Hi. Does iPadOS refresh in background? Recently noticed that Mac & iPad not synching that well unless I run Agenda on iPad as active app (not in background) and literally wait for it to sync to iCloud. Else mobile Agenda won’t sync everything, changes made on mobile Agenda not sync to Mac or changes on Mac not shown on Agenda iPad.
iCloud shows Agenda size at 630MB. Is that the reason?
Also couldn’t find Agenda under iPadOS/iOS Background App Refresh. Does it mean Agenda can’t sync in background mode?
If you close the app, it will continue in the background for a short time syncing new changes. But we don’t have the app open and sync in the background. This was causing other issues, and we thought it better not to do it.
In general, once the app is synced up, new syncs are very fast. It may be worth letting the app fully sync up, such that you no longer see any clouds passing over the island button. Do this on each device, and after that it should be fast. (Keep Agenda in the foreground. You may even decide to temporarily turn off autolock/sleep to let it fully sync up.)
Ok will disable auto lock and fully sync on all devices first.
Never experienced lengthy sync before. Was there any change to Agenda sync recently or my data gotten larger? It’s around 620MB according to iCloud but would think Agenda app itself also part of that 620MB?
Your advice is to close Agenda on other devices rather than have them running to ensure they sync in background? Rather than have Agenda running on them? I can do that.
I have a very similar use case—my Pushcut automation server automatically creates work notes for me in the morning, but right now the Shortcut has to open Agenda via the URL scheme and then return in order for it to sync and be available on all my other devices.
I believe the new shortcuts support always opens the main app, even if you don’t see it, so it should have a chance to sync up. Actually, that should be true of all automation, since it is only supported via the main app.
When I say we don’t have background sync, I mean the app doesn’t wake in the background just to sync. It will be woken in the background for other things, like automation.
I’m not sure if there is an open state that isn’t visible, but Shortcuts does not (have to) bring the main app to visibility. Shortcuts can interact with the app without it being shown, which is what makes its ability connect multiple apps so compelling.
i.e. I can get content from one app or web service, add it to another, and then have Siri speak something, all without any app being shown.
Yes, but I believe the new Shortcuts stuff in the latest OSes, which we are using, always opens the main app. It isn’t using a background extension like the older tech or a sharing extension. It is probably hidden from sight, but the app does launch AFAIK. Maybe @mekentosj can chip in, since he developed the feature.
Yes and no, the app always opens in the background but not necessarily with a UI. However, in this state we currently don’t allow the sync service to wake up. As we’re rearchitecting the app for the features in V17 I’ll explore whether sync can be enabled, but this can be complicated as we want to prevent background termination by the system, which happens if the sync would take too long.
Been testing for 2 days after suggestion above but still finding user needs to wait a long time to sync. Work done on Mac takes a long time to sync to iPad - have to literally touching iPad screen to make sure it doesn’t lock or go into background mode to have data sync before I can start work on it because latest information on Mac hasn’t sync to iPad.
Was there any change to sync or background sync recently? Can’t remember having these issues and having to wait to work on something. Used to be able to just go to Mac or iPad and work on them. Now have to wait for everything to start synching since used Agenda before being able to continue to work.
That sounds like your devices may not be fully up-to-date with sync. If you have to wait more than about 10-20s, they are probably busy with older data that still hasn’t synced up. If you see clouds over the islands icon, it is syncing.
There have not been any big recent changes, but iCloud is a service from Apple that goes through rough patches sometimes, particularly when new OSes are launched.
Might be useful for others facing same issue. Had private chats with Drew, he helped to solve the issue and dramatically reduce size of data. Thanks Drew!
Though I always delete completed notes from a project and emptying bin everyday, but that won’t reduce size of database because history of changes are saved inside the project. That caused database to keep on growing to a stage that Agenda and iCloud take a very long time to sync. Drew’s recommendation below:
Another solution would be to move the notes from such a project to a new project and deleting the original, now empty, project. This will in fact delete the history and free up space in iCloud.