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Inélsòre
Inspiring
April 8, 2024
Question

Exporting SVG to iCloud Drive destroys the iPad’s Files app

  • April 8, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 1223 views

Forgive the flashy title, but that's exactly what happened. 

Last Friday evening I've opened a 20-page PDF on Illustrator for iPad on my 2018 iPad Pro (12.9-inch) running iPadOS 17.4.1. I've exported the whole PDF as separate art boards to SVG format with outlined fonts. The destination was set to the Downloads folder of iCloud Drive.

As soon as I did that, iCloud Drive got crazy and basically stopped working. The Files app froze, crashed, opened as a blank screen. Soon afterwards, all apps that use iCloud Drive started to behave in the same way: locked, frozen, unresponsive, blank. Everything that doesn't use iCloud Drive works fine (I'm writing from Safari on that same iPad—btw why does this forum require that I turn off content blockers?! What are you doing, Adobe?).

 

I've reinstalled iPadOS 17.4.1, deactivated iCloud Drive, forced restarted, logged out of Apple ID. Nothing, it is still broken. The Apple Support advisor (2nd level) told me that my iCloud Drive is full of empty files and that the engineers will try to clean this from the backend. He asked me if I knew anything of that, and the only apps that create temporary files in the same folder of the original file are... Adobe apps! InDesign, Illustrator, they all do this. For very good reasons, of course, but this doesn't seem to work well with non-Adobe cloud storage, and yet, nowhere is advised from Adobe not to use Cloud Storage as file location. 

 

I hope to get this sorted soon, but this was clearly caused by that SVG export from Illustrator. 

I hope Adobe changes something about this, though I'm not positive nor optimist, especially after losing all this time for nothing. I literally cannot use any app, cannot access any file as long as iCloud Drive is turned on. I simply suggest you do not repeat my mistakes. I will certainly move all my Adobe files to local storage and then perform Cloud backups. 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Anubhav MCommunity Manager
Community Manager
April 9, 2024

Hello @Inélsòre,

We understand that encountering technical issues can be frustrating. Illustrator supports working across networks, removable media, and cloud-synced folders (Google Drive / Dropbox / OneDrive, etc.) and is vigorously tested across multiple configurations. However, not all configurations, including different software, hardware, settings, and access rights, have been tested. Therefore, your configuration can cause errors, crashes, or unexpected behavior. You may learn more about this here: (https://adobe.ly/4aLtr0G).

 

To avoid such problems, we recommend working on your files from a local folder and manually copying them to the removable media, network drive, or the cloud-synced folder.

 

Feel free to reach out if you have more questions or need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

 

Thanks,
Anubhav

I
InélsòreAuthor
Inspiring
April 9, 2024

Dear Anubhav,

the link you sent begins with "Is the Illustrator performance impacted". 

This is not what I reported: Illustrator worked perfectly well opening files from iCloud Drive.

What happened is the following: exporting SVG from Illustrator and saving them in iCloud Drive totally broke my iCloud Drive. It took me a whole day with Apple support to find that this was the case, and only a full restore could bring my iPad back to life. I'm now slowly reconfiguring the iPad from scratch... so much time... (not going to risk a backup restore, it could restore the problem as well).

 

There are so many things users are blind about when using apps and devices from big companies such as Adobe and Apple. For example: Adobe app automatically add themselves to iCloud backup upon installation. Who asked for that?

It should be plainly stated somewhere easy to find that working files for Adobe apps should never be on cloud storage, simply because cloud storage doesn't like temporary files, especially hundreds of them with similar names that result in orphaned inodes. Try to analyse a Time Machine snapshot done when you have several Adobe document opens from iCloud Drive, with all the temporary files also in there, and you will see what I mean. 

 

I highly doubt Apple & Adobe will ever do anything to improve this, but one thing is certain: I will never put a single Adobe file on iCloud Drive again. 

In the end, we users can only blame ourselves for trusting the providers of the services we use.

B
Community Expert
Bobby HendersonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 10, 2024

First of all, if you're doing work on an iPad you're almost forced into using cloud-based storage. Apple doesn't make it easy to save and manage files on an iPad in a traditional not-cloud way. The file system is about as basic and minimal as it gets.

 

One positive thing I can say is a USB dongle will allow an iPad to read external storage volumes. They can be USB memory sticks, solid state drives and even high capacity traditional hard discs. The iPad will even read NTFS formatted portable hard discs (which is good in my case since I use Windows-based PCs). An iPad needs to be plugged into a wall outlet via an AC adapter to use bus-powered portable hard discs.

 

What is the nature of the artwork you're trying to export in SVG format? Is the artwork really complex? Why does it have to be saved in SVG format? Is the artwork exported to another application that only opens SVG files? The SVG format is good for some purposes, but not so great for others.

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