Notes not syncing completely between macOS and iOS

Support
#1

What I did:

  • Import notes from Apple Notes.app on Agenda on macOS (~1300 notes)
  • Waiting for notes to sync to Agenda on my iPhone and iPad (syncing via iCloud is enabled)

What happened:

  • Notes did not sync
  • I suspected a sync problem because the number of notes is large, thus I distributed the imported notes in three projects with about 400/400/500 notes
  • Then I disabled sync on iPhone (deleting all notes on uninstalling Agenda on iOS), uninstalled Agenda, reinstalled Agenda and re-enabled sync.
  • Now, only one of the tree projects syncs the notes from macOS to iOS. The other projects are shown on iOS but are empty.
  • The project whose notes sync is incomplete, only about half of the notes are available on iOS.
  • Further, navigating the notes in the three folders with about 400 notes each is very slow, e.g. beachball shown for about 15 sec when switching between the projects.

Things that might be helpful to know (Agenda version, OS and model, etc):

  • Agenda version 10.0.4 on macOS, Sign in with Apple, iCloud sync, premium subscription.
  • Agenda version 10.0.5 in iOS, Sign in with Apple, iCloud sync, premium subscription.
#3

Very sorry for the late reply. (We are a bit short staffed over the summer break.)

What you are seeing is almost certainly due to the large number of notes. Syncing that many notes will take quite a while. You would probably have to leave the devices connected to power, with Agenda running, and sleep/autolock disabled. The data has to upload, and then download.

The slowness in scrolling would probably be due to having so many notes in each project. You would be better off spreading them even more, so that each project only has 20-50 notes at most.

One way to start over would be:

  1. Turn off the sync inside the settings of Agenda, and when it asks, choose to remove the cloud data. Do this on each device.
  2. Reorganize your projects
  3. Delete the app on iOS devices, and install it again, to clear all the data there.
  4. Finally, turn the sync on for the Mac, let it run for an hour or so with, then turn the sync on the iOS devices.

When the sync is active, you should see a flashing cloud icon (top-right on Mac, in the right panel on iOS). As long as you see that, it is still busy.

If all this is too much trouble, some people choose for a different approach: they use Apple Notes as their shoebox of odds and end notes, and they use Agenda for very specific, project-based note taking (eg a project per patient for cases). Agenda is not really a direct replacement for Apple Notes, it is really for a different type of time-oriented note taking.

Kind regards,
Drew

#4

Thanks for your reply. I tried to sync the notes by deleting and re-installing Agenda from my iPad and letting sync run for a couple of hours, but this didn’t solve the problem.

But if there is a limit of a few dozens notes per project, Agenda is not suitable for my use case and I will have to go back to Apple Notes. Which is sad, because I liked the concept of Agenda.

I have three feature requests:

  1. An indication of the synchronization status and progress. I found out only by accident that the Notes imported from Apple notes are only available in Agenda on macOS but not in iOS.
  2. Developement of a more capable synchronization mechanism: I think that the expectation that a note taking app is able to sync 1000 notes that are (except for a few exceptions) text-only, is not unreasonable.
  3. Update the app description in the app store to clearly state that Agenda has severe limits on the number of notest that can be processed and synced.

I hope these issues will be addressed in a future release and I will be able to come back to Agenda.

Kind regards,
Christian