Scrivener iOS syncing via Dropbox continues to crash the app

[gyokusai]

Something curious happened last week after I’d deleted Scrivener from my iPad.

From time to time, for about two or three weeks, Dropbox had prompted me after logging in on my Mac for my admin pw to “change folder permissions.” This seemed to be the known “folder permissions” Dropbox bug, which usually doesn’t go away, no matter what you do. It can be suppressed with a series of terminal commands, but before I did that, I filled in my pw once to check what would happen, and whether the prompt would really come back the next day.

What happened was that Dropbox started to reindex all of my files, which took about two days (for 1.6TB) and annoyed the heck out of me. But after that, everything seemed to be okay, and the prompt never popped up again.

Naturally, I was curious if and how that would relate to the Scrivener sync problem, so I reinstalled Scrivener on my iPad. And what do you know, it synced like a charm, and has synced ever since now for over a week, both on iPadOS 13.3 and 13.3.1.

I know all this is very messy, and I know it won’t help solve the problem, or even answer the question whether it’s a Dropbox or an iOS bug.

But at least, I wanted to share this piece of information.

[AmberV]

Interesting news, indeed, thanks for sharing that! It sounds as though in your case it was actually a bit of a malfunction that the Mac Dropbox client recovered from automatically. There is a way to force Dropbox to fully reindex, though it is unfortunately not a terribly friendly process! If anyone is willing to run them for a second confirmation, that would be greatly appreciated!

[iPersuade]

I tried this with great enthusiasm, but alas, it did not resolve the issue for me. I hope others try it and and works for them!

Just a reminder, for anyone keeping score at home: I have no Dropbox sync problem on my 2017 12.9” iPad Pro. It’s only happening on my iPhone 11 Pro. Both are completely updated with the latest OSes and software.

[AmberV]

Thanks for giving it a shot! I wonder if the manual procedure in some way differs from whatever happened in the automatic recovery that gyokusai describes. Whatever the case, it’s the first case of the problem going away for any reason at all, that we’ve heard of, which provides a glimmer of hope that there is some solution out there.

[Thomas Rabenstein]

I really tried all the suggested solutions and none of them worked reasonably and reliably. The only thing I can do now is to copy the current project file via iCloud to the Scrivener directory on the iPad and return the same way as soon as I'm done writing. This is a manual and cumbersome way, but at least it works. I still hope that a future version of Scrivener will allow alternative synchronization via the iCloud.
If I don't get a working process again with the upcoming iOs versions or an update of the Dropbox app, Dropbox-Sync is useless for me.

[windy71]

HI,

I had the non-syncing issue over Xmas and have just fixed it to my satisfaction on my setup. I have an iPad Pro 12.9" and a MacBook Pro, and an iPhone pro max.

I had about 70 scriv files in my dropbox folder. On the iPad I could see all of these in the projects view. then I closed scriv on iPad.

I went onto the MacBook, made sure scriv was closed. opened my dropbox folder and in Apps>Scrivener created a new folder where I saved every unfinished project except for about 5 - note of the 5 I kept one is quite big (for me) with hundreds of sheets in it.

So, now I have 2 folders in my Apps>Scrivener folder. I closed dropbox, went back to iPad and opened scriv, It then synced with dropbox. That took 5+ mins, then, on the iPad, I selected all the scriv files that I had earlier backed up into the second folder on dropbox and deleted them from the iPad, then closed the scriv app on iPad.

Then I made a new scrivener file on Mac, made a few test sheets, saved it. On Mac I saw it save fine to dropbox. then closed scriv on MacBook.

Opened scriv on iPad, synced, saw new file, opened it, added new sheet and some text, went back to projects view and saw it sync to dropbox.

Closed iPad scriv. on MacBook opened scriv and opened the file, the edits were in place.

Then I closed MacBook scriv and created a new file on iPad scriv, let it sync to dropbox, Then on MacBook opened scriv and opened the file. No issues.


I have no idea what it is in what I did that helped, but for my use case this works and I'm very happy with it. I hope some of you have similar results. Best regards,

[Gattopardi]

Morning, everyone!
This bug really bothers me a lot and slows down my work quite a bit. In a new attempt to solve the problem, here's what happened:
- My sync folder now contains only seven projects, among them an 820.5 MB project.
- I try to create a new sync folder and transfer these seven files to the new folder.
- The 820.5 MB project has duplicated itself. An 820.5 Mb version has moved to the new folder and a full version, but only 479 Kb, has remained in the old folder. Maybe a recovery version? But who is not in the right place?
Hopefully this can give some food for thought.

[throthberghofer]

Just installed iPad OS 13.4. Sync is working again on my 11 inch iPad.

Cautiously optimistic now. Will test with more projects tomorrow.

[iPersuade]

I am pleased -- so pleased -- to report that after updating to iOS 13.4, DropBox syncing is working as expected with no crashing. I hope everyone else has the same experience.

P.S. I was not having the problem on iPad, so that's why I made no separate observations about iPadOS 13.4. I can confirm that synching on iPad remains just fine for me on iPadOS 13.4.

[Thomas Rabenstein]

I have good news. With the update to iPadOs 13.4, syncing worked fine. I just started with my biggest project file (350 MByte) and it was transferred without any problems. Also my other projects (12 project files) now synchronize again without problems. I am really relieved. As before, all my projects are in one directory. So far there are no restrictions. I'm still testing, but it looks like iPadOs 13.4 solves the problem. You can open the champagne bottles.

[Amcmo]

Well, that seems to suggest the issue was at the Apple end all along.

Here’s hoping the fix is in for everyone and the few who slagged L&L for not fixing it can give a collective ‘sorry Keith’

[Gattopardi]

Yes, the problem seems solved  !

[sidderke]

This is great news! Personally, I'm doubting a bit if I should get back into working with Dropbox because I got used to the way of working with only iCloud, and it allowed me to leave Dropbox completely behind. Will think about it.

I know this is a bit off-topic, but I tested the mouse/trackpad functionality in iPadOS 13.4 and it's been really great. For text editing it will make a lot of stuff a lot quicker and easier. Very curious what this all means for the future of Scrivener iOS and iPad apps in general.

[AmberV]

Excellent news! Glad to hear everyone's reports and confirmations that this has finally be fixed.

[sidderke]

Just confirming: it works on an iPhone 8 Plus and an iPad Pro 11".