There is definitely a problem with Dropbox, I can’t even open dropbox.com on my iPhone, neither with Safari nor with iCab imitating a desktop browser.
I don’t think anything with the word “daily” in it will be terribly useful. Like I say, it’s more the precise time of the crash that is important, are there any reports from that time?
Hm, Dropbox works again (might just have been a bad Internet connection), but Scrivener still crashes on iPhone XS Max with iOS13 when trying to sync. It works on my iPad with iOS12.
I’d recommend installing iOS 13.1, released this morning, before proceeding with further troubleshooting.
Katherine
Okay, so this is highly mysterious. I tried the steps you suggested, unlinked Dropbox from the iPhone app, created a new folder and it worked. Then I copied my projects into that folder on my Mac, one by one, syncing in between each time. It worked on the phone with the first project, with the second, the third. When I added a fourth project and tried to sync Scrivener on iPhone once more, it crashed. So I thought I identified the bad guy. I deleted that project from my test-folder again and synced again. But still Scrivener crashed on the phone, even though the suspicous project wasn’t in the folder anymore. As if some tainted file still remained in that folder from the bad project.
So I deleted that test folder and created another one. I put that evil project (and only that one) into it and synced again – and it worked. I put another one in it and it worked. I put all other ones (a total of six) inside the folder and now it crashed again.
I repeated that process once more, put one project (that I was also suspicious of) inside another virgin folder and it worked, a second one, it worked, then put the rest inside (each of them had proved to work already in previous arrangements) and now it crashed. So I can confirm it is not one specific project that causes the crash but it seems to happen when a certain number of them is exceeded. Or randomly? I don’t get it.
I didn’t find any log file that fit the times of the crashes (but there’s lots of them, maybe I missed it). Certainly no log file that has “Scrivener” in the name.
And now I updated to 13.1, it still crashes.
Oh, and more information: For me as well the setting app crashed when I tapped „syncing & sharing“ (as discussed here: [url]https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-1-2-ios-13-settings-syncing-sharing-crash/47178/1]), but I can’t reproduce that anymore after updating to 13.1
yes, me too
Not for me with 13.1
iPhone 8
I just installed iPadOs 13.1 on an iPadPro 2018.
Scrivener is starting but crashing when I try to sync. with Dropbox.
The Dropbox works fine. After I opened it, it was automatically updated and I had to logon to it again.
Still, syncing Scrivener lets the app crash.
PS: We do have a Scrivener writers group on facebook with about 800 Users and I am getting lots of posts with warnings.
Since the App continues to crash on sync, I was newly setting up the entire iOs sync part this morning, means: I did reset Scrivener first, deleted the app then, deleted dropbox completely from the iPad, to reinstall Dropbox first, then Scrivener. The Dropbox cash was empty, the sync path “fresh”. However, it still crashes . The only difference is that I do not have any project files on my iPad anymore. (It doesn’t matter, I keep on working on the Mac for now).
Graham, thanks for doing all of that testing. The scale of how much is syncing could make sense, and it does seem to correlate with what you’ve found. Out of curiosity, how big are your projects? When the sync progress thing comes up, how many files are you seeing being synced for each project, and at what point does it seem to get unstable?
I’ve done some testing based on that theory, and so far I am not running into any issues. Here are the numbers:
- 13 copies of the tutorial (57 files each): 741 files
- 1 copy of the Scapple manual: 988 files
So at the moment I have a total of 1,729 files. I only have an iPad Pro (the old original one) available for testing, so maybe this is related to memory? Is it more easily happening on your phone than your iPad, and for those seeing it with an iPad, how old/powerful is it?
I think the largest project is about 50 mb. When I had only one or two big projects in the folder Scrivener was syncing about 5000 files and it worked. I don’t know the number of files when it crashed, because you don’t get that far (it shows „Downloading file lists“, then crashes).
Got it, that at least gives me a sense of the scale I should be testing with. I could have been duplicating tutorials for another two hours before hitting those kinds of numbers. 
Here’s what I have found:
• Files previously syncing in iPhone iOS 12 are no longer able to sync in iOS 13.1 with Dropbox (If it’s file related).
• These same files are syncing without issue right now on iPad Pro with iOS 12 with Dropbox.
• I’ve unlinked and relinked Dropbox to scrivener iOS without success.
• Notebooks, Outliner and other apps I use for writing are syncing with Dropbox without issues that I’ve found so far.
- I haven’t uninstalled and reinstalled Scrivener because I have writing from iOS 12 that’s stuck on my phone atm. I was hoping this would be a last resort…
Has anyone had any success trying to sync with a different method, like iCloud?
Thanks, and how many files exist in your sync folder? A good way of checking on the Mac is with the following shell command:
find ~/Dropbox/Apps/Scrivener | wc -l(Assuming, of course, a standard Dropbox folder location in your home folder, and the sync folder set to defaults.)
This will find all files and folders indiscriminately, list them, and then count the lines in the list and print the result.
Another question I’d have for everyone: does it take a while before it crashes? Does it seem like it’s getting to a point in a process when downloading the file list, or does it give up immediately?
I’ve been duplicating test projects all afternoon, hoping to hit the limit. I’m up to 15,000 internal files and folders being synced, for a total of 1.3gb, all from the same session, no crashes.
It’s doubtful these programs had to have a custom built Dropbox client written from the ground up, using its lower level core syntax. Most programs can get away with using the very basic API, where it’s more like asking Dropbox to do this one task, and then that one, and then that one. Completely unsuitable when you may have a list of things 150,000 in length to process. There probably aren’t many things to compare it to, really—alternative Dropbox clients, maybe, and then only if they allow you to sync twenty thousand files at once or whatever, as opposed to opening one and a time.
I posted references to difference ways of using Scrivener in this post. As far as I understand it (don’t have an account myself, so I can’t verify), iCloud and Files work fine together, which means Scrivener and iCloud work fine together. And that uses Files should in theory work fine with everything else.
Hello,
I’ve recorded a video of the crash. But I can’t attach the file to this post since files with the extension .mp4 are not authorised (do you know a workaround for it ?)
However, it does take a little while and, in fact, Scrivener exits the main screen but remain active in the background.
Kind regards
It’s usually easiest to upload the video to a file sharing utility and just link to it. Attachments are limited to small files here, as we have to end up hosting them indefinitely.
That’s a potentially good clue with how it takes a while to crash though. The theory that makes the most sense to me at this point is that it’s running out of memory. That’s the kind of thing that will cause the OS to forcibly shut a program down for, and it would also mean that the “trigger point” will be different depending on the device and how much else you have going on. It could explain why I’m not running into problems yet with this iPad Pro, but others have nothing but problems with an iPhone.
The oddest thing about it though is that there is no crash report. It makes me wonder if it is a even a technical crash at all, especially since you describe it “remaining active” (not sure what that means).
Using your terminal command I see 9705 files.
The crash happens when the notification “downloading files list” is up for a while. It’s the same point which took so long a while ago, when me and some others were complaining about the duration of the syncing process (which, as far as I remember, also had to do with the amount of files). It doesn’t crash immediately, but after loading lists for at least ten seconds.
It’s an iPhone XS Max, so it should have loads of memory. And Thomas above has the same problem on an iPad pro.
Here’s is the link to the video showing how Scrivener exits the main screen during Dropbox syncing but remains active in the background (or at last automatically starts up again and is therefore immediately active) :
dropbox.com/s/qkmsakvsjhrqc … 2.MP4?dl=0
For full resolution do not use the preview inside the web interface of Dropbox, but download the file.
By the way, my device is an iPad Pro 2018.