Another one-way Sync Issue on Android App

  • Unknown's avatar
    matcaro · Member ·

    Hello Simplenote Support Team,

    I am experiencing a specific synchronization issue with the Simplenote app on my Samsung Galaxy A17 from a few days (I have used this phone for a few weeks).

    The Problem:

    What works: The app on my Samsung A17 successfully receives and syncs notes/text typed from other devices (macbook and iPad)
    What fails: Any text or notes I type directly inside the Simplenote app on my Samsung A17 do not sync back to the server or other devices at all. Also any modification to an existing note (created from another device) from my phone does not sync.

    Troubleshooting I have already tried:
    Logged out and logged back into my account.
    Cleared the app data and app cache.
    Set the app’s battery/data restriction to allow background activity and background data usage at all times.
    Tested typing via a web browser on the same Samsung A17, and it syncs perfectly. The issue happens only inside the official Android app.

    Device and App Information:
    Device: Samsung Galaxy A17
    OS: Android (Latest One UI)
    SImplenote app version 2.38 (186)

    Could you please help me investigate and resolve this app-specific upload/sync issue?

    Thanks!

  • staff-rangelife2233 · Staff ·

    Hi @matcaro

    Thanks for the detailed report — the troubleshooting you’ve already done, especially confirming that the web app syncs fine in a browser on the same phone, is genuinely useful and rules out a lot.

    Before anything else, one important warning: please don’t log out of the Android app or clear its data again while you have notes on the phone that haven’t synced. Logging out deletes unsynced notes, and they can’t be recovered afterward — they won’t appear in a note’s history either. If there’s anything on the phone that isn’t on your MacBook or iPad, please copy that text somewhere safe first (paste it into the web app at https://app.simplenote.com in your phone’s browser, since that path is working for you).

    Could you help me confirm one thing? On the phone, open a note you’ve edited that didn’t sync, tap the ⋮ menu in the top right, and choose Information. That panel shows Synced, Modified, and Created timestamps. I’d like to know whether Synced is older than Modified — and for a note you created on the phone, whether a Synced time appears at all. That tells us whether the app is queuing your changes and failing to send them, or never queuing them in the first place, which points at two different causes.

    A couple of other things that would help:

    1. Does it affect every note, or only some?
    2. Has it ever synced successfully from this phone, even once — or has it been one-way since you installed the app on it?

    In the meantime, so you’re not at risk of losing work: the web app at https://app.simplenote.com in Chrome on your phone writes directly to our servers, and you’ve confirmed it syncs correctly. You can add it to your home screen and it’ll behave much like the app. It’s a workaround rather than a fix, but it keeps your notes safe while we look into this.

    One thing worth ruling out, since it’s cheap to check: if you have a VPN, ad blocker, or private-DNS setting active on the phone, try turning it off temporarily and making an edit in the app. Those sometimes affect the app’s connection while leaving the browser unaffected. The addresses that need to be reachable are listed at https://simplenote.com/help/#network

    I should be straightforward with you: you’re not the first person to report this exact pattern on a recent Samsung device, and we don’t yet have a confirmed cause. Your answers above are what we need to change that, so thank you for bearing with me.

  • Unknown's avatar
    matcaro · Member ·

    thanks for your feedback!

    If I create a note on the phone I can see «modified» and « created » but not « synced »

    it affects every note, and it used to work on this phone (I think, I changed a month or so ago and just became aware of the problem, but I was in holidays so maybe I did not care that much)

    I’m not aware of any VPN etc running on this phone

    thanks!

  • staff-rangelife2233 · Staff ·

    Thanks — that’s exactly the detail I needed, and it tells us something useful.

    A note showing “Modified” and “Created” but no “Synced” time means the edit never reached our servers at all. So this isn’t a display quirk or a delay: the app is holding those changes locally and not sending them. You’re not the first person to report this pattern on a recent Samsung device, and we still don’t have a confirmed cause — but your answer narrows it down, and I’ve passed it to the team along with the app version and device details.

    Two things I’d ask you to do, in this order.

    1. Save a copy of what’s on the phone first. In the app, go to Settings → Account → Export data and save the file somewhere you can get to it (Drive, email it to yourself, anywhere off the phone). This writes out every note the app has stored locally, including the ones that haven’t synced — so if anything goes wrong later, the text isn’t lost.
    2. Send us the app’s logs. This is the most helpful thing you can do right now, as it records whether the app’s connection to our sync server is alive:
    3. Open Simplenote and create a new note, or edit an existing one.
    4. Give it a minute, and don’t force-close or swap away from the app.
    5. Go to Settings → More → Send logs, then pick your email app and send it to us, or paste the text into a reply here.

    The order matters — the log only keeps the most recent activity and is cleared when the app restarts, so it has to be collected right after you’ve reproduced the problem. It contains your device model, Android and app version, your account email, note counts and sync connection events. It does not contain any of your note text.

    Two things to avoid in the meantime: please don’t log out and don’t clear the app’s data again. Both delete anything that hasn’t synced yet, and they also wipe the log we’re trying to capture.

    For writing on the phone until this is sorted, use simplenote.com in your phone’s browser — you’ve already confirmed that syncs properly, so anything you write there is safely on the server and will reach your Mac and iPad.

    One last note: 2.38 is the current Android release, so there’s no newer version to update to just yet.

    Thanks for your patience with this one.

  • Unknown's avatar
    matcaro · Member · 
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.738 - LAYOUT: Small, portrait
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.787 - NETWORK: WIFI (351.00 Mbps)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.787 - SCREEN: Created (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.848 - NETWORK: WIFI (351.00 Mbps)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.848 - SCREEN: Created (NoteListFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.874 - ACTION: App opened
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.874 - SYNC: Started account bucket (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.875 - SYNC: Started preference bucket (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.875 - SYNC: Started note bucket (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.875 - SYNC: Started tag bucket (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.879 - SYNC: Added note bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.880 - SYNC: Added tag bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:43.949 - SYNC: Added preference bucket listener (NoteListFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.188 - SYNC: Removed note bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.256 - SYNC: Removed preference bucket listener (NoteListFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.257 - SCREEN: Paused (NoteListFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.257 - SYNC: Removed tag bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.257 - SYNC: Removed note bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.258 - SCREEN: Paused (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.280 - NETWORK: WIFI (390.00 Mbps)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.280 - SCREEN: Created (NoteEditorActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.319 - SYNC: Started account bucket (NoteEditorActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.319 - SYNC: Started preference bucket (NoteEditorActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.320 - SYNC: Started note bucket (NoteEditorActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.320 - SYNC: Started tag bucket (NoteEditorActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.323 - NETWORK: WIFI (390.00 Mbps)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.323 - SCREEN: Resumed (NoteEditorActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.336 - NETWORK: WIFI (390.00 Mbps)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.336 - SCREEN: Created (NoteEditorFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.368 - ACTION: Opened from list (NoteEditorFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.374 - SCREEN: Created (NoteMarkdownFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.380 - SYNC: Loaded note (ID: 1c7ed05b8de9411188be350729ce89ad / Title:  / Characters: 0 / Words: 0)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.700 - SYNC: Added note bucket listener (NoteEditorFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:51:46.904 - EDITOR: Samsung keyboard detected, overriding predictive text behavior
    2026-09-15 15:51:56.123 - NETWORK: Heartbeat received
    2026-09-15 15:51:56.445 - ACTION: Edited note (ID: 1c7ed05b8de9411188be350729ce89ad / Title:  / Characters: 0 / Words: 0)
    2026-09-15 15:51:56.483 - SYNC: Saved note locally in NoteEditorFragment (ID: 1c7ed05b8de9411188be350729ce89ad / Title: New test note / Characters: 14 / Words: 3)
    2026-09-15 15:51:56.520 - SYNC: Saved note callback in NoteEditorFragment (ID: 1c7ed05b8de9411188be350729ce89ad / Title: New test note / Characters: 14 / Words: 3)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.016 - ACTION: Tapped back button in navigation bar (NoteEditorActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.059 - SCREEN: Paused (NoteEditorFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.060 - SCREEN: Paused (NoteEditorActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.084 - ACTION: Edited note (ID: 1c7ed05b8de9411188be350729ce89ad / Title: New test note / Characters: 14 / Words: 3)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.089 - SYNC: Started account bucket (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.089 - SYNC: Started preference bucket (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.089 - SYNC: Started note bucket (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.090 - SYNC: Started tag bucket (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.092 - SYNC: Added note bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.092 - SYNC: Added tag bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.405 - SYNC: Added preference bucket listener (NoteListFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.961 - SYNC: Removed note bucket listener (NoteEditorFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.961 - SCREEN: Destroyed (NoteEditorFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.964 - SYNC: Removed note bucket listener (NoteMarkdownFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:52:01.965 - SCREEN: Destroyed (NoteMarkdownFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:52:16.124 - NETWORK: Heartbeat stopped
    2026-09-15 15:52:36.125 - NETWORK: Heartbeat stopped
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.144 - SYNC: Removed preference bucket listener (NoteListFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.145 - SCREEN: Paused (NoteListFragment)
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.146 - SYNC: Removed tag bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.146 - SYNC: Removed note bucket listener (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.146 - SCREEN: Paused (NotesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.213 - SYNC: Started account bucket (PreferencesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.213 - SYNC: Started preference bucket (PreferencesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.213 - SYNC: Started note bucket (PreferencesActivity)
    2026-09-15 15:52:49.213 - SYNC: Started tag bucket (PreferencesActivity)
  • Unknown's avatar
    matcaro · Member ·

    sorry, above is the log I get when I follow your steps!

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