Troubles with App and Sync (iPhone)

Daniel

I have a number of issues when trying to transfer photos from my iPhone 15 to my computer to tonfotos. The first attempt worked, about 80% of my more than 16.000 photos were transferred (the phone was running very hot, though). Since then, the app is losing the connection to my computer frequently, so I have to reconnect and the app has to scan my photo library on my phone again and so on. During the sync process it occationally would get stuck on a photo for long at 100% but not resume.

Also, the informations in the app are confusing. It shows me the free storage on my phone, I’m not sure why I need this information from the app. Then it shows “ready for back up”, but the number makes no sense. For example, right now it says “8,5 MB”, even though there are still 2545 photos to back up. Another thing I noticed is that the free space on my phone was shrinking during the sync process. It turns out that the app is taking almost 50 GB of storage on my phone, it basically duplicated my whole photo library. I am running the newest version of iOS.

My questions are:
Can I do any trouble shooting to resolve the problem that the app loses the connection frequently?
Is it a bug that the app gives confusing information about what’s ready for backup?
Is it a bug that the app takes the equivalent of my whole photo library as storage on my phone?

Many thanks in advance!

Andrey

Daniel It is really hard to comment on connection issues. It does not seem like app issue, more like your network issue. I think you need to look deeper into your network setup.

As so oddities with the size, I have question. Are your photos stored locally or they are in iCloud? If they are offloaded to cloud then:
1) App cannot calculate file sizes properly
2) When backing them up, they will be downloaded to the phone first from the cloud. That explains what happens with free space.

Daniel

Connection issues: I don’t have the technical expertise to look deeper into my network setup than looking into the router protocols. They don’t suggest any events that correspond to when the app loses, or should I say “forgets” about my computer. At the beginning the app would indicate whether my computer is online or not. Now, since the problem became persistent, it’s just either online or completely gone (when opening the app, it then prompts me to connect to my computer as if I were opening the app for the first time). So I am not sure if this is a connection issue per se. Shouldn’t the app tell me the computer is offline when it fails to connect to it instead of forgetting the device?

I just tried to replicate the problem: It literally happens after every time I close the app and open it again. When opening it again, I see the normal screen when I’m successfully connected for a split second, and then it prompts me to “Connect to Tonfotos”. Reinstalling the app doesn’t resolve the problem.

Thanks for pointing out the role of iCloud. My photos are in fact still stored there. Does it also explain why the backup will just stall randomly? And will all the downloaded files will be unloaded eventually after they’ve been backed up by the app, assuming I will ever finish backing up the remaining 2000 or so files?

Many thanks in advance!

Andrey

Daniel So I am not sure if this is a connection issue per se. Shouldn’t the app tell me the computer is offline when it fails to connect to it instead of forgetting the device?

Ok, that is totally different issue then. As far as I understand, app does actually connect but PC rejects it, and it results in breaking pairing up. This is not a network issue, this is security issue, such as expired pairing token that rotates every connection or something of that nature. Can you please pay a bit more attention to what happens before this? Probably the way you close the app? Actual issue is happening before, leading to inconcistent state in the pairing data on PC or in the app. Breaking up the pairing later is just a consequence.

Daniel Does it also explain why the backup will just stall randomly?

Hard to say, could be. But I would not exclude the possibility of the bugs in the app. Actually, I managed to catch some when working on the new version that will be availble soon.

Daniel And will all the downloaded files will be unloaded eventually after they’ve been backed up by the app, assuming I will ever finish backing up the remaining 2000 or so files?

I assume so, but that is definitely not something app controls. That is controlled by iOS.

Daniel

I’ve been away for a couple of days and after I came back to resume importing my photos, I didn’t encounter the above mentioned issue again, so I wasn’t able to go deeper into it by reproducing and observing it.

Instead, I came across a new problem, presumably a bug: When removing the folder that is used by a connected phone for imports to the library of tonfotos on the computer (I moved all photos to a new location, using the “move to main Archive” feature), and then opening the app on the phone, the app tries to connect to the computer, which then causes the following Java error:

Uncaught Exception:
TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘name’)
at /Applications/Tonfotos.app/Contents/Resources/app/.webpack/main/index.js:2:3256283
at Fa (/Applications/Tonfotos.app/Contents/Resources/app/.webpack/main/index.js:2:1107385)
at Server.Um (/Applications/Tonfotos.app/Contents/Resources/app/.webpack/main/index.js:2:3256164)
at Server.emit (node:events:513:28)
at onParserExecuteCommon (node:http_server:755:14)
at onParserExecute (node:http_server:669:3)

For the desktop app to work properly again, it has to be restarted. The issue can be resolved by removing the connection in the phone app and reestablishing the pairing with the new folder.

Andrey

Daniel Thank you for reporting this. I added this bug to our database.

Andrey

Andrey This is fixed in 1.15.2