Nearby Sync Issues

[scneophyte]

Thought I would give nearby sync a shot but I have discrepancies with the syncing. Right now my ipad has 5 and 27 records in two forms but my mac has 8 and 28.

I’ve tried closing / reopening both documents but I can’t get the sync to work reliably.

Since I am relatively new to syncing, is there something that I could be doing wrong or better?

[scneophyte]

I fully quit the app on both devices, reopened, looked at the sync options on the ipad, returned to My Forms and it had synced.

Am I expecting the records to update quicker than is possible?

[Brendan]

Well the problem with Nearby sync is you have to have the document opened on each device at the same time for sync to work. That’s not the case with cloud syncing, which IMHO is far more convenient. Just closing the document and re-opening should also establish a new connection to the other device. Maybe at the time you were doing that they weren’t able to connect to each other, but then they did after you reopened. Not sure. In general if both devices are successfully talking to each other, sync should happen within about 5 seconds.

[scneophyte]

I just changed back from iCloud sync to nearby sync since iCloud sync was unreliable. I experienced nearby syncing issues again until I quit the device on the Mac as well as the iPad.

The symptom:

• Records added to iPad would successfully nearby sync with Mac
• Editing records would sync from Mac to iPad with (mostly) no issues
• Editing records from iPad would not sync to Mac

The only workaround I found was to delete the Mac from the iPad sync screen and then readd it. This eventually stopped working too. I had quite the app on the iPad several times. Closing it on the Mac seemed to be the fix.

I’ll report back here if I find out anything else

[scneophyte]

Nearby sync has stopped working again (sigh).

Error message: “Synchronization has failed. Error syncing with <device name>.local., reason: The request timed out.”

Mac version: 5.1.4.1660
iPad version: 5.1.2.689
Database name is the same on both apps
The same document is open on both devices
No autolock is activated on either device
Error message is the same on both devices

Troubleshooting:
Remove synced device in both apps
Close document / close app
Reopen document and setup nearby sync again
Added new record from iPad: Did not sync…error message received
Added new record from Mac: Did not sync…error message received

[scneophyte]

Further troubleshooting:

1. Deleted document on the iPad
2. Closed document on Mac
3. Closed / Reopened TF on both devices
4. Beamed the document from the Mac to the iPad
5. Setup nearby sync on both devices
6. Added a record to the iPad…it did not sync
7. Added a record to the Mac…it did not sync
8. Edited a record on the Mac…it did not sync
9. Closed document on the iPad
10. Opened / closed a different document on the iPad
11. Reopened first document
12. Message “Sync fetching” is displayed for several minutes
13. Selecting a record makes the previous sync message disappear but it hasn’t synced

That’s where I’ve left it for now…

[Brendan]

Can you check to make sure that the firewall on the Mac isn’t blocking access to Tap Forms? When you make a change on the Mac, what happens is the iPad then establishes a connection to the Mac to pull down those records that have changed. If the Mac doesn’t allow incoming connections for Tap Forms or there are other firewalls (such as Little Snitch) getting in the way, then that could cause the failure or timeout issue.

Have you tried rebooting your Mac and iPad?

[scneophyte]

Is there a chagrined emoji? After following the #1 troubleshooting technique on both devices (rebooting) nearby sync began working again with no further actions required.

Can you point to any issue specifically that rebooting solved?

Thanks once again! I just made sure to update my review in the App Store for the current version.

[Brendan]

Whenever Tap Forms launches, it generates a random port number and listens for connections on that port. It may be possible that multiple listeners were tying up some network resources and Tap Forms was listening on a port that your other devices weren’t sending on. Rebooting may have cleared that up. But that’s just a guess.

[scneophyte]

Neat! I was able to see the random ports that were opened by tapforms on my mac but I don’t know of a way to do that on my ipad.

[scneophyte]

Okay, just FYI: Nearby sync was working fine for at least an hour and then quit again. I restarted the iPad only and it started syncing again…for one record only.

After that, syncing stopped working. Restarting both the iPad and the Mac did not resolve it.

I removed the Nearby Sync settings on both devices, rebooted both devices and reset-up Nearby sync on both devices and it started syncing again.

[scneophyte]

Next update: I verified Nearby Sync was working by adding just a single record then I took a walk. Came back to continue and sync had stopped working again.

I had to follow the same steps as above (turn off sync, restart on both devices, and reestablish nearby sync) for it to start syncing again.

It worked long enough to sync the changes I had previously made but new changes were not syncing.

At the moment, sync is only working under the following conditions:
– Modify a record on the Mac
– Must turn off / on syncing on the iPad
OR
– Modify a record on the iPad
– Must turn off / on syncing on the Mac

I have no particular firewall on either device…I may need to go back to iCloud syncing but I prefer Nearby (when it is working!)

[Brendan]

I’m currently digging into the iCloud sync system to see if I can improve on it. Once I’m done that I’ll dig into the Nearby sync system again to see why it might be misbehaving in this way. Wish I had more than one of me :)

[scneophyte]

Thanks! If you need any further information or assistance from me please let me know. Would you like for me to continue posting my experiences in this thread or is what I’ve provided so far sufficient?

[Aeron Manabo]

Hi,

I’m having the same problem with nearby sync. Before the recent update it was working just fine. But now there are discrepancies with my files. And it says that there are syncing error. Please help me on this. Thanks.

[Brendan]

Hi Aeron,

What kind of errors? Can you post the error message?

Try removing the devices from the Nearby Sync list and re-add them.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Rhyc Sandberg]

When I tried to do a Nearby Sync with my iPhone, I get an error message on the phone that says ‘Error Receiving File “My DB tapforms” couldn’t be moved to “Documents” because an item with the same name already exists’.
I initiated the sync from my Mac. The iphone was listed and it indicated on the mac that the transfer was sent successfully. But it doesn’t get to the iphone because of this iphone error message.

[Brendan]

Hi Rhyc,

I think you mean the “Send Document” function?

Try force-quitting Tap Forms and re-launching it on your iPhone, then re-send the document from the Mac to the iPhone. You can also use iTunes File Sharing to copy the document over too.

Thanks,

Brendan

[John Mathew]

Also having trouble with “Nearby” sync.

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[Brendan]

Hi John,

What version of Tap Forms are you using? There as an issue like that in an old version.

Thanks,

Brendan

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