This has been the case since at least October 2022 (which is when I started paying for sync).
Periodically the android app updates itself automatically. Not every time, but sometimes, in the process it forgets the encryption key for the remote vault. I’ve had this exactly four times in however long I’ve been using sync. The app doesn’t tell the user this. It just turns off sync. Eventually the user goes to find a file and discovers it doesn’t exist, then discovers sync isn’t running. Doesn’t seem to write anything in logs either.
Because I didn’t anticipate repeatedly typing in the encryption key on the android keyboard it is long and strongly annoying to enter. The interface doesn’t have a “show password” eye icon thing so if you mistype you get to start again. After getting through that annoyance you get to resolve whatever conflicts have arisen since the phone silently stopped synchronising with other clients.
Aside from this failure mode sync works fine. Changing to syncthing would be a strictly worse experience - no merging text files, hassle telling whether it has finished, worse battery performance. But I’m not typing that damned encryption key in ever again and syncthing probably won’t have that failure mode.
It’s a pixel 2 running android 11 but this is not a new experience. I reported this March 2023, pasting the email at the end, though it looks like I didn’t act on the suggestion to report it on the forums.
Thank you for the useful software and please change the update process to consistently keep track of the remote connections, or if that’s difficult, stop it automatically updating as I’d much rather use an old release than discover none of the changes from the last week are on the phone.
Help obsidian,
A heads up that the android native client periodically disconnects from the synchronised vault. It’s done so twice since the initial set up a few months ago so might be related to the application updating. I haven’t seen the Linux desktop app do the same thing.
The encryption key is long and extremely annoying to type on a phone keyboard. There’s also no indication that the sync has stopped working so the UX is I go to find some note I’ve written and can’t find it. Took a couple of days to guess that’s what had gone wrong.
Preferably stop forgetting the key, but failing that please make it visually very obvious that a client is newly separate from the sync graph.
Thanks!