Scrivener iOS syncing via Dropbox continues to crash the app

Scrivener Scrivener for iOS
121

IT WORKED!!!

iOS sync hadn’t been working since iOS 13(.x), and I was just able to make it work–here’s what I did:

  1. I had a bunch of Scrivener projects in the /Dropbox/Apps/Scrivener folder, along with a couple of non-Scrivener documents. I moved all but two projects to another Dropbox folder. I also kept Scrivener theme files in the sync folder.
    **Let Dropbox finish syncing.
  2. Removed and reinstalled iOS Scrivener app.
    **Ensured that Dropbox had finished syncing.
  3. in the iOS app, pressed the sync button.
    **Waited. It took some time–10 minutes, maybe? But sync didn’t want at the ‘Downloading file list…’ message
    –Tested: made small change in one project, synced–it worked. !!!

In short:

  1. clean up and trim your /Dropbox/Apps/Scrivener folder (or other sync folder)
  2. remove and reinstall iOS Scrivener
    **Make sure you allow Dropbox to sync. You know what happens if you don’t. :laughing:
  3. sync.
    **Wait.

For reference, one project is 250 MB; the other 24 MB. Other projects I had in that folder ranged from 5 to 30 MB. It may be that the issue is solved just by reinstalling the app, so you could try that first. My folder had gotten cluttered, including with Scrivener projects in older formats.

122

Thanks for sharing! Hopefully it helps others, but removing and reinstalling the iOS Scrivener app unfortunately didn’t work for me, and I did try doing it after paring down my sync folder and removing a bunch of old stuff. :cry: (I’ve tried removing/reinstalling it several times throughout my whole trial-and-error situation to no avail.)

123

Rats, TQLOS. I probably missed your post, and was excited to offer some help. Maybe for some…

Wishing you good luck!

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Glad to hear that trimming the folder down helped. That’s something I’d recommend doing periodically anyway. The design intent for this feature was always within the threshold of syncing what you are presently working on, rather than to operate as a repository for everything you’ve ever done. There is local storage for that, if you want it made available. But keeping the sync folder itself trim and currently relevant will only speed everything up in the day to day.

It shouldn’t of course break if using it heavily, though!

I think that given the most recent conclusion this wouldn’t be of much help. Since the problem does seem to be triggering a system memory related abortion of the process, it’s very unlikely to be related to specific content—and given how memory related issues can be seen on one system but not another, it’s not even a sure thing that what never works for one person would never work for anyone else.

As for the alternate sync methods, I think it’s great that iOS 13 has finally made Files a viable hub for data. I’ve been thinking of sorting out a Resilio Sync workflow now that AirDrop is too flaky to depend upon. In the past that wasn’t something I could do, since the Resilio client itself on iOS can’t send folders to other apps.

Ultimately that should be the dream goal for this system. The reliance upon every single developer inventing their own sync integration with every other tool that people want is just insanity. That philosophy in general is what holds this system back in my opinion. You can’t spend your time making your own software if you have to spend your time reinventing stuff the OS, and integration with the OS, should provide to all software equally.

125

I understand. My own favourite mind-mapping app, iThoughts, recently abandoned its excellent Dropbox sync in favour of a solution involving iCloud Drive and Files app. Sad, as the iCloud solution devised is much less flexible, but given the vocal resistance to Dropbox I’ve heard on this forum and others, plus the advantages of a manufacturer-supported solution, the developer’s decision is hardly surprising.

Soldier on, L&L! I hope you find this bug soon!

126

Trying this now. Dropbox is in the process of syncing the Scrivener project files (which is better than previously, when Scrivener would just crash as soon as I tried to sync Dropbox). Crossing fingers that it’ll go through?

ETA: It worked :smiley:
Good luck, everyone <3

127

So quick background: I have an iMac, an iPhone 8 Plus and an iPad Pro 11" connected to Dropbox.
A while ago I made changes to 2 Scrivener Projects on the iPad Pro, but when wanting to sync, it always crashed. So, not wanting to mix up the system any further, I didn’t touch these projects from the phone or the Mac anymore for days.

What I did today was through the Files App and iCloud Drive, copy (via duplicate) the files from the On My iPad - Scrivener - Dropbox folder, to my iCloud Drive. I checked on the iMac and they had the latest changes. Okay, so far.
(still ironic that I could get them off through Files and iCloud, but anyhow)

Then, on the iMac, I copied those files from iCloud Drive to my Dropbox folder, so at least they had the latest versions now. Then I opened the iOS app on my iPhone. It showed changes to those files, I let it sync, and it worked. So far, so good.

I thought: maybe I should now just delete the Scrivener App from my iPad and re-install, let it re-sync. I tried, but when re-syncing, the iOS app on the iPad didn’t ask me with which folder it wanted to sync, and just made its default Apps - Scrivener folder. Which is empty. Okay, I thought, weird mistake, I went through the settings, couldn’t find the setting to sync to another folder. Well. I’ll download the Dropbox App on the iPad, maybe that will help to connect it to the right folder. So I de-installed Scrivener again, removed (on the iMac) the empty Apps - Scrivener folder, and installed the Dropbox app on the iPad. Opened it. First it asked me to first decouple like 12 devices to only have 3 devices left, with their new restriction on devices. Fine. I checked off all old devices that were still registered, until only my iPhone, iPad and iMac were left. Next step: re-install Scrivener iOS, and probably now it will link straight to the Dropbox app and ask me which subfolder to pick. No, again: it shows me the usual splash screen, and when I push the Sync button, it automatically makes it’s own Apps - Scrivener folder, which is of course empty. I have an own Scrivener folder on the root (I only use Dropbox for Scrivener at this point anymore) but there seems to be no way to link to it. I now tried again, de-installing and re-installing iOS Scrivener, and it just always makes its own folder instead of letting me pick which one to link to.

So now there are no projects active on my iPad. And I theoretically could move all my 20 GB of Scrivener folders again to the new folder the iPad creates, but then I’ll have to re-sync on the phone as well, and at this point I’m a bit sick of the whole thing and I want to avoid spending again time for maybe nothing.
I’m now doubting about just working with a manual copy to iCloud Drive from every device, which at this point with Files and iOS 13 seems to be going well but I only tried it with 200MB Scrivener Projects, and not with my bigger (maximum) 8 GB Scrivener projects.

128

Why didn’t you tell iPad Scrivener to look in the correct folder?
Edit -> Gear wheel -> Dropbox settings

129

Damn I feel stupid now. I knew there was a way, but I was searching through the Settings App, and went to the question mark, etc. Don’t know why I missed. I’ll update to let know if sync worked.

EDIT: Still crashes, unfortunately…

130

I’m happy to report that I finally got my biggest project to sync! I used the method up-thread of creating a new Dropbox folder, syncing to the empty folder, copying one project into the new folder, then syncing again, and so on. I had tried this before, but I started with the smaller projects and it worked for those, but then crashed once I added the big project. (The smaller projects are 40 MB and 70 MB, the big project is 525 MB.) This time I started with the big project, and it worked!! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

I’m using an iPhone 11 Pro Max with iOS 13.1.2.

The big project is the only one I really need to have on my phone right now, and since I’m afraid of causing another crashing situation if I add any more projects into the new folder, I’m just going to have that one big project on there and hope it keeps syncing without issues.

131

I had had no problems on my iphone or ipad until tonight - just got a new iphone 11 pro max to replace my 7 plus after the microphone stopped working… now Scrivener crashes every time it tries to sync on the new phone :frowning:

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Yes! Finally! I had just a few projects in there so thought I’d just uninstall and reinstall. No go. Wouldn’t do a thing. Then I slimmed down my Dropbox > Apps > Scrivener folder and it did.

One key change I made: I deleted subfolders within the Scrivener folder and just put all projects directly in the Scrivener folder. It had worked fine this way before the upgrade. So perhaps you aren’t allowed to have subfolders in the Scrivener folder under iPad OS anymore?? This could explain why some folks can sync and others can’t.

Where I use Scrivener: on a Macbook Air (MacOS10.4.6) and an iPad Pro 11" with iOS 13.1.2 installed.

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Hi Amber,
I’m glad you are looking for the concerns of your Scrivener users. In our facebook forum, many writers are close to give up on it, since they can’t get sync working anymore. Many do not have the skills to access the synchronization on a directory level or understand / execute “workarounds”.
Honestly, it also makes no sense to me to shrink or tweak the directory since Dropbox would update only the changed files in a package anyway. It worked perfectly before and I can’t see any reason why it should not work with iOs 13. The file list downloaded prior to sync process cannot be the cause for the overflow but this is the moment, when the Scrivenerapp always disappears from the screen.
I also do not want to search for “workarounds” or copy directories or project files around, since this is not a quality process. I rely on Scrivener for my work and really would like to ask for a systematic solution.
If DropBox sync does not work for whatever reason, please make iCloud sync available.
The sync process can be much better controlled than in the past and all I need is an automated solution for what I’m forced to do by hand right now. (Copying project files via iCloud from my Mac to the iPad and back).

Greetings,
Thomas

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It’s safe to say that, whatever the issue with Dropbox might turn out to be, fixing it will take less time than rewriting Scrivener for iCloud compatibility.

If “making iCloud sync available” were that easy, we would have done it already.

Katherine

135

But moving inactive projects to another folder seems a rather simple thing to do to make everything work.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t had any problems? I have all my Scriv projects in a Db folder called ’Scrivener projects’, but I have my active projects in a subfolder ’Active projects’ and that’s the one my iOS Scriv is syncing with, not the parent folder.

136

I don’t have subfolders in my Scrivener folder and I still can’t sync. In fact, I only have one folder anymore in my Dropbox, because I want to get away from Dropbox for some reasons, and it’s my Scrivener folder with only my active projects. I have about 10 projects active, unfortunately they are quite big, together totaling about 20GB.

I had great and fast sync when it was still Scrivener 2, on both old hardware and newer hardware, with iOS. The downloading File List step used to take about 20 seconds, and then syncing would be very quick. It was great, and I never had complaints. Then, after the upgrade to Scrivener 3, I suddenly had to wait about 5 minutes (15 minutes on older hardware!) to get through the Downloading File List step. The syncing itself of all the files, would be at the same speed as it ever was. Having to wait 5 to 15 minutes for every file I changed, even with just changing one line of text, really became annoying quick and it never went away. According to information on the forum it was a combination of the Scrivener 3 project format making a lot more internal files, and the API of Dropbox taking forever to detect changes when you have a lot of files. All good and well, but since 2017 or whenever Scrivener 3 came out, syncing has been annoying and time-consuming, although I never really had data loss (maybe once, but it was a small thing, that I could easily could get back because of backups). But the fact is: this Dropbox API thing, where the API takes abnormally long checking files, has not been fixed in 2 years, and it should let the team at L&L think hard and long at being so depending on a sync provider system that has been having it’s own issues for a while now. (I’m sure they have, btw, I’m just on a little rant :wink:)

I still have to check if with iOS 13 I can reliably copy Scrivener Projects manually from iCloud Drive through the Files App (I’ve had very quick and reliable syncs with iCloud Drive these days, and I have all my documents on there since I’ve replaced a my Macbook Air with an iPad Pro) back and forth and just completely leave Dropbox behind. I haven’t done the checking yet, because of time and because I still hope one of these days it gets fixed with an update to iOS 13.2 or a Scrivener update.
Let’s hope that happens sooner rather than later.

137

That’s like saying it makes no sense to use separate file folders when you’re filing all of your various papers from over your life time. I mean, they’re all in the file cabinet, right?

Putting your active projects into a directory, and moving projects in and out of that directory, makes sense because that directory is a boundary for Scrivener. Every time you start up Scrivener and tell it to sync, it has to tell Dropbox (roughly) “send me a list of all the files that are in or below and the last times they were updated.” Remember, Dropbox doesn’t see your Scrivener projects as a single package file – it sees all of the component directories and files, all of which have to go into that list.

By keeping that target directory trimmed to only those projects you’re most likely to work on, you limit the amount of scanning that it is possible for Scrivener to have to perform – and therefore limit the amount of memory, network, and CPU it has to use to do it.

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11 projects, only 2 larger than 10 MB, should not tax the memory, storage or CPU of an iPhone 11 Pro Max with 30+ GB free disk space. I have been an enthusiastic defender of Lit & Lat’s decision to require Dropbox to this point, but it’s clear something is seriously broken now. I’ve had way more syncing at various times before but now it just crashes.

A reinstall didn’t fix it.

Seeing this as well.

I can create a text file in the Dropbox app and it syncs back to my Mac just fine and vice versa.

Worst part is that this worked fine on iOS 13.1.2 until I got the new phone.

139

Well I followed the procedure that AmberV described above:

Well it turns out there’s a single project that’s causing the crashes. It’s only 21.5 MB, and is a 300+ page book ms. with lots of old snapshots etc., upgraded from Scrivener 2 at some point. And it worked fine until I switched devices. It still works fine on my iPad running 13.1.2 . And it worked on my old phone three days ago. But not on my new phone running the same OS.

Also even when it works it’s still screwing up the modification dates in the Dropbox app.

It’s clearly not simply file size b/c a 70 MB project is syncing just fine.

UPDATE; By emptying the Trash and moving all my research into a separate project (which is not at all a sustainable solution…), I got the offender down to 13.5 MB but it still crashes.

UPDATE 2: I created a new project, then moved all the documents from the offending project into it and put it in a folder by itself. The new project synced. Then I moved it into my regular sync folder with the other 11 projects which synced just fine. I adjusted Dropbox settings in Scrivener to use that folder. And it crashed.

This is terribly frustrating. I’m giving up using Scrivener on my phone until there’s a fix.

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Thanks for running through those checks, Derick. It wouldn’t surprise me if overall megabytes (or gigabytes) would be somewhat irrelevant to whether the bug appears. Since this happens during the phase where Dropbox is sending a full list of the sync folder’s structure to Scrivener, it’s probably more to do with the size of that overall procedure, or its complexity. The data being transferred at that point is really simple, more along the lines of a list of file paths and modification dates (there may be a little more than that, but certainly no data, just metadata).

We do seem to be getting more reports here on new devices than older ones, which is odd, but it also doesn’t seem to be a perfect, at at least complete, description of the problem. My guess is that it’s more a statistical anomaly than anything. With how many people are on contracts, they tend to stay within a few years of the latest device anyway, so it’s more likely to see the problem on newer devices. But it is still an interesting factor to keep an eye on.