Issue syncing tags, some notes, folders between Mac and iOS

Mac: Joplin 1.0.197 (prod, darwin), OS 10.14.6
iPhone: Joplin 10.0.46, iOS 13.4
iPad: Joplin 10.0.46, iOS 13.4

I have been unable to get my iOS devices to match my Mac version for the past 3-4 days. On the Mac version I added/deleted a few tags. After multiple tries at syncing the iOS versions still show the old tags. The iOS versions also have 4 notes that have been moved on the Mac version that are still in the wrong folder. A folder that was deleted on Mac still exists on iOS.

To be clear, both iOS versions seems to be syncing properly with each other. New notes are appearing in both directions, but the changes from a few days ago on Mac are not syncing to the iOS devices.

The Mac version shows :
sync
Note that there there are things like 19/18 folders.

I am using Webdav to sync. I don’t see errors on any device under sync status. There are no visible conflict errors and none in the debug report. I do not have any console errors.

Any ideas?

Still facing this issue, wanted to add another thing I noticed in case it is helpful.

On the sync status page on iOS, the Folders listed are the ones that are on Mac, with the correct list and note count. So under status, I see the correct folders, but if I look at the actual folder list in the iOS menu, it is the outdated version.

In the Sync Status section, there is a totally different count on iOS than Mac:
Note: 407/407 on iOS, 398/398 on Mac
Folder: 20/20 on iOS, 20/19 on Mac.
Resource: 18/18 on iOS, 18/21 on Mac.

Still not seeing sync errors on any client, all three of them will sync and say they are pushing changes. Only the iPhone and iPad are syncing with each other.

Considering deleting the iOS clients and doing a fresh install from Mac.

Couple more things to note, before I try deleting and reinstalling the apps this weekend.

  • All three devices are now out of sync
  • I updated mac to Joplin 1.0.199 (prod, darwin) and I still see the same thing
  • this syncing issue seemed to start when i did a bunch of maintenance on Tags, deleted ~4 and added a dozen, might have been a coincidence, but the tags have never synced properly.
  • If I don't move it or change the title, it seems to sync ok. Some notes are immediately, correctly synced, others are still stuck.

Guessing no one has any ideas, but I thought I'd put it out there one more time :slight_smile: I will report back once I resolve it.

Ok, finally resolved this. Putting notes below in case it helps someone in the future.

I tried many things like:

  • exporting and reinstalling all the apps
  • changing the sync folder (webdav) and re-syncing from scratch

In the end, I believe the the actual issue was a very large attachment that was causing sync to hang indefinitely.

While I never saw an error on the sync status page, and while I regularly saw the sync status say it was complete, I don’t think it was really finishing the sync process. I also think tags must be synced after resources which is why those never went.

What helped me final figure out the issue was looking at the logs.txt file in my joplin-desktop folder vs looking for errors in “sync status” or the console. I also added a file named flags.txt with the contents --open-dev-tools --log-level debug, although I am not sure if that actually changed the log output.

The culprit was:

“Uploading a large resource (resourceId: xxxxx, size:103089014 bytes) which may tie up the sync process.”

After going to Tools > Note attachments I was able to see the giant file and delete it. I then went and deleted the corresponding .crypted version from the joplin-desktop > resources folder.

Possible enhancements to prevent this for other people ( I will look into opening a feature request for these):

  • Seems like it would be useful to see sync related logs on the sync status page
  • Wish I could see what note had the giant resource. In this case I was happy to delete the attachment without seeing which note it was in, but would make them easier to diagnose if I wasn’t sure.

Very happy to be back up and running again!

1 Like

Glad you managed to fix it. We've recently added the resource list screen and it's good to see it can be useful to debug and fix sync issues.

Good point, I'll add an issue about this.

Yep, very happy to be in sync again. :slight_smile: Thanks for all the hard work on Joplin, it's an awesome tool.