Away from home and offline: what works

The app keeps your libraries on the device itself. That is why almost everything works without internet. What changes depending on where you are is when your changes reach the other devices.

What always works, without a connection

• Seeing your library, searching, filtering and opening the page of any book and of each of its copies.
• Adding, editing and deleting, typing the data yourself.
• Noting the books you want to have (“Missing”) and marking what you have read.
• Making a backup (Backups, export and import).
• When you are in a bookshop, finding out if you already have that book (“Do I have it?”): the check is made on your device.

What needs internet

• Looking up a book’s details (title, author, cover): the app asks an internet website for them. Without a connection, the search by ISBN (the number printed in the book, next to the barcode), by code or by title finds nothing. You can add the book by typing the details yourself and complete them later (Add a book).
• Covers you do not have saved.
• Creating an account, signing in and everything about the cloud (The cloud).

If you only share over the Wi-Fi at home

Changes pass from one device to another, if you paired them before (connected so they pass changes; see Share at home), when they are on the same Wi-Fi and the app is open on both. If you change something away from home, your other devices do not know until you come back. Nothing is lost: they update by themselves when you return.

If you are together but without Wi-Fi, on one of the two phones turn on the “hotspot” (the option that shares that phone’s internet with another device) and connect the other one to that network. Then pair, or pass the changes, as you would at home. It does not use your mobile data plan: everything goes between the two devices.

If you have an account and uploaded the library

Your devices update from anywhere, as long as they have internet. At the end of the menu you will see one of these phrases:

• “Up to date”, or “Synced” with the time: everything is up to date.
• “Not connected to the cloud”: there is no internet, or the app cannot reach the cloud. Everything keeps working here and over the Wi-Fi at home; the changes will be uploaded when the connection comes back.
• “Live” or “Not live”: they tell you whether the cloud notifies your device at the same moment someone changes something. The official server does not do that yet, so for now you will see “Not live”: other people’s changes arrive when the app updates, for example when you open it.

If two people change the same thing without a connection, when they meet the most recent change of each piece of data wins (the title, the date…). If one deletes something the other had changed, when they meet it disappears for everyone.

What the app does not do

• Without a cloud account, there is no way to see your library from far away. Without an account, changes do not reach one device from another over the internet.
• The app does not send you a notification when someone changes something and the app is closed. It updates when you open it.