I did not want to believe it. But I can reproduce the problem more or less on my both Macs (with Monterey 12.2.1 each). When Devonthink 3 is open (synced via iCloud) on one of my Macs, the synchronisation of new – e. g. downloaded – files in the iCloud Drive Download or any other folder is blocked on this system. The Finder keeps showing the upward grey arrow. A little while after closing the Devonthink app the upload succeeds. The blocking has nasty effects on the work with both Macs because the iCloud Drive folders are often not in sync if I have forgotten to close Devonthink on the system that I am not working with.
This is the only report I recall seening of this.
Are you indexing files in iCloud Drive?
Yes, I am indexing a great part of my iCloud Drive in Devonthink 3.
And are these indexed files always locally available?
Yes. No „optimization“ of iCloud Drive.
Which version of DEVONthink do you use? Does this still happen if all databases containing indexed iCloud Drive files are closed?
I am using DT 3.8.3. Closing the database would be counter-productive for me, so I did not try it. But now I closed it, restarted the Mac and moved some local files to a iCloud Drive folder. They uploaded immediately and synced with my other systems (2nd Mac, iPad).
And does the issue happen again immediately after opening the database (without any additional actions in DEVONthink)?
Yes. I was unaware of this immediacy until now, because I always open Devonthink when I start my Macbook. This time: Devonthink closed. I moved a local subdirectory with images to an indexed folder of iCloud Drive, started Devonthink with active indexed database – and the upload process of the images to iCloud Drive stopped (grey upward arrows at many files).
Without any further user actions? And no actions shown in Window > Activity?
no other action, not even a move with the mouse. The files were visibly added to the database though
Could you please launch Apple’s Activity Monitor application (see Applications > Utilities), select DEVONthink 3 in the list of processes, choose the menu item View > Sample Process while the indexed database is opened and send the result to cgrunenberg - at - devon-technologies.com? Thanks in advance!
In my experience, when indexing iCloud folders it the “do not optimize” option does not make the sync fool proof. In this scenario I believe the problem is that DT syncs the database via CloudKit faster than what iCloud Drive manages to present locally, but in a non predicatble way.
From all the reports here and elsewhere about Apple’s iCloud services, it appears to be opposite–Apple runs these servers in a way which produces non-predicable results. So it seems. Only Apple really knows and they do little to help resolve or debug, far as I can tell. And last week their servers were up/down (by their own reports).
DEVONthink sync works well with other methods.
Sorry my phrasing was not exact, I wanted to state that it is in a “non predictable way” on Apple’s iCloud Drive part.
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Changing the DT sync from automatic to 15 minutes does the job – until now.
But since I could reproduce the issue – If DT syncs automatically then iCloud Drive sync fails – I feel a lot better now with the new situation: if DT syncs all 15 minutes then iCloud Drive sync succeeds. At least on my two Macs.
Thanks for sharing this experience. It may prove useful to others and development as well.