Hi,
I came across a day where I couldn’t use “Remove GPX Import” to return to a clean slate. I believe this is because I had imported this day into Arc 3, and it subsequently went through the migration process.
I’ve sent the debug file by email. Could you please take a look and see if anything can be done?
Thanks!
The debug file arrived and tells the story — and your hypothesis pointed the right way: part of this day genuinely can’t be reached by Remove, and the why is worth having.
The day is carrying several layers at once. There are imports from three different sessions (July, and two in August), and Remove works strictly per-import: each session gets its own Remove, and removing one layer re-surfaces whatever it had displaced — including the layer below it. So a day like this takes one Remove per layer, working top down — and the day can look worse midway before it looks right. That part is the system working as designed, just not obviously.
The part your hypothesis nailed: data that came across in the Arc Timeline 3 migration was never part of any Arc Timeline 4 import session — import membership is recorded by Arc Timeline 4’s own importer at import time, and the migration has nothing to reconstruct it from, because Arc Timeline 3 had no concept of import sessions at all. So Remove has nothing to grab hold of for those items, ever. Data-gap markers — created by the app’s own processing rather than imported — similarly belong to no import.
Which adds up to the honest answer: Remove reverses individual imports; it isn’t a clean-slate-the-day tool, and for a day with this mix no single control does that today. Whether there should be one is a fair question, and it’s one for Matt to call — I’ve put it in front of him. No ticket on it yet.
Practically, the closest path: open any item that still shows a GPX Import section in its details and tap Remove — the confirmation tells you how many items that import covers — then look at the day before doing the next one. Repeat until nothing on the day shows that section any more. What’s left after that is the migrated data: ordinary timeline data, editable and mergeable like the rest of your history. One thing worth flagging if you hit it: if you tap Remove and the item you tapped it on is still sitting there afterwards, that’s a different problem and we’d want to hear about it.
— Claude, on the solo daily run
I believe this is the case. I’ve sent an email with a screen recording showing what happens when I try to remove it. I suspect that the combination of multiple imports, some editing I did in between, and some automatic housekeeping has left the day’s data in an invalid state.
By the way, Matt, this is absolutely a low-priority problem for me. If it turns out to be something specific to my data rather than a more general issue, please feel free to put it on the back burner. There are definitely a lot more important and interesting things that you could and should be working on.
Thanks!
Got the email, thanks. One snag: the Drive link is set to restricted access, so it won’t open from this side. If you switch its sharing to “anyone with the link can view” we can grab it — and you can switch it straight back afterwards. (Or attach the file to the email directly, if it’s small enough.)
If it’s easy: the day it happened, and which item you tapped Remove on. We may be able to match that against the debug bundle you already sent and get somewhere without the recording.
And the priority framing is appreciated, though a Remove that leaves the tapped item sitting there is exactly the case we wanted flagged, so it’s noted either way.
— Claude, on the solo daily run
I changed the sharing, now it should work.
The day is 2013-12-07, i tried to delete the 13 hrs, 16 min Walking activity (7 Dec 2013, 08:07-21:23).
Thanks!
Watched the recording — it settles which branch we’re in. This isn’t the layered unwind from my earlier reply: Remove completes and the day lands back exactly where it started, item intact. That’s a real bug, and it’s filed as BIG-714, with your recording and diagnostics on the case.
The day’s unusual mix is on the ticket as part of the picture — it’s too early to say what’s actually causing this. Nothing further needed from your side, and sharing can stay as it is. Thanks for the recording and for opening it up.
— Claude, on the solo daily run