Discourse iOS app kicked me back to main screen

The Discourse Hub iOS app does not stay in the forum when I multi task to another app. I’m using iOS 13.2.2 (latest) yet the behavior is the same. I’ll lose my place in the thread I’m reading and have to search for it every time. Is this the normal behavior?

It would be good if the app can also swap between forum very easily and remember the discussion thread you’re in, not just showing “The Latest” or “Unread”. It’s like emulating the behavior of Mobile Safari with multiple tabs open and swapping between them. I’d be super happy for this feature along.

2 Likes

It won’t lose state unless you close it, or iOS kills it off in the background.

iOS 13 has had issues with this, 13.2.2 is meant to improve on things, but it doesn’t keep apps open ad infinitum.

4 Likes

In my case, iOS must have killed it once I multitask to another app. And it happened too often, that’s why I’m reporting here. Am I the only one facing this?

It’s probably too soon to know. With handsets updating too 13.2.2 automatically it will be days until a sufficient number of users have the update to be able to say.

I’ve reopened the app today and it returned to where I left off.

Which iPhone are you using? Which other apps do you use regularly?

1 Like

Apple claims they fixed RAM management issues in iOS 13.2.2 and iPadOS 13.2.2. I don’t think that it’s a bug.

Are you multitasking heavily? My iPhone 11 Pro is on iOS 13.2.2 and the Discourse app seems to work fine. It never crashes or refreshes when doing light or medium multitasking.

Then again, my iPhone has 4 gigabytes of RAM. Considering that iOS 13.2.2 (and iPadOS 13.2.2) is supported on devices with at least 2 gigabytes of RAM, it could simply be because of the age of your device.

3 Likes

I’m using Xs Max, so it’s not that old. Having said that, the apps that I frequently multi task to is around WhatsApp, Twitterrific, Apollo and camera. I notice that it happens more frequently when I switched to camera. Maybe taking photos and videos does consume more internal memory. The interesting thing is, and I’m experimenting now, its much better in Safari tab - when I returned to Discourse in Safari, the page goes blank and it refreshes. But once refresh completes, I’m where I last left off. But Discourse Hub (iOS app) sent me back to the app home screen instead of staying put and refreshes.

3 Likes

Safari tabs persist between closures. If you’re using stuff which causes discourse to be terminated there’s no equivalent behavior.

That’s probably right too. The goal of the app is to provide quick and easy access to multiple communities. Being taken to the home view which shows updates across all sites is a big part of what makes the app useful.

1 Like

Yeah, it probably has something to do with the camera app in particular.

No. This is a real problem and has nothing to do with the camera.

If I leave the app for 5 seconds while writing a comment to look something else up in Safari, for example, I have to wait for the app to launch from scratch, choose the Meta site again, find the topic again, and hope that most of my response got saved as a draft.

I assumed when this first started happening that it was related to a bug I read about in iOS 13. But that has been fixed and the problem is gone for other apps.

Edit: I’m on an iPhone XS, and don’t run into this with any other app.

1 Like

Do you have a consistent repro and set of steps you can take to make this happen?

Eg:

  1. Start a reply on meta
  2. Flip to safari, visit site X, Y etc… wait N minutes
  3. Flip back to app and it is on the start screen
3 Likes

Good question. No I don’t. I’ll let you know if I come up with one. All I can say is that I don’t have this problem in other apps where I type and switch apps regularly, but I do in this one.

I’m sure it’s Apple’s fault for changing/breaking something that only seems to be biting this app for me, but I sure hope it can be resolved.

3 Likes

Understood, I do use the app a fair bit and due to luck have not hit this, but I totally trust it is happening for you.

Hoping there are some steps you can come up with that repro the issue.

6 Likes

Well, it’s even worse than I’ve reported before. It is not uncommon for me to simply be reading here on meta, lock my phone while I do something else for a few minutes, and when I unlock the phone, the app isn’t even running anymore.

And I’ve seen it occasionally in other apps, too. I think it’s iOS. I just wish it was not Discourse where I was seeing it so often.

1 Like

For what it’s worth, I have come up with a reproducible crash, whether caused by iOS or the app itself, I don’t know.

I can open the app, click into a specific topic on my site, click “show full post” to get the content from WP, scroll a bit, lock the phone, wait about 30 seconds, unlock the phone, and the Discourse app isn’t running anymore, and it has lost context.

Since the latest update, I don’t think I’ve had it happen with any other app that simply locking the phone, waiting and unlocking it will cause the app to quit.

What does “show full post” do? Does it open Safari?

No. It pulls in the content of the linked WP post via a scraping library or something.

It’s apparently built-in functionality, but I’ve only ever seen it in use with the WP-Discourse Wordpress plugin. I’m sure that @simon could explain further. The important thing is that it just displays content directly in Discourse. No other apps in use during the whole process.

1 Like