Hi all, there is a severe problem with storage. Cannot find a solution.
Problem: my Android Internal space is limited (32GB, old phone), and Delta Chat storage is running out. However, I cannot find any solution to this problem.
I tried to move the app to the SD card, no luck.
There is no option within the app to move all data to the SD card either.
I tried to delete messages (settings, delete chats from device – not server!), but while it deleted the messages from my chat list, the space occupied by delta on the Internat drive is exactly the same, not a byte got deleted.
I uninstalled the app, and chose not to keep the data, but this way obviously I cannot use Delta Chat on this phone.
I will not re-install it until a solution is found for the “filling up the Internal drive continuously without way to delete” problem is solved.
It is clearly something the programmer somehow omitted to think about, but I am surprised, because when writing a software, this consiration (looking ahead into the future, a.k.a. “strategic thinking”) should be the first and foremost: to make an app that is usable not only for a day, but for many years to come… so, what is the solution?
Thanks in advance! Otherwise delta.chat is really, really promising as an app, if this problem could be solved… Cheers
Addendum: to add insult to injury, I backed up the big account, tried to restore it after a fresh re-install (contrary to what I said earlier, I tried to re-install it anyway), but it did NOT open my back-up file, some IMEX error, “failed to write entire file” or something like that as error message. So now I can REALLY not recover my account on that Android phone. Pathetic, really… there has to be a solution, but what is it?
PS: probably the reason for THIS failure is that the backup was incomplete, hence the error when restoring it… but why was it incomplete? Because there was no space on the Internal Drive already, and the backup could NOT be saved onto the SD card (which has lots of space). So, a second problem is discovered: why cannot we backup to the SD card directly?
The big problem is that all Android phones have Internal drives, some have also SD external storage. The Internal drives are deliberately made small (to force people to buy new phones when they get full), alas, so if a program can only store anything on the Internal drive, and it keeps growing, it is a temporary software, can only be used for a few weeks, after that it renders itself useless. Need to solve it by storing all downloaded info on the external SD card that we can upgrade anytime easily. Hope it helps…
Yes, this is a problem. See discussion here:
Personally my OS (Mobian) is running on the SD card (on a Pinephone, so onboard memory is rather inadequate). I have space but as my history grows the app is getting slower, taking several seconds to load a chat.
Would having a DC copy on your desktop be useful to you? Or storing mails as Maildirs to view them in the threaded view of another mailclient? DC’s use of open standards does make it more hackable.
I think a chat export feature in DC might make sense. Users could export their chats from time to time to archive them and thus free up space on their devices.
It wouldn’t be necessary for all versions of DC to have this feature. In Telegram, which in my opinion has the best export function of all messengers I know of, this is only possible on desktop. Furthermore, it wouldn’t need to be so complex. Text files are completely sufficient.
Such a feature would also have security advantages. Users could store important, security-relevant messages off their device in a secure location and wouldn’t have to carry them around. In addition, they would be more independent of the app.
I have the same profile on Desktop and Android, with different deletion settings. The size of Desktop account is 4.5 GB, the size of Android profile is 380 MB. I have deletion from device setting set to “5 weeks” on Android to avoid keeping too much data. So deletion does work, it is not missing completely.
As usual with bugreports, we need at least the version of the app and actual error message to be able to debug it.
The backup is just a .tar archive with the database and a blob directory next to it. You can try to open it on desktop and see if it is somehow broken/incomplete. You can also try to import it into Delta Chat Desktop (even if you already have the same profile imported already in the same client) to see if it is working.
I use it on Android but with saving only 5 weeks of message. And the largest profile is only 380 MB.
There might be actual bug with something not deleted, similar issue was also reported here:
But so far we did not get any report with details on whether it is the database or blob files that take the space. Without such details we cannot debug it.