Wow, I never noticed that problem before, but you are correct!
Airtable’s iOS app does not run in the background nor process any background activity, so it will not finish an upload if you don’t stay on the exact same screen where you started the upload. That is a bummer!
I would definitely submit this as a feature request (maybe a bug report?) to support@airtable.com, and hopefully they can resolve it at some point in the future.
In the meantime, if you’d like to have reliable attachment uploads that operate in the background, the best way to do this would be to integrate Airtable’s mobile app with Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.
Fillout is 100% free and allows you to update existing Airtable records, including managing attachments for existing Airtable records.
Fillout will give you a formula that you create in Airtable that will generate a unique link for each one of your Airtable records.
So, from within the Airtable mobile app, you would click on the link which will take you to that particular record in Fillout. Then, you can upload your attachments there.
Note that if you leave Fillout during the upload, you will still need to come back and finish submitting the form, but your uploaded attachment will be sitting there, finished uploading & ready to be submitted.
Fillout offers hundreds of other advanced features for Airtable as well.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
