Does Essay work offline?
Yes! You can use Essay without an internet connection! While Essay is a web app and requires an internet connection for some functionality, we wanted to offer more flexibility to return to your work and continue writing even when you aren't connected to the internet. Read on to learn about how to use Essay offline.
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How does Essay sync data while online?
Essay is a web app, so any change you make on the platform is stored in the cloud, synced, and reflected on any device you use.
What features are available offline?
You can open Essay without an internet connection, as long as you have either:
Visited Essay recently on the same device and browser you are using
Or, have downloaded the Essay PWA and opened it recently
Keep working on and editing existing documents
Access all your existing work from any of your folders
Switch between existing documents so you can work on multiple projects while offline
View your notes
What features are NOT available offline?
Creating new documents, notes, folders or tags
Editing or linking notes (to essays, outline sections, sentences, etc.)
Using the Save for Later feature
Moving essays between folders
Editing any user settings (password, default styling, etc.)
How does Essay work offline?
As mentioned above, as long as you've used Essay recently, you can load Essay while your are offline.
While working offline, you will get a pop-up message telling you that you are offline:
You will also see an offline icon at the top of your screen:
Essay saves your work to your device while working offline, so all of your changes / edits are saved locally. This means you can close your tab or browser and come back to it; your essay will load with all changes saved. However, if you clear browser data, or your browser cache, you will lose any changes you've made offline using Essay.
Your work is saved in your cache for up to 30 days, meaning you can be without an internet connection for up to 30 days before having to reconnect the internet to sync with our server. However, we recommend connecting as often as possible so you receive software updates and to prevent losing your data. We can't guarantee that work saved locally to your browser will not be lost.
Once you reconnect to the internet after having been offline, the changes sync to our server.
What happens if you work on multiple devices offline?
We recommend you only use one device while working offline, as we can't keep the document synched between devices without an internet connection, and your changes could be lost.
If you happen to use Essay while offline on multiple devices (or one device online, and the other offline), our server will attempt to keep these versions synched as best it can. Generally the outcome is that you'll have a version saved to your version history containing any overwritten changes from the less recently updated document.
For example, let's say you are working offline on your phone and your laptop. While you are offline, we can't sync the changes between the two devices. Therefore, when you reconnect both devices to the internet, we try to save the more recent version as the working version, while the other version is saved to your version history.
Data loss can happen here, so we don't recommend using multiple devices while offline.
Conclusion
Essay is best used online, with a stable internet connection. But, if you are somewhere with limited internet or without a connection, we have offline functionality to give you the flexibility to continue writing.
Open Essay while you are offline, access all your work, and continue writing & editing. Essay will save your data locally and sync your data with our server as soon as you reconnect to the internet.