks like it may just be halting rather than crashing, which would be just as odd, but it clearly isn’t still running in the background since when you come back, the sync process needs to be restarted.
But this is one area where I’m not terribly familiar with the intricacies of how iOS works. I’ve always considered that “multitasking” screen to be more of a “Recent Apps” screen. On my phone I see stuff in there that is months old, and if I tap on the tile, the thing I activated obviously isn’t running and is booting a fresh session. Does stuff disappear from that view when it crashes, ordinarily?
That will never be the case. Please refer to this earlier post in this thread. Dropbox is just another method of moving data around.
That’s still something I wonder about, even though it seems to not be a major factor, one thing that is much more difficult to find patterns with is what the environment looks like, and how that impacts other heavy-duty processes like this. Thanks to the data you’ve all been contributing to this thread, it seems unlikely to be something solely on the Scrivener side of things. With full reinstalls having been done, full sync resets, there is little chance for odd variables like non-default settings, custom fonts, or other things that might be a trigger. It could still be content related, but it seems unlikely given that the trigger, for those that see it, seems more related to quantity than precisely which projects are involved.
Something like device model being newer is a factor of environment, so that is an interesting observation.
Some more tests I can think of:
- To better rule out content-related issue: try using the Mac tutorial as test content. Duplicate it a dozen or so times and populate your sync folder with only that. Then proceed to test as you would with your own projects.
- How loaded is the device; is there plenty of free space indicated in Settings: General: iDevice Storage?
- And within that same panel, is Offload Unused Apps enabled, and if not, does enabling it change anything?
Obviously we’re still stumbling around a bit in the dark here. One last thing before finishing this post: if anyone has a reproducing case with a sync folder they would be willing to share with tech support in its entirety, something we could do is have you share that whole folder with us, so that it is linked at the account level, and then I could set up my device to sync to it from scratch and see if it crashes. Obviously that’s a leap of trust for anyone to take, and you’d definitely want to back that folder up since testing can be brutal to data.
None of us has seen this actually happen. If we could see it, it would probably already be fixed since such things are very easy to track down once they happen on a developer’s machine, with all of the debugging available.
I had only about 4gb of free memory on my phone, but I deleted a bunch of podcasts and now have 10 gb free. It still crashes.
I don’t think seeing it in the multitasking panel means it hasn’t crashed. When I „reopen“ from there I get a short startscreen with the Scrivener logo before the app starts again.
I found something that might be interesting. In the iPhone’s analysis reports. I have a lot of “JetsameEvent”. I have verified and they are created after Scrivener crash. The name of our app appears in the report . Perhaps the others can control whether such reports appear in their own device. If you think this useful, I can send a report for developers.
Yes, I also finally have a log file. Someone over at Facebook told me to look for a jetsam log file and there it is, Scrivener crashes and we get a jetsam log. I sent it to your support mail address. Hope this will help fixing the problem. I have other entries for other apps too, so the memory really seems to have a general problem.
I don’t know if it will work for everyone but I found a workaround that worked for me.
I created a new folder inside Dropbox
then I moved all my Scrivener projects from /Dropbox/Apps/Scrivener/ to this new folder
I opened Scrivener iOS and it didn’t crash.
Then I closed it.
I moved one project back in /Dropbox/Apps/Scrivener/
I started Scrivener iOS again and it synced this one Scrivener project without problems.
Then I moved back the other projects one by one and synced every time.
Amber, some of our Scrivener FB forum users have tried out to trace the crashes and Robert found a Jetsam-Entry in the log area of his iPhone/iPad, which always appeared after the crash. He saved it to provide it to your support team. Hope this helps.
Greetings,
Thomas
Sounds hopeful! I had seen one of these reports earlier, but it looked a bit like a generic system rundown rather than something specific to Scrivener, so had put it aside. Having a few additional samples of this kind of report may be helpful, please do send them in.
If it is memory related, something to try is to fully restart the device by holding down the power key for a few seconds, then swiping off on the screen. Reboot the device, and go straight to Scrivener and try syncing.
Yes, he did send it already …
Meanwhile, I switched back to the good old times and copied the project file I am working on via iCloud and the iOs filemanager into the Scrivener directory. It works fine and the project file can be opened. (I disconnected dropbox before this exercise.). I know, it’s a manual task and I have to copy it back when I’m done and this is not very comfortable, but at least a workaround.
Maybe it’s time to implement an iCloud sync for the next release?
It seems to work better than in the past.
Greetings,
Thomas
Still crashes after restart …
I tried gcg’s method, and it worked for almost all of my Scrivener projects. Looking at my projects Scrivener crashes on those two projects with more than 100k words and more than a thousand files to sync (according to info I got from “show packet contents” on my Mac). So, maybe it’s the number of files to sync that causes the crash? Just my two cents.
Have it as well here.
iPad Pro 2018, iOS 13.1.
EDIT: Just did the update to 13.1.1, but still crashes.
I have good news and bad news.
The bad news: There was an update to 13.1.1 today, but it didn’t solve the problem.
The good news: I dared to upgrade to iOS13 on my iPad pro and Scrivener doesn’t crash here!
But of course, this is once more mysterious, since I have the exact same projects that crash on the phone but work on the iPad.
13.1.1 has not helped here.
The synch still fails and Scrivener drops to background app on iPad Pro 12.9 2018.
Strangely upgrading my iPhone X to 13.1.1 synched fine then a follow up synch failed per the iPad, then another synch worked.
My iPad Mini5 2019, iPadOS 13.1.1 crashes
My iPhone SE 2017, iOS 13.1.1 doesn’t crash
I tried this today, copying a dozen tutorials into a Scrivener test folder, syncing with the iPhone after each copy, and then syncing with the iPad Pro once all 12 tutorials were copied into the new folder. Both those processes have been crashing Scrivener on the phone and the iPad to this point. But today … everything is syncing fine (with tutorials as content only).