This article helps you check whether the sync speed you're seeing is normal, or whether something's actually gone wrong.

Expected timings

Note: If what you're seeing is close to these numbers, everything is working as expected — no action needed.

Why a sync can take much longer

Password Boss processes sync requests one at a time, in sequence, rather than all at once in parallel. This is a deliberate design choice: it prevents two changes from overwriting each other and accidentally losing data.

The trade-off is that if one large operation is running, everything behind it in the queue has to wait its turn. This isn't a bug — it's the system protecting your data at the cost of speed during specific situations.

The main trigger: large imports

The most common cause of a slow sync is a large import happening on one of your devices. While the import is processing:

• Other changes you make have to wait in line behind it.
• Syncing that update out to your other devices can take 5–15 minutes in the worst cases observed.

If you (or a teammate) recently ran a large import, a slow sync afterward is expected, not a failure.

The "taking longer than expected" prompt

The on-screen sequence reads: “Please wait while we prepare the application,” followed after about 10 seconds by “This is taking longer than expected.”

If you see this message, it means the app is still waiting on a response that's queued behind other activity — it has not failed or stalled. Refreshing the page or app is safe to do, but it will not push your request ahead in the queue or speed things up.

The app is spinning or won't load at startup

This is a different symptom from the sync-queue delay described above: the app doesn't finish loading or authenticating when you open it, rather than a specific change taking a while to sync across devices.

This happens while the app downloads and decrypts your stored data. The more items in your vault, the longer this can take — a few extra moments is expected and not a sign of a problem.

What to do

• If you know a large import is running (yours or someone else's on the account), wait it out before making further changes — adding more changes on top just extends the queue.
• Before assuming sync has failed, check the other device's own sync interval or refresh behavior — sometimes what looks like a stuck sync is really just that device not having checked in yet.