Simplenote Android app silently stops syncing changes
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First off thank you for Simplenote, it’s a great program and app, I’ve been using it across half a dozen of my devices for almost a decade.
The issue I’m currently facing, and which I’ve ran into multiple times in the past, is that the Simplenote Android app stops syncing its changes. It will still download changes to notes from other devices, but it will not upload its own changes. It will not upload new notes, nor will it upload changes to pre-existing notes. All of my other devices (including another Android device) are able to sync bidirectionally.
The most troubling aspect of this is that the failure is silent and can easily lead to data loss. (Although at this point it’s happened so much that I’ve become paranoid and reduced my usage of Simplenote due to the risk of data loss.) Aside from the noticing that my changes aren’t present on other devices, the only indication of a problem is if I tap the info icon to see Synced/Modified/Created/Words/Characters info. The Synced date will be remain older than the Modified date on the app. Or, for a new note create on the app, there will be no Synced date listed.
If I make a change to a note that I’ve modified on my phone (but which has not synced due to the bug) and restart the app, the modification from the phone is lost. It is not in the note history either.
Restarting the app does not fix the issue. Restarting my phone does not fix the issue. The only reliable way I’ve found to fix it is by completely deleting all app data, reauthenticating, and letting it re-download all of my notes. Since I have so many notes, this takes a long time and makes the app laggy an unusable while it’s downloading. It also uses a great deal of data to redownload everything. And of course, I have to manually export my unsynced changes before I do this, otherwise they are lost.
Versions:
- Android 16
- Simplenote 2.37
Note, this issue has recurred multiple times over the past 2-3 years. Sometimes it is fixed by waiting (for days), sometimes it is fixed by reinstalling. These are not really acceptable solutions to me for a recurring problem.
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Hi. We sometimes see internet routing problems where users on some networks have trouble accessing the servers, while most others have no difficulty. Is it possible that the Android device with the problem is connected to a different network (presumably cellular) from the networks used by the other devices?
While you are experiencing this problem, see if you can reach simperium.com from a browser on the Android device. You won’t be able to login there, but should be able to reach the site. That is the cloud service Simplenote uses for syncing. You could also try a traceroute to simperium.com from both the problem device (when it is working) and one that works. See if they follow different paths across the internet.
By the way, you can check that updates have reached the servers by logging in to app.simplenote.com in a browser. That web app accesses the server directly. I do this quite often, with the sort order set to “newest first”, so I can confirm that recent changes have been stored.
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Today the problem started while on home wifi (same network as most of my other devices). Confirmed that I can access simperium.com on my device on wifi. Just tried turning wifi off and I can also access simperium.com just fine that way. Testing now, the syncing is still broken on the Simplenote Android app, regardless of wifi vs cell.
Just now, I tested on my other Android device (Android 12, Simplenote 2.37) and syncing works perfectly fine there. Just created a note and it appears on all my other devices, including the originally mentioned problematic Android device.
Traceroute to simperium.com looks to be the same between all three devices.
Now in the middle of typing this, the problem seems to have resolved itself (after about four hours). Not sure if anything I did resolved it: toggling wifi on/off, powering on my second Android device, creating and editing a bunch of notes for debugging.
Thanks for the tip on app.simplenote.com in a browser. I’ll check that next time to see if I can gather more information that way. That may be helpful for debugging, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s a solution to the trouble I keep having with the app. Ideally a) the app would alert me if syncing is broken and b) the app wouldn’t lose edits that are made when syncing is broken.
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Hmmm. I notice that your working Android is running the older Android 12, while the problem one has the current Android 16. You know, Android implementations vary by manufacturer. Is the problem device possibly a Samsung phone or tablet? Also, have you used any settings that might limit an app’s ability to upload data?
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Both devices are Google Pixels. I’m not aware of having used any settings that might limit the app’s ability to upload data. I’m on WiFi 95% of the time.
Over the past month, my Android 16 phone (primary device) has lost sync (just as described in OP) 2-3 times.
In addition to the silent sync failures I described in the OP, it seems there are also other sync issues. Currently looking at recently created and edited note, across three devices and four app instances:
- Windows 11, app: Note shows “last synced” Jan 26 11:20 PM, “last modified” Jan 26 11:19 PM. It is missing the latest change, which was made on my phone.
- macOS, app: Note shows”modified” Jan 26 11:19 PM, there is no synced date. It is also missing the latest change.
- macOS, web: Note shows “last synced” Jan 27 3:11 PM, “last modified” Jan 26 11:19 PM. It is also missing the latest change.
- Android 16, app: Note shows “synced” Jan 27 03:47 (AM), “last modified” Jan 27 03:47 (AM). It has the latest change. I’ve just now turned my phone onto airplane mode to prevent losing my edits.
Actual sequence of events:
- Jan 25: Created initial version of note
- Jan 26 ~11:19 PM: make edits on Windows 11 PC
- Jan 27 3:47 AM: make edits on phone
- Jan 27 3:11 PM: open macOS app, see edits are missing. Close/reopen Windows app, close/reopen macOS app, login to https://app.simplenote.com/, etc. See that phone edits are missing despite phone showing “synced”. Turn on airplane mode on phone to prevent data loss.
Right now, there is at least one other note that I’ve edited on my phone which it thinks is synced but really is not.
This behavior aligns with what I’ve seen multiple times before, over the past year or more. Although I’ve not spent as much time to precisely check my steps, the experience I have had multiple times is 1) I edit a note on my phone, 2) hours later I edit it on my Mac, 3) minutes or hours after that I notice that my phone edits are missing, 4) checking note history on the phone/Mac/PC shows no evidence of the edits I made on my phone. (This contrasts with other behavior I’ve seen where making edits on an out-of-sync device will append to the note history, rather than overwriting it. This at least allows me to recover my edits, if I notice the problem before the note’s history limit is exceeded.)
So it seems like I’m facing two different syncing bugs:
- Android app silently stops syncing notes, “synced” date is accurately displayed as out of date
- Android app claims to have synced notes, but other apps (Mac/PC/web) don’t see it and will cause data loss by applying edits to an older version of the note and leaving no trace of the note history.
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Hi @mitchellxb,
Thanks for taking the time to document this so thoroughly.
Just to add a bit of context about how syncing and note history work in Simplenote: the history “slider” may not always show records in strict chronological order. This is because Simplenote’s sync system processes note updates as they reach the server, not necessarily when they were made on each device.
For example, if you make a change to a note on Device A at 00:00 but the device is offline or unable to sync, that version won’t reach the server immediately. Later, if you edit the same note on Device B at 00:30 and it syncs successfully, the server now has the 00:30 version. When Device A eventually reconnects and uploads its older local change from 00:00, that version might overwrite the newer one, making it appear as the latest edit.
In this case, the history slider would show the 00:00 record as the most recent change, even though it was made earlier, which can definitely be confusing if you’re expecting the order to match the actual edit times.
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