Document keeps refreshing/crashing on IOS

[David2]

Hello,

I recently migrated all my data from Workflowy.

I have performance issues with desktop and web app but I can live with that.

On IOS, both iPhone and iPad, document keeps refreshing after a few seconds of typing. Document is quite big (2mo), I’m breaking it into smaller parts but still crashes.

I deleted the app and installed it again but no changes.

Any suggestions on how I can stabilize it?

The whole document was perfectly smooth on Workflowy.

Thanks for your help.
David

Steps to reproduce

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Expected result

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Actual result

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Environment

Which operating system are you using? Which browser are you using? If you’re using a desktop or mobile app, what’s the version number of Dynalist?

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Additional comments

[Erica]

Really sorry about the inconveniences!

I have a few questions and their answers will help our investigation a lot:

1. By “2mo” do you mean “2mb” or something like that?
2. On iOS is the app laggy, or is the document refreshing automatically the only issue?
3. Is the refreshing happening on all documents or only the larger ones?

Thanks a lot in advance! Sorry again.

[David2]

Hi Erica,

After splitting the main document it’s much better now both on desktop and mobile devices.

I think you can close this, I’m happy

Thanks for your help.

[Erica]

@David2

After splitting the main document it’s much better now both on desktop and mobile devices.

I think you can close this, I’m happy

Thanks for your help.

Happy to hear!

[JF]

Hi,

I’m now having this same issue: “document keeps refreshing/crashing on iOS.”

I’ve been noticing a decrease in performance with Dynalist and I’m not getting concerned as for me I feel like started like a month ago. Very oddly has been gradually getting worse and worse and now seems something I’m experiencing almost daily to the point I’m initiating this post.

Here some of the issues I’m now having:

• SLOW DOCUMENT LOADING. On desktop version, any time I open an existing document it typically takes 10 to 20 seconds if not longer to load (before use to load much faster). Somehow I feel as if my account was moved to a less performing server

• INPUT/TEXT GETS DISAPPEAR. Now sometimes I enter just few lines that are simply gone just a minute or two later. This one I stater seeing it two days ago and is terrible because is stressfull thinking all that input is going to get lost (as in fact has happened). This issue has happened on both Desktop and mobile

• UPLOADING FILES & IMAGES ON MOBILE. Uploading files or images on mobile app is basically not working for me 90% of the time. When I try to upload an image (about 4 to 5 mb in size) it always takes many attempt to actually see it on mobile, however I see that those attempts do end up on the “upload manager” (which I can only see on Desktop)

• NOW DOCUMENTS BASICALLY NOT WORKING AT ALL ON MOBILE. Lastly, and what really made me open this post is on mobile app (iOS) I’m now having a hard time trying to work on a simple document because page crashes. As troubleshoot, I deleted the mobile app, reinstalled, but still having issues. Basically documents are now frequently “refreshing/crashing” regardless of size. I recorded a video showing how a totally new document (so for sure very small in size) crashes as soon as I start entering text. Also, not shown in the video (would be too long), but that same document, without entering any text or touching the screen, it still crashes every minute or two, somehow something makes the page to reload. Here the video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MZUdbwujy9_8RWnmWXUp8Scb5f2T4zxV/view?usp=sharing

Here some questions trying to fix the issue:

QUESTIONS:

1. In my case, Instead of having very long documents I intentionally normally create a folder and create different documents to make sure file size is small, but now I’m wondering if having too many documents ir an issue with Dynalist or can decrease performance?

2. As a workarond to the file/image upload issue (third bullet above) basically, I’m uploading the image from the phone and then on desktop I go to Upload Manager to get the URL (as all “attempt” that I try from and do not on mobile actually de get uploaded and show up on Upload Manager section on desktop). The question is: is there any way to see “Upload Manager on desktop” from mobile app?

Note: here what I’m using:

• iPhone XS and iOS 14.6, which is the latest
• Under Settings/iPhone Storage says: App Size: 22 MB; Documents & Data: 220 MB

Thanks. Appreciate the help.

[Shida]

That does sound like there’s a lot of data hanging around. If your even your desktop app takes time to load (the desktop app should be able to work without network access), then it probably isn’t a server related issue.

As far as input disappearing, I’d hypothesize that it’s likely due to crashing before the app gets a chance to save it. By the looks of it, I would guess that the app is crashing due to being out-of-memory.

As far as I can tell, having too many documents does indeed have performance impacts as well. All documents are loaded into memory and queried when you perform things like creating internal links, using the move tool, using global search, etc. It seems that your account has documents in the thousands, which is definitely not a size we’ve tested, and in retrospect is definitely not a use-case we’ve originally designed for. Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult for me to really fix this problem now without a full rewrite of the internal engine, so there isn’t much I can do to help, other than advising to trim down the amount of data.

[JF]

@Shida

so there isn’t much I can do to help, other than advising to trim down the amount of data.

Thanks for the input Shida.
I was not expecting my account to have documents in the “hundreds” not in the
thousands" : ) … but I see your point.

In order to mitigate or improve performace I’d like to “trim down the amount of data”, as you are suggesting, but I’m wondering how to really do that.

Using the “Archive” feature, which I’ve never done before, is all I can think of. I’m wondering if all it does is still show and sync the documents across devices (as it tested it), except it would exclude them from searches, therefore offload them from memory?

QUESTIONS:

1. You think using Archive that would improve performance?

2. Assuming using Archive would help, I would archive documents, but I also use folders but those can’t be archived, would Folders also impact memory or only the Documents?

3. Could you please list as many options as you could on how to “trim down the amount of data.”?

[Shida]

Archiving documents should help - documents marked as archived aren’t loaded into memory for linking and global searching purposes, and aren’t synced unless you have the document open.

By trimming down the data, I meant that if you were keeping a lot of reference material and/or old data that’s no longer relevant but nonetheless useful to be kept around in case you’ll want to revisit them for odd occasions, you can consider exporting them into both OPML and text format, and store them locally or in your favorite cloud storage. Then you can safely delete them from Dynalist. That way, they no longer occupy space and memory when you use Dynalist.

To be honest, I think during the initial design of Dynalist, the majority of the use cases we’ve observed and designed for are for short-term things like task tracking, brainstorming, etc. Long term data archives weren’t a thing we thought would be a good fit for the outline format.

[JF]

Thanks for the input/advice.

[Maya_Gail_Taylor]

Hi, I have this issue now with my 2022 journal and notes - the same lag and crash/refresh - on my iphone. It started happening just a week or so ago on iOS 15.5 so I upgraded to 16.1.1 but it did not help. This does not happen on desktop or on my tablets. It’s a document I use and search multiple times every day. Help please? Thank you

[Jason4]

I’m having this issue as well. Even after I split all my top level nodes into separate files. I was interested in exploring other options besides WorkFlowy, but having a performant iOS app is a dealbreaker.