DTTG not syncing correctly from Mac (Inbox / deleting items)

I keep encountering an issue where the inbox doesn’t sync correctly to DTTG. I delete the files from my Mac, let it sync but very often DTTG still has them in the inbox.
If I delete on DTTG first, it disappears correctly on Mac.

If I rename files on the Mac, they rename correctly on iOS but if I move or delete them, they often keep sticking around (even outside the inbox but it’s the most noticeable there). Sometimes the iOS version creates duplicates that are not getting synced back on Mac.

I tried deleting the app multiple times and re-install / re-sync from scratch and for the first couple times it works fine, but then goes back to not wanting to sync.

I also noticed that at first when it works, the inbox is called “Global Inbox” on DTTG but later gets renamed to just “Inbox”, not sure if that means anything.

I tried with Dropbox, iCloud and both at the same time as sync backends but this problems keeps popping up.

I am using DEVONthink 3 on my Mac with Mojave, and iOS 13 on my iPad and iPhone but the same issues happened on iOS 12 before I installed the beta.

Any ideas how to debug this?

1 Like

Sometimes the iOS version creates duplicates that are not getting synced back on Mac.

DEVONthink - Mac or mobile doesn’t randomly create duplicates. It’s likely you have the sync conflicts setting to Duplicate documents.

In DEVONthink To Go 2, select Help > Contact Us to start a Support Ticket. Thanks!

PS: iOS 13 is a ​beta ​operating system. Unless you are explicitly beta testing and reporting, you should not run a beta operating system on a device you need operating as expected.

The problems were already there before upgrading to iOS13

The duplicates I am talking about are very odd. They aren’t the usual duplicates that I experiences a few times with DT because they aren’t even syncing back. They literally only exist on the iOS device.

I’ll create a ticket!

Sadly the problem keeps popping back up. This time my server (mac mini) added 5 new documents, only 1 appeared on my phone and other Mac. I renamed the file on my Mac to see if it would propagate back to my server (it did). I then went ahead to setup a new Macbook and none of the new files appears.

I tried verifying the db, resyncing the mobile apps completely from scratch and forcing a complete resync on my new Mac. Still the files don’t pop up and are just on my server.

Do I have to clean the sync store again?

What kind of sync store do you use? Is a verification (see contextual menu in Preferences > Sync) successful?

I am using iCloud only for my sync.

I verified each database individually without it doing much, but hitting “Verify location quickly” seems to have fixed it. All other devices triggered a sync for all databases and the documents that were missing have now shown up. In total the newest Mac ended up syncing 300 files spread across all databases!

I wonder what happened behind the scenes? The server that does most of the automation also has “verify uploaded items” checked so I would have assumed that it makes sure that everything is ok without manual intervention.

is there anything I can do to avoid this problem? My server runs without screen usually and it’d be nice to have peace of mind that everything stays ok.
For example, can I trigger this verification with applescript or URL command?

This isn’t possible and it wouldn’t be a reliable workaround. Especially on Catalina iCloud seems to be broken for quite a few users. Therefore the best and most reliable option would be to use another cloud service.

1 Like

I understand you don’t work for Apple, but is this still an issues that you know?

I was just about to upgrade to Catalina, as I was waiting for the iCloud problems to be polished away. Perhaps better to wait some more then.

Yes I get that, especially as an engineer that has to deal with integrating various APIs.

But as a paying customer I don’t want to pay another cloud service just to get DT to sync correctly. iCloud sync was/is advertised as a feature of DEVONthink and for me a deciding factor why I bought this app for the price that it costs (which would have been a long time of some other premium subscription). DT is also the only app that I sync with iCloud that runs into all of these issues.

If iCloud doesn’t work for the quality standards that DEOVNthink sets, and the recommended solution is to switch to a different cloud provider, maybe it’s better to add a warning somewhere when setting up the location.

Anyway, I hope it’ll get figured out eventually.
I’m glad everything is in sync again and will periodically verify the location (or try to hack some UI automation with applescript together) for now

Only few customers experience this issue. E.g. we can’t reproduce this at all, it works as expected on iPhones, iPads and Macs over here.

See…