I suspect it’s the incremental volume of data that needs to be sync’d. Those apps likely have a fraction to deal with compared to DT. So when you launch the app, the sync may look instantaneous. In addition, having more than 1 database to sync in DT also compounds the time taken.
My question is: is there a technical limitation imposed by Apple that prevents DTTG from using Background App Refresh to Sync? Or is that just a silly strategy as you may inadvertently run down the mobile’s battery for instance? Or have I got the wrong idea of Background Refresh?
Their sync appears to be almost instant when I install these other apps for the first time on a new iOS device. And there is no perceivable delay at all when I subsequently open the other apps after adding new items.
I would understand if I were syncing my entire database on the iPhone, but I set it to only download on demand so it is only downloading metadata.
Why does it take longer to sync a few Drafts notes than to sync a few items added to a Devonthink database? There seems to be a lot more software overhead in the sync process on DTTG than with other iOS apps.
Their sync appears to be almost instant when I install these other apps for the first time on a new iOS device. And there is no perceivable delay at all when I subsequently open the other apps after adding new items.
Again… they are not doing the same thing. Those apps are looking at singular files put into an iCloud Drive folder. They’re not even syncing. iCloud is syncing, just as it syncs other iCloud Drive data.
DEVONthink is not syncing singular files. As mentioned many times, it is syncing raw, chunked, and optionally encrypted sync data about the database, not the files themselves. And if you want to know why we don’t do it the other way, here’s one reason: I could look in your iCloud Drive/Drafts folder and see what you’ve got in there, no matter how public or private it is. Go into a DEVONthink sync location and look for the same file. You won’t find it. And anything you think it may be, might be a partial file so you’d have to find the other parts. Then opening it you’d find it’s gibberish inside. For security-minded people, that’s considered a big benefit and even allows use of a sync location on a service they may have questions about its privacy.
Also, iOS controls Background App Refeesh. DEVONthink To Go doesn’t. When it launches it raises its hand and says, “Hey! I’ll sync when I’m not the frontmost app, when you’ll let me.” iOS/iPadOS nods and say, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll let you know but you’ve only got about 30 seconds to do your business then I’m shutting you down again.”
When DTTG is indeed the frontmost app and the sync screen is displayed and counting down, why can it sometimes take over an hour to do a thin sync of a database? Surely the metadata of a DT database is not that large.
@BLUEFROG OK after thoroughly cleaning/verifying/repairing all databases and sync stores the DTTG sync works very well.
It is interesting that whatever minor errors there were in the database and/or sync stores were not an issue in DT3 but created issues in DTTG. In any event works fine now - so thank you for your help.
Since the update today sync is broken - in iOS get msg that I need to verify and repair DB but I don’t see a way to do that in iOS. On Mac, DB verify is fine but it won’t sync locally or via CloudKit to iOS because of error message getting in iOS. Any ideas?
