When does background app syncing turn on for iOS

I have the function enabled in the iPhone, but it never seems to sync for me. Is there a way to make this function better?

4 Likes

Should be on automatically. Check your iOS Settings app > General > Background Updates. You should see a setting for NewsBlur.

Still not working great for me - it just never seems to update even though I have it turned on . How often does it check? Is there a way to make it so it just syncs when connected to wifi or with geo-fencing a la instapaper?

Keep up the good work.

I must also say it really doesn’t seem to work.

I find that just about every time I open the device (at least when I haven’t used it in a while, say, a day) I’ll see it start a sync (bar at the bottom) and the storing process for the past day and yesterday: I also see that before the syncing process has really got going the unread count for sites are way of what they should be indicating that no sync has been done in the background.

Echoing Hampus.

I guess that it won’t happen while the iPad is asleep (which would be the most useful option), but even when the iPad is awake and Newsblur is available in the background, it only updates when it’s brought to the foreground.

That looks to be the case. But it should be able to do background refreshes at any time. That’s what the new iOS background refreshes are supposed to allow.

Tweetbot almost always has my timeline fully loaded and ready when I open it.

Samuel - Any update on this?

Guess I’ll bring this up again. Background refresh is set to on but I still see it updating each time I open the app, the latest stuff is never just there waiting for me.

This is especially annoying if you decide to open it when for example you’re on the train and you hit a spot where there’s no connection so you can’t load that image on twitter so instead you open newsblur where you expect to have the latest stuff saved for offline access, but nope.

(Granted, not a big issue, there’s data access most of the time, but I’d still like for stuff to just be there when I open the app.)

The OS gets to choose how often it syncs in the background. It works and it’s going to sync everytime you open the app anyhow, as there are bound to be new stories. I’ll look into why it’s not opening more often.

As a data point, how long does it take to go from On Its Way to All Done? If that’s over 30 seconds, iOS penalized the background sync.

I don’t think it’s ever even close to 30 seconds.
I’ll grab a screenshot tonight and then open in airplane mode tomorrow, see if there’s any difference. Hopefully there is. I just get the feeling Newblur always starts in a rather old state. IOS gets Tweetbot spot on for me,most of the time is ready and does no loading when I open it.

Go figure, I forgot to get a screengrab last night… But here is a screengrab off the app now, started with airplane mode active:

Just now on the site:

As you can see the sate of the two is rather different… (And know I realize I only got half the list on the phone…) The list on the phone hasn’t been updated all night, an easy way to tell is that Cinemassacre had 6 unread on the phone (yea, not visible in screenshot), that was true until sometime between 18 and 19 last night when I went through them all.