What offline-first means for you

Offline-first is a paradigm for building apps. Before the introduction of the cloud, most of our apps were offline-first. All data was stored on your computer, and an internet connection wasn’t strictly needed.

Today, Cloud-based apps are dominating our lives – with many important advantages. You can work seamlessly across devices. If you lose a device or it breaks down, you don’t lose your data, but can jsut continue working on another device.

Unfortunately, these advancements came with a cost: Apps now require an active internet connection. For many apps, you need to wait on every click for the results to be returned from a server. This is a painful experience and prevents us from working at our own pace.

It is time to merge these two worlds. That’s what local-first or offline-first is all about. It comes with all the benefits and basically no disadvantages. You’re keeping all the advantages of the cloud but the user experience is fundamentally different.

With an offline-first app, you’re more independent. Server outages happen all the time, everywhere. And sometimes, we don’t have a stable internet connection. With an offline-first app, this won’t affect you. You will be able to continue working. While not every detail of Capacities will be offline-first, most of it will. No core functionality will require an internet connection anymore.

On top of that, you don’t need to wait for content to be loaded; it’s already there. The technology you use for your work is no longer the bottleneck. You now define how fast you work. While Capacities is not perfectly fast yet, you can expect to see huge improvements in the transition to offline-first. We promise that you’ll feel the difference.

Last, you’re in better control of your data. Regardless of what happens to Capacities, you’ll always be able to export your data on your device. Nobody, not even us, can prevent you from accessing and using your data.

We are convinced this is a fundamental change in what Capacities is and what it will be capable of. We’re excited to make your knowledge work more effective and fun. You can expect these improvements to be released in the coming weeks and months. We’re sure you’ll like them.