Troubleshooting

Real behaviors, what they mean, and what to do.

Offline and connection

“Offline mode, showing last synced data” Your device lost its connection; CineFlow is serving the last synced copy of the project. Reconnect and the app refreshes automatically. CineFlow verifies connectivity with a real network probe, so this banner reliably means you are actually offline.

“Editing unavailable offline” Some pages (callsheet list, gear, cast and crew overview, scene creation) are read only while offline. Other surfaces keep working offline: shot edits, availability, and the script and document editors, which show confirmations like “Saved offline. Will sync when you reconnect.”

After reconnecting: “Synced N offline changes” Queued offline edits replay automatically. “N changes failed to sync, will retry” retries on the next reconnect. “N changes could not be synced and were set aside” means those specific edits could not be applied (for example access changed in the meantime); redo them manually.

“Editing offline. Changes will sync when you reconnect.” / “Connection lost. Reconnecting…” Script and document editors keep your edits locally and reconnect on their own; no action needed.

“Editing offline. Keep this tab open until you reconnect: no backup could be saved on this device.” Rare, and only in the document editor. Your browser refused to keep a local copy of the document, which Safari on iPhone and iPad sometimes does when a tab has been in the background or the device is short of memory. Your edits are still in the page and still sync the moment you are back online, but they are not written to this device, so closing the tab or reloading before you reconnect would lose them. Keep the tab open until the banner goes away. Reloading once you are back online clears it.

“You’re offline. This page couldn’t be loaded.” You navigated to a page that was never loaded on this device while offline. Reconnect and click Retry.

After an update

“A new version is available.” A new CineFlow version was deployed while you had the app open. Click Update now to reload into it. If a page briefly reloads itself once after a deploy, that is the app fetching the new version and is expected.

Desktop app

On Windows, the app asked you to sign in again after an update Once, and only once. The Windows app used to serve itself from a different internal address, and a browser keeps your sign-in, your open tabs and anything saved offline against that address. Moving the app to the address the Mac version already uses is what fixes canvases going blank on Windows, and it starts that storage fresh. Sign in again and everything you have synced is where you left it, because your projects and documents live in your account rather than on the computer. Your open tab groups do not come back; reopen the projects you want and the app remembers them from then on. No later update does this again.

The one thing to watch: edits you made while offline that have not synced yet. If you saw “Saved offline. Will sync when you reconnect.” on a shot list or an availability change and you have not been online since, that edit is held against the old address and the update cannot carry it across. So before you update, open CineFlow while you are connected and let it finish syncing. If you have already updated and something offline is missing, contact support with the log file described below before making the edit again.

On Windows, a whiteboard, diagram, slides or drawing area goes blank a few seconds after it opens Fixed in the Windows app released after v0.2.6. The canvas painted, then cleared itself about five seconds later and clicks in the empty area did nothing. Update to the newest Windows build. On that first launch you are asked to sign in again, which is expected and explained above.

Support asked for the desktop app’s log file The desktop app keeps a log file on your computer and sends it nowhere by itself. On a Mac it is cineflow.log in ~/Library/Logs/cloud.cineflow.desktop. On Windows it is cineflow.log in %LOCALAPPDATA%\cloud.cineflow.desktop\logs, which is usually C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Local\cloud.cineflow.desktop\logs. Attach that file to your message. It records errors and what the canvas was doing, and never your sign in, your e-mail address or the contents of your documents.

“Windows protected your PC” when running the installer SmartScreen warns because the Windows build is not yet code-signed. Click More info, then Run anyway. See Getting started.

“CineFlow is up to date.” but you expected a newer version The update check found no newer build for your platform. Download the latest build from the link in Getting started.

“Could not reach the update server.” / “The update server is temporarily unavailable.” Check your connection or try again later. Check for Updates… repeats the check on demand.

“The update’s signature could not be verified, so it was not installed.” The downloaded update did not match CineFlow’s signing key, so it was refused. Download the latest build directly instead and contact support.

“The update is installed. Quit and reopen CineFlow to finish.” Windows sometimes closes the app before it can restart itself. Reopen CineFlow from the Start menu.

You paid in your browser and the app did not reopen Payment happens in your browser, not inside the Mac or Windows app, so the page you land on afterwards has to hand you back. It says Payment complete and reopens CineFlow by itself. Some browsers will not open an app without being asked, so if nothing happens, press Open CineFlow on that page. Your plan is applied either way: it is granted when the payment clears, not when you get back. If you have closed that page already, just switch to CineFlow and open Settings, Plan and Billing.

“Open another page in this project to split with.” A split shows two different pages of one project, and the tab you chose would put the same document in both panes. Open another page of that project and split again, or pick a different page for the other side.

“Open a project to show this document beside.” A standalone document does not split on its own: it is shown beside a page of whichever project is in front, and it never joins that project. Open the project first, then use Show beside the current page in the picker (Cmd T) or Show in split on the Documents group.

Signing in and sessions

“You’ve been logged out. Your session expired.” The session genuinely ended (expiry or revocation). Click Log in again; you return to where you were.

Signed out after closing the browser Remember me was unchecked at sign in, which makes the session end when the browser closes. Sign in with it checked to stay signed in.

Password rules differ Sign up and emailed password resets require at least 8 characters with upper and lowercase letters and a number; changing your password from Settings requires at least 6 characters.

Sharing and invites

A visitor sees “This share link doesn’t exist.” or “This share link is invalid or has been disabled.” The link was revoked, expired, or mistyped. Create a fresh link and send it again.

“Callsheet unavailable. This link may be inactive or the callsheet has not been published yet.” Callsheet links deliver published versions only. Open the callsheet, click Publish in the Share popover, and the link starts working.

A share link does not show my latest changes Links serve a frozen snapshot. Click Update link to latest on the link’s row (or Publish update for a callsheet). Visitors with the page open get a Refresh banner.

“Invite not found, expired, or already used” The invite link is no longer valid. Send a new invite.

“This project’s team is full. Ask the project owner to upgrade their plan, then try again.” The owner’s plan has no project collaborator places left. The pool is account-wide, not per project, and counts distinct people across every project the owner has, live pending invites included. The owner can upgrade, buy an Additional project collaborator add-on, or free a place by removing the person from every project they are on and revoking any pending invite to them, then re-invite. Archiving a project alone does not clear a pending invite. See Billing and usage.

A collaborator sees “You don’t have access to this page” Their per-page access for that page is set to none. A project admin can change it under the member’s Custom access menu.

Limits and upgrades

“Upgrade required” dialog You hit an enforced plan limit; the dialog names it (“More projects”, “More collaborators”, “More team members”, “More team workspaces”, “More workspace documents”). Archive or remove items, or upgrade. See Billing and usage.

“PDF export limit reached” The monthly PDF quota on the project owner’s plan is used up. Buy the PDF Export Pack or upgrade. Client-side exports (slides, Word, JSON, Fountain, FDX, Outline) still work. See Billing and usage.

An AI action opens an upgrade dialog instead of running Brief import, AI Smart Import, and converting markup into a shot list need a paid plan. On Free the trigger opens the upgrade dialog named for that feature. The help Assistant and the Gear page’s catalog matching are not affected and work on Free. See Billing and usage.

“Checking your plan. Try again in a moment.” An AI action was clicked before your plan finished loading. Wait a moment and click again.

“Storage limit reached (X / Y GB). Upgrade your plan.” Shown when uploading a project cover or importing a script file past your storage allowance. Remove files or upgrade.

Uploads

• Person photos: JPEG, PNG, or WebP up to 5 MB; save the person first, then add the photo.
• Documents page: PNG, JPEG and PDF are stored as attachments, and DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, XLS and CSV are converted into documents. Anything else is refused by name (“Cannot add notes.txt. Use DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, XLS, CSV, PNG, JPEG or PDF.”).
• Brief import: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, or an image, up to about 3.5 MB.
• Document text editor drops: images only.

Callsheet email

Recipients show Sent when the email goes out, Opened once they open it, and Confirmed when they confirm presence. If someone reports no email, check their address in the recipient list, ask them to check spam, or send them the share link directly.

Errors and crashes

“Something went wrong on our end. Report it?” An unexpected error was caught. Click Report to send a crash report, then reload the page.

“This canvas could not be displayed” Something went wrong drawing a whiteboard, diagram, slide deck, storyboard or PDF markup. Everything that has already synced is safe on our servers, and the error has been reported to us automatically. The panel shows the error itself: use Copy details if you are contacting support, since that text tells us exactly what happened. Leave this document takes you back to your documents, which is the one to use if reloading lands you on the same error again. Reload is worth one try. Reset data is a last resort that clears the canvas data stored on this device, including anything not yet synced; a shared document is restored from our servers the next time you open it.

A whiteboard opens blank with no error Reload the page first. If it stays blank, contact support; this can indicate a sync problem on our side rather than lost content.

Could not read pixels from <host>: it does not allow cross-origin reads. Palette needs the image bytes, and that image’s host refuses to hand them over to a web page. Upload the image to the whiteboard instead of pasting its link.

“That image has no colour to extract.” The selected image is fully transparent or empty, so there is no palette to build.

“Could not load collaborative document/script” A server-side permission or configuration problem rather than your connection. Refresh once; if it persists, contact support.

Contacting support

Click Get Help in the sidebar footer, ask the Assistant, or click Contact support to file a ticket (Bug Report, Feature Request, Billing, or General Inquiry).