How to get data from Voice Dream Reader to Apple Watch

By vBeckles, 28 January, 2020

Forum
watchOS and Apple Watch Apps

I’ve been trying to find instructions on how to transfer from VDR on my phone “10-r” with latest IOS to my Apple Watch?
It tells me that my reading list is empty on the watch. I thought it might be because there was nothing in that folder on the phone. I added 2 files to the reading list on the phone and then opened the watch again and nothing. I thought maybe a ICloud sync might work, but that didn’t either. So I’m at a loss on how to make it work. Any insight would be appreciated.

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Comments

By Zoe Victoria on Thursday, January 30, 2020 - 22:10

Since the Apple Watch has nowhere near the space of an iPhone, VDR requires you to move the files you want to your reading list. To do this, go to edit mode and select the files you want. Activate the button that says 'reading list and an alert will appear, asking you to select whether you want to add it to the top or bottom of the list. Once you've done this, you'll be able to open the apple watch app and listen to it. It will ask you where you want to play the audio and once you select that you should be good to go..

By Moopie Curran on Monday, December 30, 2024 - 22:10

Hi,
I know this is an old thread, but I have several zipped audiobooks in my vdr reading list that I want synced to my apple watch. Does VDR on apple watch not support zipped audiobooks? If it doesn't, what's another option? I've had the zipped books in my reading list for a while, since before I got the apple watch. Do I need to re-add everything?

By TheBllindGuy07 on Wednesday, January 1, 2025 - 22:10

I am pretty sure vdr does support .zip daisy books if that's what you're talking about. Otherwise maybe not related but I understand that BDR had sync issues since forever and til the ages to come and the new company is especially worst by just saying garbage things in their QA like check icloud sync, internet connection and etc while anyone can understand after 5 minutes that basically in the code there is very weird preprocessing that happens with each and every new file which is so badly coded that after like 10 maximum (even if thexe .txt files are less than 1mb) the app will crash. I use this app only because it has Acapella tts and nowadays it's seemingly the only app having this in the apple ecosystem, and *only* on ios/ipados/watchos and not macos while we pay an even higher price now.
A bit off topic but for me this reading list thing actually seems to work and I'm on the betas of both ios and watchos.

By Labsii on Tuesday, January 7, 2025 - 22:10

I don't think that some syncing problems can be fixed, as they are a side effect of the underlying technology that shouldn't be used for that purpose.

iCloud is intended to be used for file sync, not for data sync, as for such sync Apple provides developers with CloudKit.

As data is expected to constantly change, storing it in the file is not practical, as it means that the whole file needs to be constantly uploaded (and downloaded on another device).

So whenever some metadata changes (like reading position), the complete file with metadata needs to be uploaded again if you use iCloud sync. CloudKit is much more powerful as it allows you just to upload/download just the changed data. While this may still lead to some issues, they should come at 100x fewer rate and are easier to be properly resolved when they happen.

By TheBllindGuy07 on Tuesday, January 7, 2025 - 22:10

My point exactly and thank you for confirming :) I mean I'm not familiar at all with apple ecosystem but this is exactly what vdr seems doing storing app data per file each .txt file creates a folder with hex name and in it we have that file with non ascii character trimmed and a .json, this is the preprocessing I was talking about.