Painfully slow iOS sync

[MA2020 4]

I've been using Evernote for several years, and some time in the last 3-6 months the iOS mobile app has become unbearably slow to sync.

On my iPhone (running iOS 14 with Evernote 10.9), If I edit a note and then save and close it, it takes 20-30 seconds for the app to sync that edited note, no matter how minor the edit was.  This is happening when I'm connected to a strong and fast wifi connection - there is no network issue.

This is a deal-breaker for me.  Before I leave Evernote forever, I wanted to see if anyone has experienced something similar or has ideas on how to solve this.

[PinkElephant 8,785]

What iPhone ?

iOS 14 can run on an iPhone 12, but as well on an iPhone 6S. The 6S has only appr. 1/10th the transistor count of the 12 in its CPU. This has an impact.

The other significant factor is the quality of your WiFi. Which band, how crowded, etc.

[MA2020 4]

I'm using an iphone 8.  Certainly not the newest or fastest phone, but I've been using EN on it for a few years, and this problem with EN only started in the last 3-6 months, so I don't think the phone itself is the issue.

Most of the time I'm on my home wifi, where I have a strong signal and a fast connection. For example, I just ran a speedtest and got 500+ Mbps down and 300+ Mbps up. I then went into Evernote, made an edit to a note, saved and closed the note, and it took 39 seconds to sync.

Thanks for your help!

[PinkElephant 8,785]

What we do when on our slower hardware (iPhone 6S+, iPad Air 2): Viewing is ok, editing for shorter notes, longer notes on desktop or a younger iOS device. EN v10 simply needs more resources.

[MA2020 4]

Thanks for the input, I appreciate it.  Unfortunately for me that means leaving Evernote and finding a new app.

If anyone has other suggestions on what may help solve this issue with EN, I would be very interested.  I don't want to leave EN but will have to if I can't solve this.

[PinkElephant 8,785]

Obviously the new app generation was not developed with older devices in mind. On desktop there is legacy, on iOS the AppStore does not allow to use an older version of an app.

The easiest (and completely free) replacement on Apple devices is Apple Notes. It has more functions than one would expect, some of them sort of hidden (like the build in scanner, Scribble handwriting-to-text converter, selection of local or cloud storage), of course there is always a gap between any two programs.

[thegreatluke 8]

I’m on an iPhone 11 Pro and on a fresh start Evernote can take 5 seconds or more to load the home page. I spend a good deal of time looking at the green elephant head. 

[PinkElephant 8,785]

3 sec from starting the app until Home Screen shows. If there are new notes, 2 more secs until the new notes ribbon has updated itself.

This will not get much faster - the time is IMHO quite standard for an app that shows content that it needs to load from the internet first.

To compare: Safari opening a web site with content, for example from a large newspaper: 4sec, and this does not include the time to start Safari itself.

So I really have to ask what you are complaining about.

[thegreatluke 8]

It can be faster if more info was kept on the device.... I'm not trying to complain. I'm just reporting some general slowness on EN for iOS that I'd like to see improved. For most of my writing projects I end up using either EN or Bear, and I can tell you that Bear doesn't take anywhere near that long to open... I probably couldn't even start counting before it's open and ready to go... I realize that Bear is not "web first" and EN is, but maybe a larger local cache for EN would be helpful... I don't know what the answer would be, I'm not a developer. I actually have all my notebooks set to sync local on my iPhone, so I wouldn't even expect the web connection to be an issue.

Anyway my goal wasn't to pile on, for the sake of trash talking EN, it was just to say yeah I have this issue too hoping it would get fixed. 

[PinkElephant 8,785]

Personally I have a full download of my notebooks on my I-devices. Just tested it - it makes no difference whether I am connected to the internet, or in flight mode to force the app to use the offline data.

As posted above, opening time is at 3 sec (maybe even a tick faster), what I don't regard as slow by any means.

From other threads it is known that on older iOS devices, the app is significantly slower. Probably the internet connection plays a role as well - I have Gigabit internet for my home network.

[HeBoIz 247]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

As posted above, opening time is at 3 sec (maybe even a tick faster), what I don't regard as slow by any means.

3 sec for start would be good or o.k.

In my case I do have to wait for fulls start at least 7 sec up to 10 - 14.
Internet connection surely isn't unimportant but I can't see any mentionable difference, even if I'm on 250 MBit/s.

My device isn't the oldest, but it may be to much counsumer standard and to thinbreastet for EN10 on iOS, at least based on Electron.
Seems like EN10 on iOS is running much better on high end oder pro devices with big memory than on standard ipad 2019 with 32 GB.. 😥

(Anyway, I wouldn't regard even 7 to 14 sec as painfully slow as long as the ipad is primarily used for recherche and lookup work. But it's getting hard and annoying when you try to do editing work and do some copy and paste with longer notes. In this case iOS EN 10 on weaker devices seems to lose context and focus every time you change the app for more than a few seconds. This means: 7 to 14 sec every time you come back to EN, plus finding your editing context-selection! Might be a RAM-management issue, may be caused by lots of memory used for Electron-EN10 filled with my data - less than 10k notes, only small part of it downloaded)

[PinkElephant 8,785]

This is our observation as well: On older devices, even when able to run iOS 14 and EN v10 the speed is falling off.

Our iPhone 6S+ only has appr. 1/10th of the transistor count of an iPhone 12. So maybe it is to be expected that a new app is not taking these as the benchmark for performance.

From us users view this feels as a sort  of neglect for everybody with older hardware.

[ksbraz 0]

I use an iPad Pro on solid WiFi and have found much the same thing. Big drop off in speed several months back and none of the updates make it better. My iPad is a couple of years old. I’ve been an Evernote (paid) power user since 2009, but when it takes 30-40 seconds just to open the app, it’s unacceptable. If I’m trying to jot down an idea, I’ve forgotten it by the time the app opens!

[mikimoore 0]

I have an iPad 6th generation from 2018 and an iPhone XR from 2019. Both are running IOS 14.8.

My iPad takes 20-30 seconds to open EN. My phone takes 2 seconds. Yup, the problem started a few months ago.

If i want to capture a note on my iPad, I use Apple’s Notes app on my iPad and then friggin’ copy the note into EN on my desktop windows machine. 

[PinkElephant 8,785]

Can't reproduce anything like this.

There are several possible steps:

• Switch the iPad completely off and on again - the Apple logo must show now
• Log out of the app, back in
  Hint: If you have content downloaded for offline use, it will be lost when logging out
• After logging out, uninstall the app, switch the iPad off, on again and reinstall

[Randy Zeitman 19]

Is this a sync problem or a listing problem.

Notes created on another platform do sync but don’t immediately show in the Notes listing unless you search for the ‘missing’ note.

[PinkElephant 8,785]

There may be a lag for a new note to show. In my case it is short, usually seconds, in rare cases minutes.

You can check in the iOS settings, Evernote (not the in-App settings) whether the background refresh is allowed (right above mobile data).

 

[Damon98xp 3]

在 2021/9/17 在 PM9點16分, PinkElephant說:

Can't reproduce anything like this.

There are several possible steps:

• Switch the iPad completely off and on again - the Apple logo must show now
• Log out of the app, back in
  Hint: If you have content downloaded for offline use, it will be lost when logging out
• After logging out, uninstall the app, switch the iPad off, on again and reinstall

This solve my Evernote slow sync / find no file issue on iPhone/iPad for the past 1 year(from legacy to web based evernote), thank you Pink Elephant!!

[Dan Mickle 1]

I have found that if I have iCloud Drive sync on (in iOS settings), Evernote sync horribly slow.  The minute I switch that off in settings, it works fine.

 

Just thought I would offer my solution

 

[PinkElephant 8,785]

Can’t reproduce this. My iCloud Drive sync was and is always on, and EN syncs fast as it always did. I see no interaction between these settings.

This does not mean it can’t be - but then I think it points to an underlying problem.

For a start I would try to switch the iOS device completely off once, and on again. If this does not help, maybe a force restart can solve the problem.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/force-restart-iphone-iph8903c3ee6/ios

More ideas see my post above.

[Klh 0]

On 12/19/2021 at 11:25 PM, Dan Mickle said:

I have found that if I have iCloud Drive sync on (in iOS settings), Evernote sync horribly slow.  The minute I switch that off in settings, it works fine.

 

Just thought I would offer my solution

 

Worked for me too. IPhone 8 Plus. 
 

[bswiss56 8]

Another point is this topic sync with IOS...:
Why is the new version requesting manual sync (function hidden)

Evernote so far (i am using it since 2009) did not require such process - it was always immediately synched between all devices.

To bad there is no way (unlike with Mac or Windows) to go back to a legacy version...

[PinkElephant 8,785]

EN does not request manual sync.

Not to use it together with the server.

Not to update notebooks downloaded for offline use. The initial download is a special story.

If you have a syncing problem, do the usual things to set the client to a fresh start:

Log out, log back in

Log out, switch the iOS device off, wait, on again (Apple logo must show), log in

If both does not work, log out, uninstall, dump all data when asked, power off/on and reinstall the app 

[Suzanna D 0]

On 12/19/2021 at 11:25 PM, Dan Mickle said:

I have found that if I have iCloud Drive sync on (in iOS settings), Evernote sync horribly slow.  The minute I switch that off in settings, it works fine.

 

Just thought I would offer my solution

 

This fixed my issue of EN being so slow as well!

[PinkElephant 8,785]

May be, thanks for the confirmation.

Its just that iCloud Drive sync is (at least for me) integral to several workflows, and therefore can’t be turned off easily. However I don’t experience EN to be slow when syncing, even with iCloud Drive enabled.

[anfang 38]

On 12/2/2022 at 6:44 AM, PinkElephant said:

May be, thanks for the confirmation.

Its just that iCloud Drive sync is (at least for me) integral to several workflows, and therefore can’t be turned off easily. However I don’t experience EN to be slow when syncing, even with iCloud Drive enabled.

I'm not sure what Evernote is syncing with iCloud for, as Evernote does have its own servers. Does it really store anything there? As a result, I think turning it off shouldn't affect any other app that uses iCloud?

[PinkElephant 8,785]

EN doesn’t store things on iCloud Drive, as far as we know. But user experience in the forum can point at things. 

So maybe there is an interaction - just give it a try.