Blank Screen White Screen after sync IOS iPhone

[SunSystem_Techn]

We have a fleet of field technicians using AppSheet for their field reporting.
After logging in, as usual from any of the various login authentication choices of Salesforce, Google, or Microsoft. Once logged in, the app syncs, and turns to a blank or white page. Some, and not all of our technicians are reporting this issue, and we have +180 users on the app in question. Attached is a video to illustrate.

A fix has been the following:

1. Uninstall AppSheet
2. Reboot phone
3. Reinstall AppSheet

We are looking for a more permanent fix and stability.

Thanks in advanced.

[Steve]

Please contact support@appsheet.com directly for help with this.

[Kirk_Masden]

SunSystem_Technology:

blank or white page

I’ve had this happen occasionally with my app on my own iPhone. As @SunSystem_Technology pointed out, rebooting or reinstalling is sometimes necessary to break through the white screen barrier. Today, two students using a copy of my app on their phones reported the same problem.

My app is fairly large. I wonder if size might not be a contributing factor. I would also be curious to know if other people are experiencing the same problem.

[NinaDCS]

I contacted support yesterday with the same issue. My users sent me screen recordings and I sent them to support. I haven’t heard anything back yet but this was late yesterday. I also have a huge app with tons of columns so I was wondering the same.

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks! Another student reported the issue to me today. I too have written to support.

[Kirk_Masden]

NinaDCS:

I contacted support yesterday with the same issue.

Your report may have been what is referred to in the following feedback I got from support:

I would like to let you know that this is known issue from our end, already dev has started working on this since yesterday!!

[NinaDCS]

Thanks! I still haven’t heard anything from my end so it’s good to know they are working on it.

[Patrick_Wong · Accepted solution]

Sorry for the delay! We’ve found the issue with our code and have pushed out a fix roughly around 18 hours ago. If you are still seeing the issue could you let us know? Thank you.

Note that for the native apps you may have to force restart the app in order to get the new code (see Quit and reopen an app on iPhone - Apple Support)

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks! I just got a notice from a student who said he is having the problem but I think he must have the old code. I’ll tell him to restart it.

[Kirk_Masden]

Patrick_Wong:

If you are still seeing the issue could you let us know?

Hi @Patrick_Wong ! I have no doubt that the fix was helpful – I haven’t heard anything from my students about blank white screens since then. Unfortunately, I experienced the problem again today. I wonder if slow internet service might not be a contributing factor. Here’s what I wrote in the support thread today:

The problem occurred again today. My internet provider (the mobile company I use in Japan) is quite slow (it’s a very cheap service) and I think that may have had something to do with it. When I was away from my speedy Wi-Fi environment at home the problem occurred. I quit the app but no effect. I even reinstalled the app but still got the white screen. Finally, when I arrived home and had Wi-Fi, the problem went away. I’m not sure if that was just a coincidence but that’s what I experienced.

[Kirk_Masden]

Hi @Patrick_Wong !

I have seen the issue on my phone a couple times since this and am prompted to write again because a student using a copy of my app just reported the problem. In both my case and the student’s case, it seems that the passage of time can fix the problem. However, in the short term, I have found that even erasing the AppSheet app and reinstalling it doesn’t fix the problem immediately. I’m a bit surprised if other creators haven’t experienced this problem.

[Patrick_Wong]

Hey Kirk! Sorry for the late response,

Can you file a ticket and enable support for the app in question? To clarify, the blank screen on iOS are typically caused by the application running out of memory and the OS culling it. This community post originally refers to was a change where we caused a substantial increase in memory consumption that caused a lot more application to hit this threshold and cause the application to crash. That being said, it still possible to write a large and expensive enough appsheet app to cause this memory pressure.

In another words, if your memory consumption is high enough (and your iOS device is older with less available memory) then it’s still possible for this to happen, but we can try to take a look if you open an intercom ticket.

[Kirk_Masden]

Thank you very much for this response, @Patrick_Wong . My iPhone is moderately old – Xs. It’s weird, though, because I would think that restarting the phone would clear out the memory issues and give me a fresh start. With AppSheet, however, that doesn’t seem to happen immediately, though, as I wrote above, the issue does get resolved eventually.

Indeed, I’ll file a ticket (or perhaps an old one can be reopened). But, as this problem is intermittent, I can’t explain how to reproduce it consistently. Still, I’ll contact support just the same.

Also, if you could share some tips on what to do with a struggling iPhone when this sort of thing happens, I’d appreciate it. Or, even better, if there’s a way to force my iPhone to devote more memory to AppSheet and less to other apps, I’d like to do that.

[Patrick_Wong]

Hey Kirk!

We have a number of articles around scalability that you can take a look at:

help.appsheet.com

Scaling Using Data Partitions

How to use data partitions to improve performance at scale.

help.appsheet.com

Scaling Using Security Filters

Security filters can be used to limit the data fetched by AppSheet on a per-user basis.

The underlying premise is still to minimize the amount of data that we have to send and store on the device at any given time, so using data partitions or security filters is a good way to limit that.

[Kirk_Masden]

Patrick_Wong:

The underlying premise is still to minimize the amount of data that we have to send and store on the device at any given time, so using data partitions or security filters is a good way to limit that.

Thanks! My app is rather big so I think this must be part of the problem. I need to do what I can to see if I can make it lighter without harming the functionality.

Actually, though, I meant to ask if there is anything that the user can change (a setting or something) on the iPhone to make it devote more resources to a heavy app.

[jmable]

This is not solved and is causing major issues with my clients and the iOS app.

[JoshAtwell]

We are experiencing the same problem. As of this morning.

[Patrick_Wong]

Not that I’m aware of sorry, one thing to potentially try is to start the application in kiosk mode, but since the issue has been difficult to reproduce it’s hard to determine if it makes a difference. Will continue to investigate!

[jmable]

I am having the same issues with multiple apps, multiple different iPhones (including the most recent iPhone 13 Pro Max. I feel like I don't have an overly complex app and not a crazy amount of records. I get a security warning for my UX Formats because they have select statements but I don't know how to reference other tables without using selects (i.e. highlight a username in the client table when they don't have a deposit in the deposit table). My largest table has 2000 rows. That is nothing. I have also contacted support and they linked me to this support board. 😕

[Spencer_Jones]

This should be removed from "Solved". I'm having this problem with a majority of my iOS users for the past 4 days.

[Steve]

From what I've been able to gather from the developers, this is a know problem and a fix has been prepared, but the fix is dependent on a forthcoming update to iOS, so the AppSheet fix cannot go out until Apple pushes their update.

I encourage anyone experiencing this problem to engage AppSheet Support, so that AppSheet can have a clearer picture of the scope of impact.

[jmable]

Any update on this? My users are still having the issue. I've basically had to tell them to not use the app and to copy the link into their browser on their phone.

[Steve]

I've not heard any updates, but I've also not asked. Complaints here in the community have definitely tapered off. I would encourage you to engage Support. You may be dealing with a different problem.

https://www.appsheet.com/Support/Contact

[Spencer_Jones]

They have tapered off for me as well, but it hasn't been eradicated. This is making it harder to identify sequence of events that leads to it happening.