So basically I don’t understand how and why the app started crashing. I reached out to the support email but I just wanted to ask if it would be possible delete the app and reinstall. I am not sure how data is handled now you can see your files on the ios files app.
When I first discovered this app I understood that because you can’t even view copy or move your files in the ios files app, deleting the app gets rid of all the comics and the Metadata including reading info.
As I have a lot of comics, I usually have one iPad dedicated to reading my ongoing series based on my irl pull list, this is the particular iPad where this app crashes. I tend to delete any comics there that is at 100% reading progression. While I have the files stored on external storage etc. I would rather keep the data or be able to copy it back by moving the comics via the files app or something similar. The reason for this is that for my recent comics I do not remember which ones I’ve read and haven’t read completely without this app.
I also want to know if I can use ios’s offload app to reinstall “while keeping the data and information”. I have tried this on buggy games and it mostly works I don’t know how it will affect apps that you can import external files to though.
Hello @mikozee
Sorry to hear that Panels is crashing on your device.
Before you reinstall Panels, it will be great if you could help us detect why the app is crashing in that particular iPad.
You can follow the steps in this post: Sending App Diagnostics
Once we receive the crash reports we can check them and hopefully fix the issue.
About reinstalling the app… the answer is yes, although we don’t recommend it.
First, you need to move the files out of the Panels folder in files app (deleting Panels removes all content in that folder, that’s how iOS works).
Once the files are out you can delete the app, install it again, and move the comics back in.
When reinstalling the app you are basically removing the internal database, so you’ll lose some internal data.
Last thing, this is all assuming that you are logged in with Panels (either via Google or Apple). When you are logged in, we store your reading sessions in the cloud (reading progress, time spent reading, etc). If you are not logged in, then you will lose all your reading progress if you remove the app.
I just sent an email regarding this to be honest I don’t know why this does this one this particular iPad. My other ones under different apple ids are working perfectly but i tend not to mix iPads and what comics are in them so if this problem could be solved I would be grateful.
Hey @mikozee, thank you so much for the diagnostics. It was very useful to understand what is causing the crash on launch.
It looks like the database engine we use in Panels (Realm) is crashing internally. It’s very likely that the database file is somehow corrupt. We will report this to Realm and will implement something in future versions to allow Panels to recover from this state automatically.
In the meantime, please, use the Factory Reset feature to delete all the cache files and database without deleting any of your comic files.
We are working on moving all of the user information away from the database (like favorites and server configurations).
In the future, this action won’t lose any data at all.
I just did the factory reset and after restoring my purchase, I still can’t see my library and this appeared. I did this around the time Dani sent me the email so it’s been about 20 minutes since posting I think.
Yep, that error is totally expected. It’s just a non-fatal error that we track when the Factory Reset is used.
How many files did you add to your library?
When you open the library, a spinner should appear on the library navigation bar to indicate that the app is indexing the library.
This process can take a while depending on the number and size of the files.
Does it appear when you open the library?
We plan to improve the UI feedback when importing large numbers of files at the same time.
20 minutes sounds like too much, but I don’t know how large is your library.
This iPad is only about 80gb worth. Now I’m dreading to see if my near 1 tb one which contains chronological packs would even resync if I do this. I’m not sure if I lost data or not because I left it open and it finished after a few hours. What I do know for sure is I lost sorting by created as it no longer takes into consideration the date created Metadata of the file. And also all of the reading progress of comics I haven’t read completely.
I had a similar problem and it was directly related to the indexing out of sync. The app wouldn’t crash but definitely would hang up and or not open the appropriate file I was selecting.
On my 12,9” iPad pro I have about 40gb of comics couple of thousand as well as another 15gb of pdf magazines.
I was about to move the files and reinstall but ( this is the wired part) I force stopped the app at least 6 times over the course of an hour or so then mine just started working.
I remember someone mentions they would work on improving the indexing of large amounts of files in the future.
I remember someone mentions they would work on improving the indexing of large amounts of files in the future.
I’ve been working on this for a few weeks now, and the next version of Panels will include many improvements in that regard.
Currently, Panels indexes the whole library in one go, and it doesn’t show the updates until it finishes re-indexing.
The next version indexes the library progressively and updates the UI every few seconds. This has a couple of benefits:
If the index job fails, it doesn’t have to start over but can continue where it left off.
The UI feedback is better because you won’t have to wait until the whole library index is complete to see the result. you will see your new comics appear as they get indexed individually.
Additionally, we have fixed a bug that caused the app to start multiple index jobs in parallel, making the whole thing slower.
These changes should make the app more responsive, especially importing large amounts of files.
