Automatic sync on phone app

I’m using Joplin in my computers and in the phone app (iOS).
The way I use it, I rarely open it in the phone as I usually work in the computer.
However whenever I open it in the phone it’s because I haven’t any other option at hand (last resource).
Afaik, the phone app is only synced when you open the app and hit ‘Sync’?
Given my use case, that makes every time I want to use Joplin in the phone everything is out of sync and takes ages to update (I have many notes).
Is it (could it be) possible to sync Joplin in the background in the phone so that everything is always up-to-date?

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I’d would like something like this as well. I find myself having to open the app, remember to sync, make my changes and then remember to let it sync before I close it. I’ve lost data because of conflicts and forgetting to do sync, etc. Allowing background app refreshing with Joplin would be very useful.

Is there any take on this from developers?
Are there any fundamental blockers from e.g. the iOS platform side?

I’ve mentioned in another topioc and also in a gh issue that this depends on react-native and how it handles the OSes sleeping algorithm. Joplin can only use the react-native code that is provided.

I’m trying to read between the lines a bit here, but do you mean to say that because it depends on react-native code that there is no method for implementing iOS background refresh API?

Yep, at least that was the case a while back. Maybe @laurent has more recent and accurate info.

I’m not coder and not understanding Android/iOS system deeply, but is there no way to have separate simple app for sync not written in React?
(Sorry, if it’s too stupid idea)

Anyway, Facebook and Instagram mobile apps are written in React. How do they resolve the sync?

By having teams of full time developers working on it over several years?

More seriously, everything can be done but we're an open source project and have to manage with scarce resources (few people, very little time), so we rely on existing libs, which for now don't exist on React Native.

So what is the Synchronization interval in the setting in my Android app ?

The minimum allowed is 5 minutes,

Maybe set it to 1 will solve this problem ?

sorry for my stupid idea, I don’t know much about mobile development,

On Android maybe you can use Tasker or similar app to initialise the app and have it sync at set intervals, say every hour or two.
On iOS, Workflow might work.
They’ll of course drain more battery though.

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Idea to consider, but I would not like to let open Joplin in the middle of the usage of some other application :frowning:
But on the other side, I can run it during night.
Good idea, thanks...

The lack of background sync is a complete showstopper. Unlike the extremely unreliable Nextcloud iOS app that basically doesn’t offline sync at all (it can take hours for it to even start syncing on-screen!), at least Joplin syncs reliably and in reasonable time, but it still slows you down when starting the app, and makes it unusable offline / with expensive mobile data. I for one pay by megabyte and have mobile data only enabled for messaging apps. Currently one has to remember to sync every time one leaves the house. No thanks; I’m sticking to Notes until background sync is there (I don’t care if timed or based on adding push notifications to Nextcloud), although the markdown+latex-math is very appealing… nice features just don’t sell when the fundamentals are not there.

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I opened an summarizing issue for that, since I'm still not sure what might be hindering putting it on the roadmap.