Please prioritize fixing sync issues

[Nijat_Aliyev]

RemNote does not synchronize correctly across devices and browser vs pc app. Here are the issues that I’ve been running in to consistently for months:

1. The number of flashcards is not the same at first between browser on PC and android app. I have to refresh the PC page multiple times before flash cards synchronize
2. RemNote occasionally creates duplicate flash cards on its own.
3. RemNote occasionally restarts the review schedule on my flashcards (which is a critical bug)

Every time I run into this issue, it makes we want to drop RemNote and return to Anki, which never had these issues. Please, prioritize fixing the sync bugs over anything else.

Thank you!

[helado]

I don’t enjoy requests of exclusion (i.e. “please don’t work on X so you can work on Y”). It’s better to just state the problem or request, and explain why it’s important. Otherwise, it’s an invitation to argue against the request on grounds of personal priorities, which doesn’t seem productive to me.

[Nijat_Aliyev]

What can be more important that sync of flash cards and integrity of the review schedule? It’s hard to recommend RemNote over Anki with these issues in place.

You are welcome to argue, I guess, if you want. I want this app to be in a reliable enough state, so that I can start recommending it to my friends and colleagues. I think this app is a great idea, and I’m supporting it with a pro subscription. But if this core, critical issue doesn’t get fixed, I don’t see how RemNote will have any future at all, since flashcards is the only thing that separates it from other apps like Notion.

[Martin]

Thanks for the feedback - agree that this is priority #1.

Some questions to help us investigate:

1. To confirm, are you referring to the main “global queue”?
2. Strange - are you editing the Rem on multiple devices, or is it all single devices?
3. Have you noticed any pattern of where this happens for you?

[Nijat_Aliyev]

Hey Martin,

1. Yes, global queue.
2. Yes, I edit rem on multiple devices. I have an android phone, I have a Windows PC at home, and a Mac Laptop that I take to school.
3. I notice this when I create flashcards on my Mac and then try to review flashcards later in the day on my Windows computer and vice versa. On both the mac and windows, I use google chrome. Not sure why this would be happening.

Thank you for being willing to work on this!

[Nijat_Aliyev]

I’d like to clarify exactly the sequence of events that leads to either duplication of cards or reset of the review schedule on a card:

1. I create flashcards on android, windows, and mac.
2. For a week or so, I’ll only be using android and windows and never open remnote on my mac.
3. After a week, when I first open Remnote in browser on a mac, it shows that I have hundreds of flashcards due in my global queue (even though I’ve been clearing flashcards daily on my android and windows and was expecting about 50 flashcards to show in queue that day)
4. I try to synchronize remnote on my mac to update the queue to reflect the 50 flashcards that I expect.
5. What happens instead is that RemNote synchronizes the schedule based on my mac is showing, making it so that I now have hundreds of flashcards due on ALL of my devices
6. I don’t know of a way to revert this.
7. When I open the queue, it’s the same flashcards I’ve done days ago but now with review schedule nullified, effectively nullifying the progress I’ve been making over many days.

I hope this helps!

[Nijat_Aliyev]

I just figured out a way to fix this issue.

I created a lot of flashcards under the document titled “OnlineMedEd.” I was working on these flashcards for days until they got “reset” following the steps outlined above.

I just entered the “OnlineMedEd” document again and scrolled through the entire document. I then clicked back on the global queue, and all of a sudden the progress I’ve made on the flashcards within the “OnlineMedEd” folder was restored completely!

I then repeated this process for all “reset” flashcards by manually entering the documents they were from and viewing them. This fixed the review schedule on all of them, across all devices!

I hope this information will help you understand the root of the problem and fix it! I am glad I randomly stumbled upon this solution, because it means I can keep working with RemNote while you guys work on fixing the issue!

Thanks again!

[Karthikk]

This is certainly a lot of useful information for us to go through, so thanks a lot!

I just have a few more questions:

1. Is this the first time that this happened to you? I ask this because currently the mac app is having update issues and that might be screwing up with the sync.
2. After you noticed that the progress was reset in the mac app, did you check the queue in the android and windows? Was the progress lost there as well?
3. After the fix that you mentioned above, has the queue updated on Mac as well?

[Nijat_Aliyev]

1. Minor sync discrepancies have always been there, but it got significantly worse since the update, I believe
2. The progress was lost across all platforms until I opened the document from which the cards were coming, “uncollapsed” all of the rems, and scrolled through the whole document. Once I did that, the queue corrected itself across all devices
3. Yes, after the fix, the queue updated on Mac as well.

My suspicion is that RemNote does not “load in” all of my rems that I’ve created since start every time I open the app. It only loads in what I have open in front of me, and perhaps recent rems. Maybe this is the reason why the schedule sometimes gets thrown off. Just a thought

[Karthikk]

Thanks for the reply
CC: @Martin FYI

[Gravity]

Seconding this.

Buggy syncs have been a huge problem to me as well. If small sync issues weren’t a problem earlier, 2 days back it caused me a huge data loss as well. To add more salt to the injuries, on the same day I had subscribed for Pro. It was really a bad day for me!

Coming back to the issues raised by you,
1,2,3 - happens to me as well ( tbh I do not understand fully what you mean by duplicating of flashcards. I am assuming it refers to resetting of Queue)

The Global Queue progress is not at all syncing for me. I use a windows laptop as well an iPad. If I open Remnote on my ipad, all the flashcards that I have already reviewed on my laptop reset back to 0 and I have to restart the Queue. Also, if it may be helpful to the team monitoring bugs, when I restart the queue, though the Card counter is reset to Zero, but sometimes it shows the same cards and sometimes new cards.

Remnote is in my view THE PERFECT APP for students or someone who wants to retain information for good. Yes it is like anki but it is a million steps ahead. Creating notes as well as having flashcards handy is a boon imo. But this all is for naught if there is no proper syncing. Yes there ought to be issues in such a beautiful and useful tool, but syncing issues should not be there.

As a solution, if I may propose, a checklist of ‘Session ending to dos’ can be informed to multi device users. By that I mean, checks to be performed before quitting the session or switching to another device so as to avoid syncing issues or worse ie data loss.

On the day I subscribed for Pro, I had planned on writing a Thank you note to the Remnote team. I had felt so satisfied that finally I had found the tool I was looking for. However, on the same day I suffered the data loss. Still I want to say my thanks to the team. At the cost of sounding repetitive, I reiterate that I feel it is THE PERFECT APP I have ever stumbled upon which focusses on not only information collection & information organisation but also focusses equally on information retention. I feel that it has been made with such love that it has covered almost all the nitty gritties of note taking and revising and also managed to keep itself so clean and tidy.

[steveaw]

Another data point for you, as I am having the duplicate card issue too:

To confirm, are you referring to the main “global queue”?

My main workflow is to review via the global queue, but at times I have reviewed a document’s cards using the “Practice with spaced repitition option”. I don’t think the duplicate cards correlate with documents that I reviewed using the non global queue.

Strange - are you editing the Rem on multiple devices, or is it all single devices?

I review and edit on multiple devices (all running windows with chrome), but not at the same time. I have it open at work and then at home. I do try to check that it has synced when first opening: by checking the timestamp on “Settings/About”. I have noticed that other parts of the UI (like the number after “Queue”) do not refresh immediately, but I assume that the “Settings/About” timestamp reflects that a sync has happened. Similarly at the end of the day when shutting down, I check that timestamp and close the browser.

Have you noticed any pattern of where this happens for you?

I have been monitoring cards made in the past few days and have not seen any duplications

Things that I have not been doing in the past few days, but did do when I got duplicates
-Open the windows desktop app
-Use the “1 hour” button when reviewing cards
-Switching between default and anki scheduler (I only did that once, but may have reviewed some cards under the anki scheduler)

Other things
-Never used the mac version

Nijat_Aliyev wrote:

I just entered the “OnlineMedEd” document again and scrolled
through the entire document. I then clicked back on the global queue,
and all of a sudden the progress I’ve made on the flashcards within
the “OnlineMedEd” folder was restored completely!

Interesting! I went to the “Settings/Account/Cards” view. Found a card that was duplicated (and had 2 different review schedules), viewed the document, went back to cards and there was only a single card left!

Just did it again. Here is a card with three duplicates:

After viewing the document:

Hope this helps.

[Nijat_Aliyev]

Hey, I wanted to share one more observation regarding the sync issues.

I changed the settings in my chrome account to clear all cookies when I exit the browser. Ever since doing that, RemNote synchronizes accurately on chrome between my two devices and the android app. There are no discrepancies in the global queue at all, not even a single flashcard off.

That being said, RemNote also takes longer to load my documents when I first open it, which also makes sense.

Hope this helps bring us closer to resolving this issue for good!

[Karthikk]

That’s a great observation, I will forward this up to the dev team and see if this makes sense to them and hopefully we nail this issue for good.

[naefl]

Facing issues too - osx. “Last synced” says 1.5 days ago. Force syncing takes >30min (I hundreds of PDFs saved that I’ve read so KB is pretty big). Even after force syncing finishes (green notification says “synced”) the last sync date remains 1.5days ago.

[schmy]

I just wanted to further highlight @steveaw’s finding regarding duplicate cards.

After a number of hours spent trying to clear duplicates from the queue and the Settings>Accounts>Cards list, I found Steve suggestion to be the easiest.

Simply open every document, including all of the toggles.

EDIT: Use Cmd+Shft+Down to expand all descendants.

The process reduced my queue from 320 down to 56.

I had been opening RemNote on two Androids, a PC, and a Mac, so whatever the bug was, it was duplicating cards multiple times.

But opening every document seems to have cleared all the duplicates from the card list.
(The “Merge” button is appearing on the bottom of the screen now, but that’s not a critical issue.)

[schmy]

Me again. Back to advise that the fix I list above only works for the duplicates in the Card screen.
As for the sync, it’s pretty broken. I have RemNote open in a browser, where I just cleared my Queue all the way to 0. Save and close. Open up Mac app: Queue = 100 again but says sync is successful.

[Henrik]

Have you tried @Nijat_Aliyev method? Opening RemNote in a browser without any RemNote cache or cookies, e.g. an incognito/private browser tab, always solves the issue for me

[Yuvve]

I also suffer from a lot of syncing problems, and this is possibly the only thing that could make me stop using RemNote. I actually dread opening RemNote from a different device than my usual one, since EVERY time I do it it ruins my queue, sidebar and edit later.

[Jason]

same it’s quite concerning