Scrivener iOS syncing via Dropbox continues to crash the app

Scrivener Scrivener for iOS
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Yes, that is all a known part of the pattern. It’s probably a few pages back in this thread at this point.

Well, there is quite a lot to unpack in there. One can write an horrifically inefficient loop that copies the entire hard drive list over and over in its attempts to map the territory. But it should go without saying that we haven’t done that, and the loop that has built this list for years now is pretty much the same loop that was optimised to work on very old hardware—so it’s pretty efficient. The problem is almost certainly not with the loop.

The joke then (which to be clear is all it was) is that iOS produces a memory use threshold error log when shutting down Scrivener, on devices that have way more RAM.

So to say it’s not a RAM problem is… well, it’s more complicated I think. It’s not, obviously a matter of the size of one’s chips—that is mathematically true and self-evident—but to say it isn’t a memory problem because of this (or inversely that the process should be small) probably isn’t a safe assertion. It may be that the memory problem is false, that iOS thinks it is running out of RAM when it isn’t, but even so that is still kind of a memory problem, or at least a problem in the infrastructure of the device that deals with memory.

This has confused the topic at hand. I’ve split it off to a new thread.

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No improvement. Installed 13.3. iPad Pro (11 inch) still crashes.

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Hello all,

I just upgraded my iPad to iPadOs version 13.3. At the same time an update for the Dropbox arrived today. Unfortunately the problem persists and Scrivener says goodbye while the app downloads the file list. The actual synchronization process hasn’t even started yet when it crashes.
If I empty the dropbox directory on my Mac and synchronize an empty directory without project files, the synchronization will run without a crash. It doesn’t help me, but shows that the crash is actually related to loading or synchronizing the directory content.
I still hope that this problem can be solved. If we, the users, can help the developers in any way to identify the cause, please feel free to ask.

Greetings,
Thomas

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Sorry, but that’s not really true. There has been the problem of the „downloading file list“ taking extremely long after upgrading to Scrivener 2, which as far as I followed up was never really resolved or explained. I hate to say it, because I really love Scrivener, but my impression is that the database just isn’t made for syncing and the workaround you found is just to complicated to work „flawlessly“. The software is great on the Mac, but it doesn’t seem to evolve with the trend to switch devices seamlessly.

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Let’s try to keep this thread focussed on the actual bug at hand here. It just makes things confusing when completely unrelated topics are brought up.

The explanation might have been lost in a long thread about it, but the source of the problem was indeed pinned down and reported to Dropbox some time ago. Since then I’ve heard that performance has improved marginally, and they even communicated with us that it is something they are aware of and wish to improve. The technical explanation has to do with how their API has a lot of overhead when trawling a folder hierarchy. The more folders you have, the longer it takes to build a file list.

I know in my recent testing it did seem to be a lot better than it used to be. I ran some tests with over 10,000 folders to be synced, and while it took a while to build the file list, it wasn’t anything like it used to be.

Again, this is not in any way relevant to this current problem, which is all I was speaking of.

An interesting theory, but no. For one thing, it’s not a database, and the format itself was designed from the ground up for syncing. So scratch all of that. Secondly, what we’re talking about is a simple request for a full file list from a folder. This is the first thing you must get from the server when syncing files: a list of files. That is not a workaround, that is how you work. It is also not complicated—it is a request for files from a file system. That the server takes forever to produce this list does not speak to “flaws” in the system.

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Okay, sorry if I made stupid technical assumptions. But it remains true that syncing is tedious, even without the bug. Maybe you just can’t have both: the greatness of Scrivener and an easy, seamless user experience when switching devices.
The way I work involves many short writing episodes during the day on whichever device I‘m just at. My phone is useless for some time now. Maybe I just have to accept that Scrivener isn’t made for my use case.

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Syncing is tedious… for some users, not all.
I have had a ”seamless user experience” since day one. So how come it works for me and not for you?

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Lunk, would you have the kindness of not dismissing other’s bad experiences nor imply that it may somehow be their fault, please?

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I’m not dismissing it and the question is a question.
If some have problems and some don’t, the differences between our use cases should be of interest in trying to find the cause.

Several users have reported problems, but if a majority of the users had problems L&L would be drowning in complaints, and they’re not. So far the reactions in here suggest that a minority of users have problems, so the important question should be “in what way do their set up differ from those that don’t have problems?”

If it is total number of files in the synced folder, then it should be interesting to know if there is some kind of breaking point and/or if that changes depending on device, or depending on connection speed with the Db server, etc.

In my case, I have lots and lots of Scrivener projects, but only 6 in the folder I sync with my iDevices. The total size is usually less than 50 Mb (only text no images) and the total number of files usually below 1500. No syncing problems.

Killerwhale, what does your scenario look like?

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I also had problems. We are trying for months to get answers and solutions but nobody has them.

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This is the issue though. Not all of us can or do work this way. I have three projects on the go, so theoretically I could limit my sync folder to these projects only (And I do). But two of them require research, copy and maps/pix from previous projects. To access those projects on my iPad I need to sync to another folder containing my library of projects, which of course crashes Scrivener. However, even before the crash problem, sync was slow and clunky, as others have said. And yes, the ‘problem’ is that my projects are large. But that shouldn’t be my problem. I’ve used Scrivener for years because it was a solution to that problem. Currently, it isn’t. You’re lucky that you can work around the limitations of the app/s, but in my case it’s not possible and it’s impacted my ability to work on the road and in cafes etc.

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There’s some truth to this, in that the complexity of synchronization is directly related to the complexity of the Scrivener project format, which in turn is essential for what Scrivener does.

Katherine

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@lunk : My scenario had gone badly from day 1 with the Scrivener sync. For a long time I wasn’t able to use the iOS app, had to reimport all files in a new project that then worked for a while. Since iOS 13, Scrivener has not worked on any of my devices and I have decided that sometime next year I will certainly trade, with regret, Scrivener’s power features for a reliable sync on another app.

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@lunk : Hey, you made your point. You don’t have the issue, we got it. We’re all glad to know what your seamless sync implies in terms of projects, and what device you use, That’s precious debugging intel. But now, the thing is : what are you still doing here ? We understood your situation the first time, why do you keep hammering other people that have the issue with the fact that you don’t ? Are you the kind of people that goes into hospitals to tell sick people that you are healthy ? Because that’s what you’ve been doing here for months now. Again : why do you still follow this topic if you’re not directly concerned by the issue ?

Now that being said, I’ve also been having the issue for a while. I’ve just been following things silently for now but I thought I’d bring my situation in as well :

iPad pro 2019, 11’’, latest OS version and latest app version (eagerly updated as soon as possible as you can all imagine). I’ve been having the same issue as stated before, sync for all my current projects doesn’t work. I’d like to spot that the app doesn’t seem to crash for real, as it’s still open in the background and doesn’t need to load back up, but the sync is aborted anyways. I’ve been trying swapping projects a bit, but it seems that my bigger projects sync without issue until I add the smaller ones as well (and I need them too). I never tried the smaller ones on their own, since my biggest project is the priority for me and I want it safe on my dropbox.

When I say “biggest”, I mean 2.29Gb. While the smaller ones are 36Mo and 130,7Mo respectively. This is what doesn’t make sense for me at this point.

I also noticed that if I remove the files from my dropbox and ask my tablet to upload them all back as they are on it (not up to date to my current progress), it works. However, when I go check them on my computer, the scrivener file icon seems to be different from the one used for the files created from the said computer, which is also super weird. And if I try modifying them, even the slightest, they won’t sync back to the tablet. I have no idea what’s going on there.

Reading this topic, it also seems to that the issue is more or less device-bound ; some devices are more likely to have the issue while others never will. I don’t get it.

And, please, no need to tell me that I have to remove the smaller projects if my main project works and stop complaining. As I said, I need them too. And as many other people already said here, we purchased this app several times to have a seamless experience between devices and a sync that could take all our projects, which has perfectly worked until recently. There’s no point arguing on that part.

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I’m sorry that hear that our problems have no solution. So I’ve decided to jump ship for my research part that I had in Scrivener for Devon Think (DT).
The only thing I miss in DT is the capacity to see more than one document at the same time. Otherwise vastly more feature in DT.
Ill still use Scrivener for those projects that work on iPadOs.

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I’m one of the users with this issue. Thanks to support I found a temporary workaround by removing all but one project from the sync folder and that one project remaining syncs correctly.
However, I’m terrified by the idea of doing anything that could alter this random equilibrium, like adding a second project to the folder, or even download the new 1.2.1 version.
Since I found nothing about this version in here, I must suppose the issue hasn’t been solved. Will it ever be? When I purchased the iOS version I did it because I knew it would easily sync with Dropbox, because I honestly don’t have the skills nor the time to set up anything complicated. I’m not an IT expert and I pay to get services that solve my IT problems with simple solutions. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. I find myself with a solution that doesn’t work or works partially. And this is becoming frustrating. I had more files in the sync folder because I needed them there, not because I forgot them.

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I have the same problem. I had it working with two files, but as soon as I added a third one, it crashed on both my iPhone and iPad. I have the latest devices and the latest versions but there seems to be no cure.

I have read everything in this thread, but I have yet to hear of a solution or clarity around the nature of the problem.

Can a :frowning: nyone provide a resolution?

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My novels are written in a universe. I need to have my old projects on my iPad, so that I can refer to them as I am writing my current novel. My MacBook is too big to work on the tray-table on planes, and I spend a lot of time working on planes. I have been using this workflow ever since the iOS app came out. Now with my new iPad pro, suddenly I have to change?

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Possibly. Unfortunately it’s a terribly inconsistent issue and thus really hard to diagnose or predict. It seems to be most common with new devices. I had an iphone 7 that worked fine then when I updated to iphone 11 it stopped, despite an ostensibly more powerful device. I have been able to work around it by checking all my projects and finding the one that was causing the sync to fail and longer syncing it.

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I’m in the same situation as Margrad and frankly find your answer, Katherine, difficult to swallow.
Scrivener is marketed as a powerhouse . We as users are willing to go through the sync hoops in exchange for the additional power the app brings, especially because it allows for complex projects (you reiterated that point again in this thread).
If you tell us we need to use Macs, then there is no need for an iOS app, is there?
If we need to use simpler projects, then Scrivener’s power is wasted, is it not? All that talk about Scrivener optimising resources to avoid loading entire projects in memory makes no sense anyway then, does it not?

Please consider also that we are dedicated users that come to these forums in order to establish communication with you and get reassurance that the tool we use to make a living will continue to work reliably. The vast majority of users want things that just work and do not care for explanations like “yeah, but Scrivener is doing really nifty things in the background to avoid loading your entire project in memory”. They will just go to Ulysses. (There: I spoke Voldemort’s name.)

It’s wonderful that it works for some people.
For many others like us, it does not. Not working reliably means not working.
It’s been over two months the issue has been reported and we barely have received any news. I think we have been more than patient.