First, the reassuring bit: your pattern isn’t gone.
If you see PDF not available on this device on a pattern, the file itself is safe and exactly where you left it. What’s missing is permission. Yarn Squirrel knows which file belongs to this pattern, but this particular iPhone, iPad or Mac hasn’t been given access to it yet.
This comes up most often when you set up a new device, or open Yarn Squirrel on your iPad for the first time after importing patterns on your phone.
How to spot it
You’ll see a cloud icon with an exclamation mark, and a row that reads PDF not available on this device. In a pattern made of several parts, only the parts that can’t be reached are marked this way — the rest open as normal.
If the row instead says PDF (needs download) with a downward arrow, that’s something different and easier to fix. See What do the two cloud icons mean?.
Why it happens
When you imported the pattern, you chose to keep your PDFs where they already were rather than copying them into iCloud. That’s a perfectly good choice — it doesn’t use any extra storage — but it comes with one catch: the permission you gave to a file outside the app can’t travel between your devices. Apple ties it to the device that granted it.
So each new device needs to be shown your PDFs once. After that, it remembers.
Patterns stored in iCloud by Yarn Squirrel don’t have this problem, because the app keeps its own copy it can always reach. You can read about both options in Where Yarn Squirrel keeps your PDFs.
Three ways to fix it
If it’s just one pattern, tap the row that says PDF not available on this device and pick the file. On a multi-part pattern, tap the part you want and pick its file.
If a lot of patterns are affected — the usual situation on a new device — go to More → Settings → PDF Files → Reconnect PDFs. It lists everything this device can’t open and lets you point at many files at once. When all your patterns live in the same folder, it offers to reconnect the whole lot in a single tap.
In the appOpen Reconnect PDFs
If you’d rather not do this again, switch to storing PDFs in iCloud. Yarn Squirrel then keeps its own copy that every device can reach. See Changing where your PDFs are stored.
If reconnecting didn’t help
A few things can get in the way:
- You granted a folder, and the file is still unavailable. Granting that same folder again won’t change anything. Reconnect PDFs marks these files for you — point at those files directly instead.
- You renamed the file. When you pick several files at once, Yarn Squirrel matches them by file name. A renamed file needs reconnecting from its own pattern page, where there’s no doubt about which pattern you mean.
- Two patterns are waiting for files with the same name. Yarn Squirrel deliberately leaves these alone rather than risk attaching the wrong PDF to the wrong pattern. Reconnect them one at a time from each pattern.
- No location was ever saved for the file. There’s nothing for a folder or a name to match against, so these have to be reconnected from their own pattern page. Reconnect PDFs lists them separately so you know which ones need the personal touch.