Sample guide: offline-first note apps explained
Sample article for the Sandbox Notes site: what offline-first means for a note app, how changes sync later, and what happens when edits collide.
This is sample content for the Sandbox Notes test site.
What “offline-first” means
An offline-first app treats the copy of your data on your device as the one you work with. It saves every change locally first and talks to the server in the background. The network becomes a way to share changes, not a condition for making them.
How changes sync later
While you are offline, changes wait in a queue on the device. When the connection returns, the app sends them in order and receives what others changed in the meantime. Web apps can do this with storage built into the browser, such as IndexedDB, and with service workers that keep the app itself available offline.
When edits collide
Two people can change the same note while one of them is offline. Apps handle this in different ways: some keep the last change, some merge changes line by line, and some use data structures designed to merge automatically. Whatever the method, a good app keeps the overwritten version somewhere you can restore it.
Read more
See how the sample product does it on the offline sync page, or start with how to take useful meeting notes.