General Does “Files” app sync in the background reliably?

[says_stuff]

I’ve been trying to upload some pdfs i have stored on my ipad to my google drive folder.

Unfortunately due to the awful connection i’ve been having here, it’s been some days and i still haven’t finished the sync. I have to leave the ipad unlocked, google drive app on, screen on and i come back to connection issues and uploading will stop. I then have to restart the sync manually.

According to your experience, would it help if i did all this in stock ios 11 files app?

Will it sync to google drive even when i’ve closed my ipad cover to avoid battery drain? Will it pick up where it stopped even if connection drops momentarily?

 

[gwhizkids]

I’ve been trying to upload some pdfs i have stored on my ipad to my google drive folder.

Unfortunately due to the awful connection i’ve been having here, it’s been some days and i still haven’t finished the sync. I have to leave the ipad unlocked, google drive app on, screen on and i come back to connection issues and uploading will stop. I then have to restart the sync manually.

According to your experience, would it help if i did all this in stock ios 11 files app?

Will it sync to google drive even when i’ve closed my ipad cover to avoid battery drain? Will it pick up where it stopped even if connection drops momentarily?

Not to sound snarky, but why don’t you just try it? Sounds like you have a fairly unique situation with your connectivity, so I’m not sure anyone else’s experience is relevant to your situation.

 

[says_stuff]

I didn’t take it as snark, i just didn’t want to spend some more days with it trying and failing at syncing.

Question was general though and i would like to know the answer if it will sync to services other than icloud in the background. Apps like google drive won’t sync (is it only me? ) after locking the ipad.

 

[gwhizkids]

I didn’t take it as snark, i just didn’t want to spend some more days with it trying and failing at syncing.

Question was general though and i would like to know the answer if it will sync to services other than icloud in the background. Apps like google drive won’t sync (is it only me? ) after locking the ipad.

Fair enough. I’ll try it out n a large file

 

[gwhizkids]

I didn’t take it as snark, i just didn’t want to spend some more days with it trying and failing at syncing.

Question was general though and i would like to know the answer if it will sync to services other than icloud in the background. Apps like google drive won’t sync (is it only me? ) after locking the ipad.

Tried it out on a 25mb file. Synced to Google Drive immediately using the connection in Files. Hope that helps!

 

[says_stuff]

Much appreciated. I’ll give it a try with those 300+mb pdfs and i’ll post my results for reference.

 

[says_stuff]

Well f* that.

Inside files app, i copied the folder (10gb of pdfs) i couldn’t sync to my google drive through pdf expert sync feature. I copied it inside a new folder i created.

It synced like three pdfs and stopped.

I then copied the folder inside a folder on “on my ipad” section of files app and i copied that folder to google drive.

That didn’t sync anything. I only get a greyed out pdf that hasn’t uploaded.

Then pdf expert crashed and lost everything i had synced so i now have to restart the sync but that’s probably a different story.

Great. This sucks.

 

[says_stuff]

Trying to upload the same 10gb folder in dropbox through files app, seems to work so far, so i have to guess it’s google drive extension’s fault.

 

[Shirasaki]

Well I would argue iPad is not a replacement of computer even at this point. And those apps are not meant to be running in background for an extensive amount of time. Also I doubt file app will allow google drive to finish syncing in the background.

Maybe, if you give up syncing, but instead sit in front of your iPad and manually upload each file to your google drive, you could put everything in place.

 

[says_stuff]

Also I doubt file app will allow google drive to finish syncing in the background.

Maybe, if you give up syncing, but instead sit in front of your iPad and manually upload each file to your google drive, you could put everything in place.

Files app - dropbox extension works fine in the background. Google drive doesn’t so far.
Waiting for onedrive.

As for the other suggestion, manually upload everything everytime? Redo if i use it on an other device? Sit and wait for the 300mb pdf to upload? Why?

 

[cynics]

In a closed ecosystem I've found files to be high reliable. Since its a native app tied into iCloud Drive it has more "power" than 3rd party apps. Once I put a file into the files.app I can turn off the device or go into airplane mode (airport) walk in and out of wifi to little or no LTE reception etc etc and all the files manage to make it onto iCloud Drive allowing me to view them from other devices.

Its been the best, most reliable implementation of a cloud base user accessible file system I've experience on any device.**

**Note some of the limitations imposed on other cloud services are due to the restrictive nature of iOS. So while I'm saying iCloud in combination with the Files.app is the best a lot of that has been due in part to 3rd party apps not being able to have more power in the OS.

 

[Shirasaki]

Files app - dropbox extension works fine in the background. Google drive doesn’t so far.
Waiting for onedrive.

As for the other suggestion, manually upload everything everytime? Redo if i use it on an other device? Sit and wait for the 300mb pdf to upload? Why?

When you manually upload each file, at least you can sort of control how file is uploaded to your google drive. For the sync, you have no control except maybe pause. No one knows if the app tries to upload multiple files concurrently, or still one by one. And I believe sync has some extra steps to make sure everything is in place, while upload alone does not have. I have encountered strange sync issues with OneDrive which is fixed by simply manually uploading the problematic files.
Just my $0.02.