Shared Sessions — How Quickly Do Updates Appear?
Short answer
If you share a session with someone, the updates you make show up on their device almost immediately. The other direction is a little slower: when they make a change in your shared session, your device checks in on a short interval to pick it up, so you'll see their edits within about a minute. This isn't a bug — it's how iCloud handles shared content. The expectation worth setting is simple: subscribers see the owner's updates faster than the owner sees the subscribers'.
What does this look like in practice?
Say you (the owner) share a session with your coach (the participant):
- You add a swing, comment, or drawing. Your coach's device gets a near-instant push from iCloud and the change appears within a couple of seconds.
- Your coach adds a comment, marks a swing, or imports data. Your device picks up the change on its next check-in — typically within a minute when the app is open, longer when it's in the background.
For most coaching and review workflows this is invisible. You usually find out about a coach's comment when you next open the session, not the moment it happened.
Why isn't it instant in both directions?
Apple's iCloud sharing delivers instant notifications very reliably in one direction (owner → participants) but does not deliver them in the other direction (participants → owner) through the public framework MotionEdge uses. To handle that, the app checks in with iCloud periodically to pull anything the people you shared with have added. That's the "polling interval" — it's small, but it isn't zero.
This is consistent across other apps built on the same public iCloud sharing framework. It isn't something MotionEdge can shorten to zero without Apple changing the underlying behavior.
How can I force an immediate refresh?
You don't usually need to — but if you're collaborating live and want to see a participant's change right now, the simplest move is to pull down on the session list to refresh, or close and reopen the session. Either of those triggers an immediate check with iCloud rather than waiting for the next scheduled check-in.
Is anything lost in the meantime?
No. Updates from participants are always saved to iCloud the moment they make them. The small delay is only about how soon your device discovers them — not whether they exist. As soon as your device checks in, every change since the last check is pulled down together.
Does this apply to all shared content?
Yes. The asymmetry covers swings, comments, drawings, imported data, and edits to anything in the shared session. The same expectation applies whether you're sharing with a coach, a teammate, or a friend.