Matlab App Designer Save Button Unresponsive

I am a student using Matlab App Designer (r2019a) for my final year university project and recently I have been running into a few problems, I cannot find a solution online so I am hoping somebody on here has experience with this.

I am in the process of creating an app and it is currently sat at 20,000 lines. This means that my laptop is unfortunately not powerful enough to use to continue creating code (it takes over 10 minutes sometimes to run the app from within app designer and even longer to load app designer itself) - so I am now trying to use university computers (note my laptop is Mac and the university computers windows). I used to be able to run through remote desktop on my laptop and it would work without any issues, however this is now not an option.

When I open App Designer through a university computer (whether that be in person or on remote desktop), the app will not save.

When I press to save work, nothing happens and the * indicating unsaved changes never goes away, no matter how long I wait for. I do not receive any error codes and cannot cancel by using Ctrl+C.

This also means I cannot run the app through app designer - as it saves before running. I now know that this is not a problem with running the app as I can run it through the command window without any issues, just with no saved changes.

I have tried several things, including increasing java heap memory, running on a local network (it currently runs through onedrive), checking the profiler etc; all of which do not solve the problem.

I do not think it is an issue with Mac vs Windows, as it used to work without any issues when remote desktop was used from my laptop previously (before I essentially returned to office).

Has anyone had this issue before? Has anyone resolved this type of issue before?

Thanks in advance.

[Mario Malic]

Did you get any answer from support related to previous question?

[George Barrass]

Hi Mario,

This is still related to the previous problem. I received one reply from tech support with a few things to try but unfortunately none of them worked. I sent a follow up and unfortunately have not had a response since.

As you can see from this question I think I have narrowed the problem down slightly to being a problem with the saving capabilities rather than the running capabilities.

[Mario Malic]

I do not think it is an issue with Mac vs Windows, as it used to work without any issues when remote desktop was used from my laptop previously. This doesn't eliminate your laptop from being the problem. Maybe you know someone who uses iOS and has better hardware, with more RAM than your laptop to test it out.

[George Barrass]

So are you suggesting that I attempt to run through someone elses laptop? Or run through remote desktop on their laptop?

For the former, i'm not sure what this would achieve as the app still does run on my laptop, just very slowly and I assume it would work on theirs also for this reason (unless the aim is to see if it doesn't work on their (to isolate to my laptop) rather than if it does).

For the latter, again i'm not sure what the aim of this is as it would still be using the same university computer.

[Mario Malic]

When I open App Designer through a university computer (whether that be in person or on remote desktop), the app will not save. Do you have previous versions of the app when it had less lines to test out the save functionality? How did you make an app with that many lines (in short period?), did you continue someone elses work? If the latter, did they use the same version of MATLAB to code the app?

It's unlikely that someone will have something to add on this question, as this question is of the software nature and not many people know stuff except the staff. How many gigs of RAM does your laptop have?

[George Barrass]

The only version of the app I have is one which has 700 lines, from a few months ago. This saves and runs without any issues.

A lot of lines have been added within this short period because even though I have been having troubles, I have still had deadlines to meet and have agonisingly been doing it through my laptop. A large chunk of this was copy and pasting components.

My laptop has 4GB RAM, whereas the university PC has 8GB.

[Mario Malic]

Yep, most likely it's the RAM.

Just a note, I am working on the app for 6 months or so, and I have 3k lines in App Designer, and few k outside of it. I wonder if you have an issue of duplicating components or if you actually need that many components. You can check this in App Designer yourself, without unzipping file like explained below.

Before going further, WARNING: do not to edit anything in the file.

First, copy your app to some other folder so you don't mess up your original file. What you'll do is to unzip the file into the new folder.

Find and open

\matlab\document.xml

Here's the example of duplicate components

        Test1EditField                  matlab.ui.control.NumericEditField
        WidthEditFieldLabel             matlab.ui.control.Label
        WidthEditField                  matlab.ui.control.NumericEditField
        DoesnotapplyCheckBox_14         matlab.ui.control.CheckBox
        DoesnotapplyCheckBox_15         matlab.ui.control.CheckBox
        RowEditFieldLabel               matlab.ui.control.Label
        RowEditField                    matlab.ui.control.EditField
        TestLabel                       matlab.ui.control.Label
        DeckDropDown_5Label             matlab.ui.control.Label
        DeckDropDown_5                  matlab.ui.control.DropDown
        DeckDropDown_3                  matlab.ui.control.DropDown
        DeckDropDown_3                  matlab.ui.control.DropDown

See this double DeckDropDown_3, there are plenty of those down the file, usually when you copy and paste the components, they should have the different number, just like these two checkboxes with 14 and 15. The components do not have to be in order, you may see them at some other place down the list.

[George Barrass]

Hi, I have now checked all of the components.

Unfortunately, there are no dupliactes (although my eyes could be failing me and I may have missed some). The number of lines is just a result of there being 2200 components.

The only thing that I noticed was that it creates the label and edit field for Numeric Edit Fields seperately, I am assuming this is normal, however it adds up to a lot of extra components.

Given the number of components, it could be a case that some could be duplicated 1000 lines after the original, and unfortunately I don't think I will ever be able to spot that.

With regards to RAM, how can you explain my 4GB RAM laptop running the file (just slowly) and the 8GB RAM PC not running the file at all - even if left for hours on end (one instance I set running at 10am this morning and it is now 3:15pm)?

[Mario Malic]

You mentioned that you're using the OneDrive, did you try to copy the file on to Uni PC locally, and run it from there? Maybe there's an issue saving the file to OneDrive.

[George Barrass]

I have tried this and unfortunately it is still not working. I have even tried pausing onedive and then tried saving locally and still no luck unfortunately.

I do apologise for facing you with what seems like a very unique problem, however you can probably imagine the stress that I am facing right now given this project is worth over 20% of my final degree.

[Mario Malic]

To be honest, this could be something most of us here have no experience of, as most of users here are volunteers who help in coding, and this is a software issue. Due to the fact that this is a software issue and it is not possible to find out what causes the problem, App Designer is quite new and digging into its internal stuff is time inefficient for volunteers. The best bet is the customer service, I think it's possible to share your app with them under NDA, this way is just a wild guessing which probably won't lead anywhere.

I think it's worth of a try to try it on different computer and different version of MATLAB. BTW, I do recall some questions that App Designer would slow down once certain number of components is reached, which was fixed in newer versions.

[George Barrass]

Thank you for your help regardless.

I managed to stumble upon a computer that has access to both 2019a and 2019b. Upon running using 2019b I was very surprised to see that it worked without any issues! I even had to double take to make sure!

I could have accidentally used it previously? However I think this would have given me an error.

Looks like i've now got to go around installing 2019b on my laptop to run it on there.

Thanks again,

George

[Mario Malic]

I would suggest to go for latest version if available. This post says that there have been massive improvements from 2020a.

App Designer apps are forward (dont know about backward) compatible between the versions, the first time you launch an app in the new version there will be updating process to the new version.

Good luck on your project!

[George Barrass]

Thank you!

I don't think anywhere has 2020a/b however I have asked IT support if they would be able to install it.

Again, thank you for your help, it is massively appreciated!