Offline support
How an app behaves when the network drops: whether work in progress is kept, queued and sent later, or simply lost.
Updated October 2026 · with examples from our own builds
What does offline support mean in practice?
Phones lose signal in lifts, basements, trains and building sites. Offline support ranges from the basics, such as never losing what someone typed, to full offline use with data synced when the connection returns.
Who uses the app, and where, decides how much you need. A field engineer confirming deliveries on a construction site needs drafts that survive a dropped connection; a social feed can show a gentle error. Deciding early is cheap, and adding sync to a finished app is not.
Offline behaviour has to be tested on purpose: airplane mode in the middle of a form, a server that stops responding, an app killed halfway through a flow.
Offline support at a glance
- Minimum
- Never lose what the user typed
- Full offline
- Local storage plus sync and conflict rules
- Test with
- Airplane mode, a stopped server and a killed app
Where has offline support come up in our builds?
The site engineer's phone portal is designed so that every form keeps a local draft if the signal drops, for confirming deliveries line by line and filing daily reports from site. It is a prototype; no application code has been written.
The pre-Play QA pass break-tested both apps the way store testers work, including airplane mode, killing the app mid-flow, double taps on submit and a stopped server; all 28 defects it logged were fixed.
Common questions about offline support
Does my app need to work offline?
Ask where your users will be. Field staff on sites or in vehicles need forms that survive a dropped signal; most consumer apps need only clear errors and no lost input.
How do I test what my app does without a network?
Switch on airplane mode in the middle of a form, stop the test server while a request is in flight and kill the app halfway through a flow, then check what was kept.
Related terms
Sources
Planning a product and not sure where offline support fits? Ask us, or browse all 116 terms in the glossary.