why does notes switch to the beginning when i switch between apps, and the keyboard enter punctuation randomly?

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Level 1

17 points

why does notes switch to the beginning when i switch between apps, and the keyboard enter punctuation randomly?

Some of this I may have asked before, yet I would like to mention that I likely have updated iOS at least once in this case since I first encountered a similar issue.

I have seen at some point since I first purchased this phone, that I had seen that the phone would scroll up and down automatically sometimes when using the native note app. This had been about a paragraph's length. This no longer happens.

However, I am now encountering some issue that if I am using another app simultaneously (for instance, I am listening to something like a podcast, or I am reading an e-mail), then I navigate between that and the notes app, the notes app will keep scrolling back to the beginning of the app, and in order to return to where I had been in the app, I have to search for some keyword. This becomes like a productivity function frustration.

I am wondering if anyone knows a solution besides checking for iOS updates, and then troubleshooting from there? It is useful that I can search for a known keyword after exiting the app; however, that does not allow users to stay in the same place within the notes app without exiting.

Beyond this, I have noticed that I can be typing a sentence, and the native keyboard will type punctuation in the middle of a word automatically. It may also type spaces, but I am not sure. It may or may not be part of the autocorrect feature. But for myself, autocorrect is 50% a positive feature, and I do like to type text for any type of type-related feature in the phone. Within the notes app at least, I have been typing sentences outside of the punctuation screen, and then punctuation is automatically inserted after a word when a sentence isn't even finished.

It does not seem to be perfect, but I would appreciate any feedback regarding these matters.

iPhone 11

Posted on Aug 4, 2023 1:24 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 4, 2023 2:58 PM in response to JoshuaCM

OK, what may have happened, your phone has only 3 GB of RAM, and only 2 GB is free after iOS loads. So if another app needs RAM a suspended app (like Notes) might be swapped out to storage to make room. When this happens the most recent settings of the app are lost and it will go back to a checkpoint.

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Answer 2

Aug 4, 2023 1:30 PM in response to JoshuaCM

Your screen digitizer may be failing. If it only occurs when the phone is plugged in, you have a bad cable. If it is at other times it is the screen digitizer, your screen protector, or case.

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Answer 3

JoshuaCM Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 5, 2023 10:45 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

So, I have a question about this. The other day, I was talking to my cellular service provider about intermittent connections regarding dropped data signals.

They told me that a fix was to switch airplane mode on and off. Last night (and probably this morning), I noticed that this issue with the resetting of the notes app would also seem to simultaneously occur when something like the issue with connection interruptions seem to occur.

It may be related to RAM, but I recall something like I cannot search for the specific note (neither on data, nor on WIFI), and it appears that I cannot use neither of those to access the notes app for a moment.

I do not recall if I was able to access another application, but when I turned the airplane mode off and then on again, then I was able to access the notes app again, and search actually within the note for the place that I was working on.

So I had observed that some function was stopped temporarily, and by interrupting the internet access, I was able to access the notes search feature. It was actually accessible by a manual function in that lapse time (if i would call it that).

Would this be related to RAM, or something else? It does what we were discussing (by moving to the beginning).

The app may freeze each time, then move up, but I am not sure. I don't know what internet access has to do with the app, besides possibly trying to back it up to the cloud.

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Answer 4

Aug 6, 2023 7:45 AM in response to JoshuaCM

iOS monitors RAM continuously and optimizes it as part of its virtual memory management, which is actually a feature of the Unix base that iOS is derived from. Essentially whenever RAM is needed for an app about to run and there isn’t enough room for it, first the virtual memory manager clears freed up data, then moves “chunks” of apps around in RAM to open a large enough block to fit the app about to run; this process is called “garbage collection”. If enough space can’t be freed to hold the new app, the oldest app or apps in RAM (meaning the least recently used) are copied to a reserved storage area in permanent storage; they are said to be “swapped out” or “rolled out”. When that app is suspended it becomes eligible for being rolled out. At any given time there are a hundred or more processes, some of which are apps, that might need to run; for example to receive texts, check for mail, update weather, update apps, etc. But RAM can hold only a few; maybe as many as 5, so all the rest are rolled out, and can be rolled back into RAM after older apps have been swapped out.

Virtual memory management was first developed at Bell Labs in the mid-1970’s to deal with computers that had 16K of RAM, so it has had 50 years to be optimized.

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Answer 5

Aug 7, 2023 8:14 AM in response to JoshuaCM

A list of “running processes” would have only one process in it, because iOS runs only one at a time. thus, you don’t have to be concerned about what is “running”. You can see a list of apps that you have used since the last time the phone restarted by viewing the Task Switcher, which you can see by swiping up from the bottom of the screen and pausing before you lift your finger. When I do that I see 120 apps that I have used since my last restart, but none of them are running; they are all suspended, waiting for you to choose one.

And “taking up space in memory”, if you mean RAM, is meaningless, because the amount of RAM used by a process is constantly changing. A process doesn’t have one block of memory; it has dozens, or sometimes hundreds of tiny pieces of memory that are magically mapped by iOS to one address space from the programmer’s perspective.

When RAM gets full and more is needed, some of those tiny pieces of RAM are copied to a section of storage called a “swap area” and removed from RAM, so that RAM can be used by THE running process. Since the process that owns that piece of RAM isn’t running, it doesn’t cause a problem. When that suspended process needs to run again the pieces of code that were moved to the swap area are copied back to RAM, possibly by freeing up RAM from another suspended process.

The swapping, or rolling out, is fast, but not instantaneous. You may see a brief pause (less than a second) when this happens.

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Answer 6

JoshuaCM Author

Level 1

17 points

Aug 4, 2023 1:39 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

How can i test this?

I think the notes app returning to the top of the screen is mostly only happening when i switch to the podcast app, yet punctuation issues may happen at various times.. It seems like the punctuation issue could be an autocorrect feature.

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Answer 7

JoshuaCM Author

Level 1

17 points

Aug 4, 2023 2:50 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

I may have accidentally tapped two spaces. I didn't swipe the notes app up. I just switched between apps by moving side to side. If I am out of the notes app for probably a certain amount of seconds, then it seems to reset, and move to the top of the current note.

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Answer 8

JoshuaCM Author

Level 1

17 points

Aug 5, 2023 8:48 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Does iPhone iOS have a way to check if apps are using RAM? I can only see the aspect of what takes up space overall. I have seen this issue occur possibly when not specifically switching between apps as well.

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Answer 9

JoshuaCM Author

Level 1

17 points

Aug 6, 2023 7:20 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

thanks, but i meant that is there something like a list of running processes that show what is taking up space in the memory, as to where somehow these can be controlled manually. However, if there are only minimal processes running that can be controlled, this might not help much. I was thinking that if certain applications were running in the background, or something like that, I could shut them down. I do not usually have too many applications running at the same time that I know of.

The Notes app seemed to go back to the beginning of the page around when I last replied without switching apps, but i am not sure.

What does it mean that the Operating System rolls them out, or swaps them out? I did find that the screen had glitched briefly today on the side of it. I do not know if it is specifically a screen error, or if it was due to something else causing it that you may have mentioned. Something like multiple colored lines off to the side, showing the display had not functioned, or become disrupted briefly.

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Answer 10

Sep 5, 2023 5:29 PM in response to JoshuaCM

I’m sure it has nothing to do with RAM. Turn on Airplane mode, then turn on Wi-Fi. That will keep Wi-Fi on in the future when you toggle Airplane mode.

The reason toggling Airplane Mode works is it forces your phone to search for the strongest cellular signal, rather than use the one it had been using, which might be weaker. But what it really indicates is that your carrier’s network coverage is poor in your location.

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Answer 11

JoshuaCM Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 5, 2023 7:31 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Do you know why the notes search word feature may shut off while the data and wifi signals are weak? there is the feature to search for a keyword that shuts off while the notes app returns to the beginning of the current note. it resets when the network is disconnected by airplane mode.

There is an appearance that the search feature is dependent on a network connection, but i don’t know.

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Answer 12

JoshuaCM Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 16, 2023 12:00 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

If the notes are grouped under "On My Phone," why may the search feature itself become intermittent?

My phone has the "on my Phone" feature turned on, yet it has notes syncing turned on under the "iCloud feature. It shows nothing being stored for notes there. I went to turn iCloud off, and I was prompted that it will delete the notes. However, it seems to me that many notes were created on this phone.

Some may not have been, but probably on the previous phone. I would like to try to understand why the phone keeps showing "no notes" intermittently. I was able to search the notes probably twice in airplane mode, but usually only via the internet. It is a little confusing.

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Answer 13

Aug 4, 2023 2:03 PM in response to JoshuaCM

The only punctuation feature in iOS 16 is a period if you tap 2 spaces in a line. When you switch to the podcast app do you kill the notes app by swiping up on it in the app switcher?

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Answer 14

Sep 5, 2023 7:38 PM in response to JoshuaCM

Notes are hosted on a server along with your mail, unless you group them under On My Phone. So to search it needs to access the server or servers the notes sync to.

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why does notes switch to the beginning when i switch between apps, and the keyboard enter punctuation randomly?

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