Working offline

Offline mode keeps a copy of your documents, sheets, canvases and files on the device you are using, so Nemi opens and keeps working when the connection does not. One switch covers Files, Docs, Sheets and Canvas: you do not turn it on again when you change apps. You can read, write and edit while disconnected, and what you typed is sent as soon as you are back. Open Settings, Offline to switch it on.

Switching it on#

It is off until you turn it on, and you turn it on per device. That is deliberate: a copy of your work on a borrowed laptop should be a decision you make on that laptop, not something that follows you there because you once made it on your phone.

What gets kept, and how you decide#

Two things fill the offline copy, and they work differently on purpose.

A device keeps as many of your marked items as its own budget allows, so something can be marked and still not be on the phone in your pocket. That is not a failure, it is the budget doing its job, and the Offline screen shows you what is actually there.

Controlling the space it uses#

• The budget is how much room Nemi may take on this device. Lowering it takes effect straight away: the least recently opened items go first.
• Marked items and unsent edits are never removed to make room. If the budget is too small to hold them, it is exceeded rather than honoured, and the screen says so. Unmark something or raise the budget.
• Include file contents is the setting to turn off first on a device that is short on space. Documents are text and cost very little; files are whole files.
• Remove all empties the copy on that device without changing what you have marked, so the next time you are online it fills back up.

Editing while you are offline#

Type as you normally would. Your edits are written to the device as you make them, so closing the laptop or reloading the tab does not lose them, and they are sent as soon as a connection comes back and the document is open. The Offline screen counts how many documents are still waiting.

Two people editing the same document offline is fine. Both sets of edits are merged when each device reconnects, rather than one replacing the other. What cannot merge is a document somebody deleted while you were away: it comes back as gone.

What is on the device, and who else can read it#

The copy lives in your browser on your own hardware. We do not hold it, cannot read it and cannot remove it for you remotely. Anybody who can use that device and reach that browser profile can open what is in it, so device encryption and a screen lock are what protect it.

• Signing out deletes it. Leaving the account takes the copy with it: the documents, the files, the stored parts of Nemi itself and the setting. Your theme and accessibility settings stay, so the sign-in screen you land on is still readable. Switching offline mode off does the same thing without signing out.
• Turning the switch off deletes it, all of it, immediately.
• Vault folders are never kept offline. They are encrypted with a key that only exists when you unlock them, and this feature does not reach them.

What still needs a connection#

• Uploading, converting and compressing files, all of which happen on our side.
• Meetings, and anything that is live by nature.
• Creating links, sending email, and anything that changes what other people can reach.
• Opening a document you have never opened on this device and have not marked, because there is nothing to open.
• Searching everything: what you can search offline is what the device is holding.