Scrivener iOS syncing via Dropbox continues to crash the app

I’ve tried that I believe but I can check it again back on my mac. I have tons of snapshots in that project, too.

Clearly not large enough. As I said upthread, we have been unable to find a reproduction case. Collectively, the L&L team has a pretty diverse array of devices and projects, and none of us are seeing it.

Katherine

It does.

What’s your sense of how many are affected?

If < 100 posted the problem here in over 3 months, does that mean anything?

There’s obviously a huge selection bias: people who aren’t having the issue don’t post. On the other hand, the thread is visible enough that some people who are having the issue may have seen it, read it, and decided they didn’t have anything to add.

But this topic hasn’t seen anywhere near the amount of activity of, say, the Windows/Paddle licensing issues we had a while back, which would have affected a very large fraction of our Windows users.

I wouldn’t want to speculate on numbers or percentages, except to say that there are enough to make it clear that there’s a real issue, but not enough to demonstrate a pattern that would help us track down the problem. (That is, we don’t have enough information to say that X device/project combination is more or less likely to run into it.)

Katherine

I received a new iPad Pro for Christmas. Haven’t had a chance to work with it much and only downloaded a handful of apps including Scrivener. At first it synced fine. Days ago, I converted a Scriv 2 file, containing a course with some multi-media (4-5gbs), to scriv 3 and crash. Sync is broken on the new iPad. Still works on iPhone 7+ & iPad Pro gen 1 (all using latest iOS).

My uneducated guess is, there is something about the new iPad and perhaps converting Scriv 2 file to Scriv 3 (as others have said).

Hmm. Could you clarify the specific sequence of events, please?

That is, was it (Scenario 1)

  • Sync project A in Scriv 2 format, all is well.
  • Convert project A to Scriv 3 format.
  • Crash

Or (Scenario 2)

  • Convert project A to Scriv 3 format
  • Sync
  • Crash

The question being if the problem comes when converting a project that’s already been synced. The new format is a substantial change to the project structure, so converting it would force the sync step to essentially replace the whole thing.

So, if the series of events was as in Scenario 1, here’s something to try:

  • Move the project out of the Dropbox folder on the computer.
  • Synchronize, which should remove it from the iOS device entirely.
  • Move it back and see if it synchronizes successfully.

Katherine

Hi Katherine,

Scriv 2 doc was synced. I made a copy and converted to Scriv 3. Both the back-up and converted file were in the sync folder when it crashed. I deleted the ios app for a clean download and it kept crashing.

As suggested above;
I moved the files in question out of the sync file. All other files synced like a charm. Added the Scriv 3 file and it crashed. Took the Scriv 3 file out and tried the Scriv 2 file, no problem syncing. Not sure that it helps but I have many other Scriv 3 files that sync fine, just the one file is a pain (perhaps the size?)

I made another Scriv 3 copy of the file. It’s crashing on sync.

Many thanks

I use DropBox and Scrivener on both PC Windows 10 Pro and MacBook Air running the latest version (14.15.2?) and have experienced no problems with either DropBox or Scrivener. I move back and forth between operating systems seamlessly. My desktop is Win10 and I use interchangeably my MBA and Lenovo Laptop running Win10 Pro.

The only trick I’ve learned is to go into the default installation of DropBox and uncheck the option to throttle uploads, which is checked by default. What you’ll find is that making changes takes sometimes minutes to upload and you get corrupted data in the cloud.

Go into Preferences | Bandwidth and set both Download and Upload rate to “Don’t Limit”

I always make sure that before I close the lid on my laptop, I look at the DropBox icon and make sure it says “Up to Date”

And how does this affect iOS sync? There are no such controls in the Dropbox iOS app,

And if throttling is the issue, does the iOS sync perform more or less well depending on the connection you’re using?

Katherine

This is my first post in this thread, and I’m just writing into to politely express my frustration not just with the syncing issue, but with the tone of the response from L&L. I’ve been a user of Scrivener since nearly the beginning and have turned over a dozen other people on to it. It’s an amazing piece of software.

However, both my iPad (11" pro) and iPhone (XR) have been crashing on sync attempt in Scrivener ever since the iOS upgrade. I understand that much or perhaps even all of the issue/fault is with Apple. Fine. But what I don’t get is why L&L representatives on this forum – in this thread – are so dismissive of the issue and the people who have it. It feels as if they are attempting to aggressively minimize it and portray the people who have it as rare and almost as trouble-makers who are stirring the pot by harping on and on about their supposedly rare issue. I believe it is a lot less rare than you think. And even if it is uncommon, please take it seriously and treat your users with respect.

Another one affected!

I have just configured a newly bought iPad Pro 12.9 (3rd gen.) with iOS 13.3 and get the “sync-crash”. It says “Downloading file list…” and then the Scrivener app closes (resp. vanished into the background and sync stops unsuccessful).

My two other iOS Devices with iOS 13.3: iPhone 8 plus and iPad Pro 12.9 (1st generation) sync without problems which might indicate that the problem is device related.

Have you isolated your files that cause the crash and submitted a copy or at least details to support?

Not a comprehensive listing, but probably enough reading material to get one up to speed on the status:

I don’t see any progress on the problem and read again and again, L&L can’t reproduce the abort during synchronization. Did the developers get a last generation iPad to reproduce the process? It is becoming increasingly clear that mainly current devices with current iOs are affected. According to a survey in our authors’ forum (700 users), about one third of iOs users complain about the crash while synchronizing and the level of frustration slowly increases. None of the solutions discussed so far is reliable or suitable for larger writing projects. I can’t use Scrivener for iOs at the moment and the expensive iPad, which I bought especially for writing on the go, is gathering dust on the shelf. I hope for an early solution.

”Mainly” is not specific enough. It could actually imply something completely different, e.g that mainly users with complex projects or a lot of background updating apps are hit by the problem.
My new iPhone 11 pro behaves just as well as the old 8, and the same goes for the iPad.

I’m not sure what you mean by your reply. Everything worked perfectly on my iPad before the update to iOs 13, now it doesn’t work anymore. And like me, there are a lot of users right now. Whether my statement was specific enough or not doesn’t really matter. It’s starting to feel as if the problem is considered minor, and that it’s not being treated as a priority because it seems to only affect a minority. That disappoints me.
If you are one of those happy users where everything works, I am happy for you. But it doesn’t help me.

It’s not affecting newer devices per se. But maybe people with newer devices have more complex use cases than people with older devices? Apps using more memory?

The only pattern is that it started with iOS13 and iPadOS … and Apple soon made it hard (even harder than it used to be) to downgrade to iOS12 or earlier. Counterexamples have debunked device-dependent and project-dependent theories, other than it SOMETIMES helping to reduce the number of projects in the sync folder.

If some people have more apps or they’re doing more complex tasks on their devices, that’s impossible for Literature & Latte to track in a rigorous way at a distance.

They haven’t seen the bug occur in front of them, so I find it hard to believe 1/3 of all users are affected, or even close.

After almost 4 months, this thread has less than 400 posts, most of them (a) duplicates from the same user, (b) Literature & Latte posts, and © posts from folks like me, who don’t have the problem. I’m moderator on a Scrivener group of over 12,000 users, and I’ve seen maybe THREE of them mention the problem. Almost no one comments on threads I started on the subject. 12,000 users, and not ONE of them started a thread.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem … even if the true number is 1/10,000 … but it makes solving it difficult. Any software engineer will tell you reproducing the problem in a laboratory setting, with professional debugging tools, is KEY to solving tricky problems. Literature & Latte doesn’t have a test case.

If the true numbers are what I suspect they may be, it’s comparable to the odds that a faulty section of the memory chip is key to getting the job done in a loop of MANY calls to the Dropbox API. iOS 13 may have made an unfortunate compromise on performance vs. error-correction.

If that is true, Apple will eventually find it and fix it, but Literature & Latte cannot.