Win10 client ignores synchronization intervals

I’ve had this issue for some time now, but haven’t checked it properly until now. It seems that no matter what interval I set for remote synchronization Joplin automatically syncs changes after about a minute of inactivity.

Syncstatus page has no info and debug reports doesn’t seem to be human readable, so I’m out of leads trying to figure out what the issue may be.

New local changes are synced after 1 minute, if no changes are made Joplin syncs every x minutes according to the settings (5 minutes in my case). That’s what I expect from the program.
Version 1.0.152 on Win 10 Pro.

Wait, so it’s suppose to sync new changes every minute regardless of what you set the interval to? That’s not very accommodating to those with traffic restrictions.

I only use the sync as backup so there’s no need of syncing if there’s no changes.

It automatically syncs changes ~1 minute after edits, these syncs take very little bandwidth (unless you regularly attach massive files to your notes, which you shouldn’t be doing). If you haven’t made any changes nothing will sync.

On another note, you should not be using sync as a backup method, it’s meant for syncing and has the potential for data loss if things get screwy see this chain. You should export your notes regularly if you want a proper backup.

Well that’s a bummer. I had no idea. I have been doing manual backups once in a while but really thought syncing was for backup too.

Was not specifically referring to bandwidth, but I really think it should be up to the user to decide how often to sync.

From my understanding the intention is to always keep the sync target up to date to minimise conflicts. This doesn’t make sense if you’re using the sync as a backup, but that’s not what it’s meant for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you make a pull request adding the ability to disable sync-on-change I’m sure @laurent would consider it.

Speaking in general, that's not what a cloud storage is meant to be. It hosts the original data, not a backup, and your local data is a copy.
If you don't want this behavior you could simply set the target to the local file system and then backup these files from time to time. There is still a question about your Win 10. There you have a myriad of processes that generate network traffic and you can't shop them without switching your notebook to flight mode.

@daniel, how many devices do you sync Joplin data to?

Yes, that makes sense. I've just been using it the wrong way.

Well technically maybe, but I don't see how this matters for the user. All that matters is that a copy of the notes exists somewhere else if one instance is lost. Since cloud storage most of the time provides better data redundancy than any device, it's usually the source when restoring files - which makes it the backup.

Desktop. But that's another topic. I'm talking about Joplin and in this case the limitations applies to my network setup and sync target. Either way, it doesn't limit me the way you're describing, even if that would usually be the case with Windows.

None, I have only used sync for backup. But if you where to ask me later, probably 4.

It's been discussed before and so far I prefer to force a sync after change and not to make it optional. The reason is that it's easy to get things wrong when it comes to sync, and when it's wrong to understand why and where it comes from, and to fix the situation.

The wise thing to do to minimise conflicts is to sync as frequently as possible. If we add an option, people will disable it, or increase the delay, and end up with conflicts or "lost" notes (just not synced) and think the app is broken.

So the current delay is more or less a feature of the sync algorithm, required to make it work properly, and it's unlikely an option will be available to change it.

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Yeah, thought so. I'd argue that in this case, it basically does work like a backup. (It's basically just a very regularly updated backup of your local changes.)
Of course, as soon as you add a second device, that is no longer the case and all the other things mentioned in this thread come into play.