Hello!
I just noticed this with the latest DTPO and the new syncing underbelly but the Activity window isn’t always disappearing after it presents some information (it often pops up to tell me that it’s syncing). I wouldn’t mind a toggle to disable to syncing activity alerts but barring that, ensuring that the window dismisses itself. I don’t have repo steps because it happens randomly but I’m pretty sure it’s occurring when I have DTPO in another Space or when it’s hidden or minimized.
Thanks!
Thank you for the bug report, we’ll check this. If you should be able to reproduce this, please let us know. A screenshot of System Preferences > Mission Control might be useful. Thanks!
I saw that this was one of the bugs listed as fixed in 2.9.1 but I’m still seeing the same behavior. Not as often, mind you, but the Activity window is still hanging about sometimes.
Unfortunately we can’t reproduce this and the sync explicitly closes the window as long as it’s empty. Any additional details? Maybe other background activities happening at the same time?
I can’t reliably reproduce it either in that I can’t provide steps since it happens entirely in the background which leads me to believe it is directly related to the new sync (e.g., it never did it before). Today, I’m going to keep DTPO hidden or minimized and see if that changes anything. I’ll report back later.
I’ve tried keeping DTO in a variety of states but there appears to be no consistency to whether the Activity window remains up or not. Sometimes it’s there; sometimes it isn’t.
I think I’m having the same issue, ever since the automatic sync. The Log window pops up every time my MacBook Air tries to sync when my iMac is asleep (with its DTPO presumably not available to sync). The error message is “Connection to server timed out.” It does this every few minutes, so the Log window fills up with the same message over and over. The “Show log” is unchecked.
I have the same issue of the log constantly appearing and experiencing timeouts. I filed a bug report and logs, but I figured it was something weird with my network. However, it’s interesting to hear that this is happening when DTPO is in a different space. I assign spaces to different functions, and my DTPO is always running in its own space. Although I also experience these conditions when DTPO is in the active space.
The Log window should be always displayed after sync issues whereas the Activity window should be automatically opened and (!) closed.
The Activity Window is not automatically closing for me either. It appears very often, and is usually empty. This problem emerged ever since I’ve begun automatically syncing with DTTG 2.
Unlike other users posting in this thread, I never use DTPO in secondary spaces. I only ever use one space, and hide/show DTPO (and other apps) as needed.
I have not noticed a pattern to report. For instance, if I manually sync databases, the Activity Window does not appear. If I find a way to reproduce the problem, I’ll file a bug report.
In the meantime, are there any usage patterns I should test, to see if this occurs?
Do your databases contain feeds that are automatically updated? Or do you OCR scans quite often?
I don’t use DTPO for feed reading. I think it’s more likely to happen when DTPO is hidden, in another Space, or maybe even just buried behind other windows. It’s really hard to nail down.
Indeed, I do have one database that is full of feeds, set to update every hour. Should I close this database for a couple days and see if I still unexpectedly encounter the activities window? Or perhaps just turn feed refresh to manual?
I don’t OCR scans often. I used to OCR PDFs received from other sources often, but not recently (and hence I doubt it’s related to this problem).
I have no feeds in any databases, and the Activity window only opens to report Sync activity. The window opens, it reports the activity. The activity report comes and goes. The window never closes by itself. 2.9.2, DEVONthink Pro Office, OS X 10.11.6
Update: I turned the RSS “Check for updates” setting to “Manually”, and have seen no improvement in behavior of the Activity Window.
At this point, I’m convinced at least in my case it occurs only when the app is hidden/minimized or in another Space. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much other relevant usage … wait, could it possibly be linked at all to the Sorter? I used to never use it but recently I’ve been archiving a ton of stuff from websites as part of a project and I’ve found it invaluable. That’s the only other change I’ve made to my DTPO usage and it was right around the time 2.9 launched.
Akiva, I doubt that the Sorter is part of the problem. At least, I never use it, or even have it open.
I do agree, though, that the issue always occur when DTPO is hidden or in the background. In other words, I never actually see the Activity Window pop up and then hang around. I only ever see, upon switching to DTPO, that it has popped up and hung around.
And here is the worst thing (for me) about this issue. Often when I catch the Activity Window hanging around after activity has ceased, the window is in a strange state: foremost, but inactive. Like so:
Because the window is foremost, I press Command-W to close it. But because it is inactive, my main database window closes instead. So I have to learn to Command-tilde to cycle my windows until the Activity Window is both foremost and active, and only then Command-W to close it. But sometimes the Activity Window will already be foremost and active, in which case this workaround is unnecessary. It can be frustrating.
I will lastly note that the Activity Window sometimes functions properly. For example, I can drag an item into the database, watch the Activity Window open as the item gets uploaded, and then see it close again.
I do not use Sorter, so I doubt this is related to it. I also see the activity window opening, displaying status of something, clearing, and then remaining open – while DEVONthink has the focus.
I get this all the time. I keep the main DEVONthink window open in one desktop space, and then have a note open in another space. It’s when I go to the note space that the window is hanging around.
I would love to never see the Activity Window. I don’t value the information it gives me, especially since the Log pops up when something has gone wrong. And since it seems this problem might be hard to pin down, it might be simpler just to allow users to prevent the Activity Window from ever automatically appearing.
Edit: I realized that I do appreciate seeing the Activity Window when running OCR. In these cases it tends to close automatically, at least for me. So perhaps if there were a way just to prevent syncing events from opening the Activity Window, then that would avoid most of the problems people are seeing?
