Help with Seafile IOS app

Ok, I know the IOS app is quite straight forward to use but there are a few things that I just don’t understand.

  1. Is there a manual anywhere? I’ve looked but not found any thing.
  2. Is there a way to force it to upload any new photos?
  3. What exactly do the settings Auto Upload and Background Upload do? They don’t seem to change anything and sound like the same thing.

I find that there are often a few of the latest photos that have not been sent to the server. In settings it says all photos synced but as I write 5 are not on the server and I don’t seem to be able to get them moving. On one occasion I noticed the Upload Destination was blank. Resetting it got things moving that day . I’ve seen the Upload Destination disappear several times now. Not sure if it’s a bug or if I’ve not understood how this is intended to work. I’ve even seen the message in settings say there are ## to upload but nothing is happening.

I am seeing this where the situation is that my server is on my local network but not accessible from the internet. Therefore I understand I have to be at home and the iPhone connected to the network. All my computers on the same network synchronise promptly when anything changes.

Thanks in advance for any answers

without background upload you have to open the App for uploading. With the background setting it works sometimes in background.

Thanks for the reply. What you describe is the behaviour I and most people would expect. However you have illustrated my point. What does Auto Upload do that is different to this?

Over the next few weeks I will run a series of tests with different settings to see if I can makes sense of it all. If I make progress I will post here.

My objective here is to know what to do to sync the photos when I can see some, usually the latest, photos are not on the server. I find they get there eventually but there are times when I want to do something with them at the time.

Auto Upload does only start when you open the Seafile App. Background should do it even if Seafile isn’t open.

Thanks again for the reply. Perhaps I am too pedantic. If Auto Upload does what you suggest it should toggle with Background Upload unless there is a manual trigger to upload somehow. I.e.

  1. Upload when the app is in the background when there is work to do.
  2. Upload only when the app is opened or
  3. Upload only when the app is open and triggered manually somehow

Not sure 3 above exists so perhaps setting Background Upload should make the Auto Upload setting redundant

I suspect Background Upload is broken. I’ve never had an upload happen in the background. Today the photos that had been refusing to upload did upload when I opened the app. The difference this time was that the app opened to the splash screen and then the list of servers. That suggests previously it had been running in the background because it had been opening straight to the list of libraries. I haven’t had time to replicate this behaviour. If I can it’s problem solved because I’ll know what to do to get things synced promptly

iOS doesn’t allow such kind of background processes. The App have to be open in the background, and then, it’ll work.

Sorry bionade24, I don’t understand what you are saying here.

I assumed there are 3 states in iOS. Lets call it “Forground” when the app is open on the screen. “Background” when the app is not visible on the screen but is visible when double click the home button and can see all running apps as large icons. “Inactive” when its not in the states I have called “Foreground” or “Background”. Perhaps what I have called “Background” is not what you mean by background.

I’ve had reason to have quite a few photos moving from my phone to the server this week. Most times its worked fine. Photos have uploaded when I’ve opened the app. I have Auto and Background Upload turned on. Nothing has uploaded before I took the app out of “Background” as defined above.

I had one instance of the upload stopping when it was working though a number of photos and videos when I switched to another app (just to get on with something else while it finished).

I had another instance where 4 photos were left not uploaded. The next day when I opened the app those 4 did upload but 20 others that had been created in between times did not upload.

It now seems that I can reliably start the upload process by double clicking the home button. Swiping away the Seafile app and then restarting it. As long as this works I’m happy. However I will start playing with the settings to see what difference they make.

So I started playing with the settings and probably answered one of the things that puzzled me about the app. It had seemed to me that the app forgot the upload destination from time to time. Turns out its cleared if you turn off Auto Upload and I had done that a few times. In that state the app does nothing other than give you access to your files. I can understand why you might want it like that in some scenarios.

In my situation I want photos to upload to the same library at the first opportunity. So I will always have Auto Upload turned on. I’ve tried turning the Background Upload on and off. I’ve never found anything has uploaded without bringing the app to the screen of my iPhone. I have not seen any difference regardless of the Background Upload setting. It’s either broken or I don’t understand its function.

Since I’m on iOS 10, I can confirm it works, even though not reliable. Maybe open a Gihub issue if there isn’t already one.

That’s interesting. I guess you have your reasons for using that version of iOS. I am on iOS 12.1.4. I will look at submitting an issue

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Ok, so this seems random. Some photos and videos uploaded at about 1am yesterday morning. This can only have happened in the background. I deliberately took a photo yesterday evening but did not bring the seafile app to the foreground. This morning it had not uploaded but immediately did so when I brought the app to the foreground.

Uploading in the background does not appear to be consistent and in my experience has only happened once. The only difference I can think of when it did upload was that there was a greater than normal volume of data in the form of videos. I am on iOS 12.2

Does anyone have experience of this, working or not working?