An update on Android sync.
I had to restart Joplin Android a few times but over the course of a day, it completed. Today the sync on Android took only 14 seconds for creating 46 local items, updating 4 and deleting 3 items. Not bad at all.
I suspect that the long initial sync was due to file sync locks conflicting between the two instances of Joplin. The Android was syncing and the Mac tried to check. Then the Android version locked up. I haven't figured out how to review the log files on Android efficiently. The scrolling in Joplin Config log record is very slow.