Reason for Relative Slow OmniFocus Sync?

1

Could this be the reason I find OF sync to be slow relative to my native apps and documents?

iCloud consists of two main services: iCloud Drive to sync files stored locally and in its cloud storage, and data syncing for apps that share databases in iCloud and use CloudKit to manage their shared data. Those who are paying Apple princely sums each month to store files in terabytes of iCloud Drive will be relieved to know that this throttling doesn’t appear to involve iCloud Drive at all, although that does of course have a storage quota enforced. Throttling only affects shared data that relies on CloudKit.

2

As far as I know, Omnifocus uses Omni Sync Server to sync, not iCloud.

When running Omnifucs on the Desktop, if you select “Show backups in Finder”, what sizes do you see for the backup files?

3

Here is what I’m showing.

Screenshot 2024-02-23 at 3.26.03 PM
Screenshot 2024-02-23 at 3.26.03 PM1640×1246 478 KB

4

But as a third party developer, don’t they make use of CloudKit, per the article?

5

Mine are 400-600kb. I work hard to avoid keeping attachments out of OmniFocus because of the impact it has on sync.

6

That’s an option, not a requirement. You don’t have to use the Apple platform.

2 Likes
7

Mine are around 3MB, and I have never “archived” older items in OF (the dialog that keeps popping up from time to time). Granted, I am not a heavy OF user… I use… Reminders!. But if you created your OF database from scratch when OF4 was released, that’s quite a lot imho. You seem to be using either a lot of attachments, or very huge ones, or have a very old database that has never been cleared.

I am not sure about the details of Omni Sync, but I would assume that heavy attachments will take its sweet time to sync to other devices, but once the attachments are propagated the sync should be fast.

Try this one: sync everything on all your devices, until the sync button does nothing. Then add a dummy task without adding any attachments. Is the sync still slow? How long does it take? Do you experience slow sync across all your devices? (I cannot seem to find your original post, sorry)

Other options to explore beyond the “Archive old items” are the “Rebuild” and “Compact Database” options in OF File Menu. I know for sure I don’t need to remind you to have your backups ready before attempting those :wink:

8

They’re your backups, not the actual working file.

9

Yes, and I assume that they have little impact on syncing; is that correct?

10

No impact at all, of course. But the size of each individual size looks bigger than what I and others have.

2 Likes
11

This, of course, depends on the number and type of attachments you add to tasks, and how long you train data in your archive.

2 Likes
12

It might be worth reaching out to Omni support, they’re excellent and can help understand.

2 Likes
13

I may delete all but the latest two.

14

I seldom add attachments so I don’t think this is the issue.

1 Like