Cloud Sync

Drop­box Sync

We rec­om­mend and now sup­port auto­mated device sync­ing of Life­Topix data using Drop­box. Please look at at our video guide on how to set it up.

Google Drive Sync (Tech Preview)

We now sup­port backup/restore as well as auto­mated sync with Google Drive as well.

iCloud Sync (Tech Preview)

Our sup­port of iCloud Sync is an exper­i­men­tal tech­nol­ogy pre­view, and is not guar­an­teed to work reli­ably. We are work­ing with Apple to make it more reli­able — our data is much more com­plex than that of apps that do sim­ple lists or tasks. In addi­tion to syncs not work­ing reli­ably between devices, there is also a strong pos­si­bil­ity of data loss. We highly rec­om­mend that for reli­a­bil­ity, users use the Drop­box approach. Also, please do reg­u­lar back­ups of your data from Life­Topix Set­tings (Email and Online).

The very first thing you should do before enabling iCloud Sync for Life­Topix, is to per­form a backup of your Life­Topix data using the backup fea­tures (Email or Drop­box online folder) avail­able within Life­Topix Set­tings (Quick Menu > ).

If you have an iCloud account, you can use that account to sync Life­Topix data across devices. Once con­fig­ured, this sync will be automatic.

While iCloud Sync is enabled in Life­Topix on a device, changes to the Life­Topix data on that device will be prop­a­gated to your other Life­Topix devices on which you have enable iCloud Sync. Changes made to the Life­Topix data on a device that does not have Wi-Fi access (e.g., when it is in Air­plane Mode) will be queued up to be sent once Wi-Fi access resumes.

In most cases, Life­Topix infor­ma­tion changed on one device will be prop­a­gated to your other devices within a few min­utes. How­ever, the time required for this prop­a­ga­tion depends entirely on the per­for­mance of iCloud. Dur­ing peri­ods of heavy use, iCloud per­for­mance has been observed to be very slow.

Note that iCloud is very new tech­nol­ogy that is evolv­ing rapidly. There­fore, it is impor­tant to real­ize that this Life­Topix fea­ture is a tech­nol­ogy preview.

Require­ments

Before you enable iCloud Sync on your devices, ensure that all of the fol­low­ing require­ments are met:

• you have an Apple iCloud account
• each device you wish to sync has net­work connectivity
• Life­Topix resides on each device you wish to sync
• iCloud is enabled in the device Set­tings of each device you wish to sync
• if you plan to take advan­tage of the built-in inte­gra­tion Life­Topix has with your device’s Con­tacts, then Con­tacts sync­ing must be set to ON in the device Set­tings of each device you wish to sync
• if you have Life­Topix con­fig­ured to add reminders to your device Cal­en­dar and you want those reminders to be synced across devices, then Cal­en­dar sync­ing must be set to ON in the device Set­tings of each device you wish to sync

Enabling iCloud Sync

To enable iCloud Sync on your devices, per­form the fol­low­ing steps:

FIRST, perform a backup of your Life­Topix data using the backup fea­tures (Email or Drop­box online folder) avail­able within Life­Topix Set­tings.

• PRIMARY DEVICE. Deter­mine which device you want to serve as the ini­tial source of all your Life­Topix data (the “ini­tial source device”). Note that the first time you enable iCloud Sync on your devices, all the Life­Topix data from the source device will be copied to the other devices — no merg­ing of data will occur ini­tially. Once you enable iCloud Sync on your devices, Life­Topix changes on one device will be prop­a­gated to the others.
• BACKUP! Per­form a Life­Topix online backup of the ini­tial source device. Refer to the Back­ing Up And Restor­ing Data In Life­Topix sec­tion of the Set­tings help.
• On the ini­tial source device, tap from  the Quick Menu, then tap iCloud Sync (Tech­nol­ogy Pre­view), then set the iCloud Sync slider to ON.
• After con­firm­ing that you have read the instruc­tions for enabling iCloud Sync, you should receive a popup indi­cat­ing that your ini­tial source device is “the first device to sync its Life­Topix data with iCloud”. If you do not receive this mes­sage, then some Life­Topix data already exists in your iCloud account and you must fol­low the steps described in the iCloud Sync Reset sec­tion of this help before pro­ceed­ing. If you do receive this mes­sage, tap Con­tinue to enable iCloud Sync.
• If your ini­tial source device con­tains any Life­Topix files (e.g., pho­tos, audio clips, video clips, or local doc­u­ments), then once iCloud Sync has been enabled suc­cess­fully, you will receive a mes­sage advis­ing you to per­form step 2 to upload those local files to iCloud. We have made step 2 optional because Apple lim­its the amount of space avail­able to you in your iCloud account. Since these files may be quite large, we wanted you to have the choice as to whether or not you wish to con­sume space in your iCloud account to make the files avail­able to your devices. Just beware that if you do not per­form step 2, the local files on your ini­tial source device will not be avail­able on any of your devices. If you wish to per­form step 2, get out of this view, wait five min­utes, and then return to this view and the Move Life­Topix local files to iCloud but­ton will be enabled — tap this button.
• If your ini­tial source device does not con­tain any Life­Topix files (e.g., pho­tos, audio clips, video clips, or local doc­u­ments), then once iCloud Sync has been enabled suc­cess­fully, you will receive a mes­sage advis­ing you to wait five min­utes for your ini­tial device to prop­a­gate its Life­Topix data to iCloud before enabling iCloud Sync on your other devices. It is very impor­tant that you wait the full five min­utes before attempt­ing to enabling iCloud Sync on your other devices.
• On all other devices you wish to sync, tap Life­Topix Set­tings, then tap iCloud Sync, then set the iCloud Sync slider to ON.

The most impor­tant things to remem­ber about enabling iCloud Sync are:

• When you enable iCloud Sync, the Life­Topix data from your ini­tial source device is what will be copied via iCloud to all your other devices on which you enable iCloud Sync. There­fore, you must select your ini­tial source device carefully.
• If you are enabling iCloud Sync on your ini­tial source device and the oper­a­tion gets inter­rupted (e.g., by an incom­ing phone call, incom­ing text mes­sage, etc.), then you must fol­low the steps described in the Reset­ting iCloud Sync on All Devices sec­tion below to purge the data in your iCloud account and then re-start the iCloud Sync process from the beginning.
• Files that exist on the ini­tial source device at the time sync is enabled will not be avail­able in Life­Topix on any device — includ­ing the ini­tial source device on which they reside — unless you per­form step 2 of the iCloud Sync process defined below.
• Apple’s iCloud tech­nol­ogy is very new and, there­fore, evolv­ing very quickly. To ensure proper func­tion­al­ity of iCloud, you must fol­low pre­cisely all instruc­tions here and in any pop­ups that you receive. You should also reg­u­lary visit the iCloud Sync page of the Life­Topix web site.

What infor­ma­tion is synced?

Once you enable iCloud Sync on your devices, all Life­Topix infor­ma­tion is synced across those devices with the excep­tion of the iCloud Sync set­ting in Life­Topix Set­tings. Beware that this means that if you set a pass­code lock on a device, even that will get synced to other devices.

Remem­ber that if there are Life­Topix files on your ini­tial source device, those files that exist on the ini­tial source device at the time that you enable iCloud Sync will not be avail­able to any of your devices until you per­form step 2. Whether or not you per­form step 2, once you have enabled iCloud Sync on your devices, all Life­Topix files cre­ated after that point will auto­mat­i­cally be avail­able to your other devices, even if you do not per­form step 2.

Dis­abling iCloud Sync

To dis­able iCloud Sync on a device, tap Life­Topix Set­tings, then tap iCloud Sync, then set the iCloud Sync slider to OFF.

The most impor­tant things to remem­ber about dis­abling iCloud Sync are:

• When you dis­able iCloud Sync on a device, any changes you make to the Life­Topix data on that device will get over­writ­ten with what­ever is in iCloud at the time when you later re-enable iCloud Sync on that device.
• The bot­tom line is that unless you are dis­abling iCloud Sync on a device as part of the process to reset iCloud Sync or you do not wish your device to be synced with other devices any more, you should not dis­able iCloud Sync.

Reset­ting iCloud Sync

Apple’s iCloud tech­nol­ogy is new and rapidly evolv­ing. This means that, on occa­sion, iCloud will fail to prop­a­gate changes. If you sus­pect that your devices have failed to receive updates, we have pro­vided a mech­a­nism to reset the iCloud Sync feature.

One indi­ca­tion that you should reset iCloud Sync is when you observe that one change you have made to Life­Topix data has been prop­a­gated but an ear­lier change has not been.

To reset iCloud Sync, fol­low the instruc­tions in the iCloud Sync Reset online help. That doc­u­ment can be found by tap­ping Life­Topix Set­tings, then tap­ping iCloud Sync (Tech­nol­ogy Pre­view), then tap­ping iCloud Sync Reset, then tap­ping Read This First.

The most impor­tant thing to remem­ber about reset­ting iCloud Sync is that you must per­form the purge oper­a­tion on every device on which iCloud Sync has been enabled.

Fre­quently Asked Questions

For the answers to some com­mon ques­tions about iCloud Sync, please be sure to read the iCloud Sync FAQ page.

IMPORTANT

In your device Set­tings, Apple pro­vides you a mech­a­nism to “man­age stor­age” for your iCloud account and for the appli­ca­tions that access it. It is very impor­tant that you not uti­lize this inter­face to manip­u­late the iCloud stor­age for Life­Topix. If you wish to man­age the iCloud stor­age for Life­Topix, uti­lize the oper­a­tions pro­vided for you in Life­Topix Settings.