iCloud Drive files keep redownloading after a period of time, causing iOS app's startup to be stuck

[3mbry0]

TLDR: After Obsidian iCloud drive files are fully synced in iOS, they unsync again after some time, and the mobile app keeps getting stuck, loading and indexing, because of it.

I have a large vault in my iCloud drive with many non-markdown files that are relatively large like PDFs, images, word files, PSDs, etc. etc., which is about 2.4GB in total.

I have seen another post on this forum with pretty much the same issue, to which a solution was provided:

A vault contains lots of images would make ios app got stuck

Are you using iCloud Drive to sync? If so, the first launch is a bit wonky. This is because iCloud Drive doesn’t keep everything downloaded by default, and Obsidian needs to read every file. So, it has to work pretty hard to make all of your files available right away. Generally, this means you should open it, wait a few minutes, then quit and relaunch. You may need to repeat this a few times, especially if you have a lot of files in your iCloud Drive Vault. Not a nice experience but you shou…

So, essentially, let the mobile app load for a while, quit and relaunch after a few minutes for a couple of times, until all of the files from iCloud drive are synced. This solution certainly worked: having the app load for a while allowed all of the files to sync eventually, as I could see in my attachments folder from the Files app that no file was being downloaded anymore, and the iCloud drive storage from settings shows that it’s taking up 2.4GB, and only then does the mobile app run smoothly.

However, the solution said I should only have to go through this once. This is where my problem is: the files keep getting un-synced after a period of time, and then the app gets stuck again; this has happened about two or three times now. Checked the Files app and about 90% of my attachments are being downloaded. Storage from the settings app says iCloud Drive is taking up more or less 1.8GB now; it says that “Your most recently accessed files are downloaded to this device for quick access.” which gives me the idea that it purposely unsyncs my unused files, and Obsidian has to reread them over and over.

I’m wondering if there’s a setting on iOS that’s similar to the Optimize Mac storage setting that I can turn off so that iCloud doesn’t offload the unused files from my vault, so far haven’t found such a setting, except one post from the forums saying that favoriting a folder may keep its files localized. I just favorited my vault, I’ll see if that does the trick. Or do I just have to do this a couple of times more until iCloud gets the idea? Would really appreciate some suggestions

[Obsidian-GT]

I too face that issue with iCloud. More often on iCloud for Winodws than on my iPhone or iPad. Redownloads and duplicates is very frequent.

[Scribe]

Per @Licat, updating to iOS 15 beta seems to be resolving many of the sync issues.

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[koala]

No, it doesn’t. The IOS 15 beta had a bug which made files larger 1MB not sync, which was fixed now. That was for obsidian sync.

Don’t use the iOS betas unless you absolutely have to.

[3mbry0]

UPDATE: Favoriting the vault folder itself does nothing. I just favorited my attachments folder, I’ll see if that does anything.

That said, for some reason the loading and syncing of files was much quicker this time. Maybe favoriting the vault did do something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[3mbry0]

Another update: favoriting the attachments folder seems to do nothing. I still keep seeing previously downloaded files in the folder getting offloaded.

If this keeps up I might have to find another free sync alternative (I can’t get Obsidian Sync at this time, unfortunately)