Inconsistent synchronization status and indicators with Google accounts
- /e/ version: 1.6-s-20221129238946-stable-FP4
- Device model(s): Fairphone 4
- Device rooted: no
Summary
I'm very confused by the behavior of the calendar and the synchronization with Google.
- I added an event to a Google calendar from my phone, and after 12 hours it's not appearing in the web version of the calendar. So, I guess the calendar hasn't synchronized yet.
- However, if I go to the account details, the screen says "last synced [few minutes ago]".
- But on top of that, there's a warning indicator saying "Sync is currently experiencing problems". So... did it sync or not?
Some clarifications:
- I've been having synchronization problems since I got the phone, see my comments in #2732 (closed). In fact I had given up and I was not using the calendar app anymore, just the web version of Google Calendar on mobile (which sucks but at least works). For some reason I decided to try again, hence I purged the Google account from my device and just added again, to see if the most recent e/OS version was working.
- The behavior I described above has been going on all day: every time I checked, the phone said it had synced a few minutes ago but the event was not on the web and it also said that " sync is experiencing problems".
- There's a multi faceted bug here. If the event did not reach the server, that's inconsistent with having synced minutes ago. But also, having synced is inconsistent with "experiencing problems" (if it couldn't sync, why say so?). And finally, if the sync is "experiencing problems", why not raise a louder notification?
The problem
Steps to reproduce
- Add a new Google account
- Add an event to the Google calendar from the app
- Open Google Calendar from a different client and observe that the event isn't there
What is the current behavior?
The event doesn't synchronize after 12 hours or more.
What is the expected correct behavior?
The event synchronizes after a reasonable amount of time (1 minute? 10? 1 hour?)
Technical informations
Relevant logs (adb logcat
)
Relevant screenshots
Solutions
Workaround
The workaround is what I've been doing so far: ignoring the calendar app altogether.
Another workaround is stop using Google Calendar. Let's concede that for the time being I can't get rid of it.
Possible fixes
Ideas:
- Just say that Google Calendar is not supported, so that I can adjust my expectations.
- If the event didn't synchronize, don't say the synchronization happened a few minutes ago.
- If the synchronization fails to happen for hours, emit a notification with some debugging information I can paste here.
- Show an exclamation mark next to an unsynced event.