Child Item

1 byte files when uploading many photos through Dropbox iOS app

Hi all,

After each vacation, I always upload my photos from my iPhone using the Dropbox app. This works fine, whenever I select like 300 photo's. Any more than this, Dropbox will continue uploading the photos as 1 byte files. Obviously, this is not the photo. I would just like to select all my photos (usually like 3000-4000 at once) and let the app do its thing, instead of doing it in batches. This has happened for many years now. I've finally decided to create a topic to see if this is normal behaviour or if it can be resolved. Maybe good to mention, i keep my phone active at all times and do not leave the dropbox app while uploading.

Find more posts tagged with

Mobile

Sync

Upload

Closed - Partially Delivered

Accepted answers

BenDBX

Hi Everybody,

We have implemented a fix in the latest version of Dropbox for iOS, V346.4.2. Please update your Dropbox app and let us know if this error still occurs.

Regards,

Ben

All comments

Walter

Hi there @jacovg91, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Could you please clarify if you're manually uploading your files via the (+) button within the Dropbox mobile app or if you're using the automatic camera uploads feature?

Can you maybe send us a couple of screenshots of a sample file showing this behavior and how the upload is logged in your events page?

Any additional information is more than welcome!

jacovg91

Hi @walter, thanks for the response! I've reproduced the issue and attached all screenshots.

I'm using the + button, manually selecting all photos (just keeping my finger on the screen and dragging it down to select hundreds). Usually, about 300-400 upload completely fine, but then the rest will start uploading (really fast aswell) as 1byte files. This happens both on my wives iPhone 12 Pro and own iPhone 13 Pro, by the way. Our apps are fully up to date, and this has happened for many years already. We've always had issues uploading alot of photos at once using the iOS app.

Hereby some screenshots and what I did to reproduce the issue. My app is in Dutch, but you'll get the idea.

Step 1: Remove the automatic lockscreen on my iPhone, so the screen won't go dark to keep the app alive.

Step 2: Selected 1147 photos, press upload in the iOS app. No issues here, it just takes some time preparing the upload. There are also videos in this selection.

Screenshot:

preparing uploading app.png

Step 3: The uploading of the photos has now started. No issues here. I put the phone down.

Screenshot:

uploading has started.jpeg

Step 4: Suddenly, without doing anything, after successfully uploading ~800/1147 photos, the upload will continue but will upload the photos as blank 135 byte files. In the past, it has many times also already happened after it has uploaded ~400 photos. It seems to be a little random.

Screenshot from app:

1byte uploading.jpg

Screenshot from desktop:

desktop 1 byte.png

from what I can see looking at the file names, it seems to be some kind of retry mechanism because it goes up to "(16)". What is also strange is that the faulty files have a file name containing the date and time of the upload, instead of the date and time the photo was taken.

The event page just tells me that the file has been uploaded, nothing else. When I try to open the file, it shows me this:

error opening.PNG

I've double checked if there is anything "weird" happening during or after the photos taken at 15/12/2022 15:12 (the date&time after which it starts failing) and I can't seem to find any issues. They are normal photo's.

Hope this displays the issue that I'm having clearly. Hope to hear from you 🙂

Hannah

Hey @jacovg91, thanks for this helpful info and the screenshots!

If you try to upload your photos using our camera uploads feature instead, are you getting the same behavior?

Perezdaniel

I have the same problem, were you able to find a solution?

Perezdaniel

@walter

were you able to solve the problem?
I can find no solution

Megan

Hey @Perezdaniel, let's jump right into this!

As a first step, can you clarify the version of your OS, and the Dropbox app that you're using on your end?

Also, do you upload content using camera uploads, or manual uploads?

Let me know more!

jacovg91

Camera upload is not an option, because I don't want to upload everything. I want to select only certain photo's.

jacovg91

Unfortunately the issue still persists.

Megan

Hey @jacovg91, have you tried to upload content using a different connection, or cellular data?

Do you notice the same behavior then?

jacovg91

I unfortunately am not in the position to upload this many photo's using a cellular connection. My home connection is insanely reliable and as I mentioned this happens on multiple devices, for many years already. It shouldn't be that hard for you guys to reproduce the issue based on my extensive description. I'm sorry to break it to you, but I'm quite sure this issue lies on your end and not on ours.

Walter

Hey @jacovg91, sorry to jump in, but I just wanted to mention that our team is looking into this.

We'll let you know more as soon as we have an update.

ss_lemonade

It seems to be a bug introduced by a recent IOS update, where selected files could randomly be sent over as 135 byte bplist files instead. I have been encountering this as well with users of our web app ever since IOS 16.4.1 came out and it is extremely intermittent (could occur with a single upload, or multiple uploads).

I have brought this up to webkit thinking it was a Safari problem but according to them, it seems to be related to IOS's new system photo picker.

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256711

Interestingly, this is the first time I've seen someone else encounter this problem so I had to comment about my experience.

ivan96

Hello,

I have been experiencing the same problem since the start of June. It still hasn't been fixed. Is there any news about this issue?

Best Regards,

Ivan

jacovg91

I just tried to upload some vacation photos again, and the issue still persists. I'm happy some others have reported the same problem. Looking forward to a solution!

ss_lemonade

I was told that IOS 16.6 has addressed this issue, so see if updating to that helps.

ivan96

No, I have tried the latest iOS 16 version, and the issue still exists.

BenDBX

Hi Everybody,

We have implemented a fix in the latest version of Dropbox for iOS, V346.4.2. Please update your Dropbox app and let us know if this error still occurs.

Regards,

Ben

jacovg91

Can confirm, it now works. However it is a shame we can't upload more than 400 photos at once now.

ivan96

It works now, but I can't upload more than 400 photos in one go. Is there a plan to fix this?

ehoffmanncentrics

RE: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256711 It seems this bug STILL occurs on ios 17.4.1 - a simple file input on a web page is returning 135 byte blobs instead of the actual data. I added to the bug report (though they have already closed it).

Anyone know what the workaround that Dropbox put into place when the issue was originally fixed?