Would you give up features for an app that works offline?
You open a document on a train and the connection drops. Being able to read it is useful. Being able to finish editing it and save the changes is a different promise.
For an app maker, keeping work on the device can mean more to maintain. For the person using it, the tradeoff might be fewer AI features or waiting to share changes with a teammate.
Would you choose a simpler app if its main task worked without internet?
Name one app where offline access has changed your choice, or where staying connected was worth it.
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It depends on the task. I'd choose offline access for writing, but staying connected in Figma feels worth it when a teammate and I need to make decisions together. Which features would your users actually miss while offline?
For a collaborative app, I'd worry most about two people acting on different versions. I'd keep offline edits but show clearly that they haven't been shared yet, and ask before overwriting a teammate's changes.
@stan_xu1 That makes sense. For me, being able to edit a draft offline matters most; live collaboration can wait until I reconnect.
Yes, especially for notes or documents. I’d happily give up a few extras if I could keep working on a train and sync later.
For mobile apps this matters even more than on desktop. A web app wrapped in a phone shell usually just shows a blank screen when the signal drops, while a native app can at least open, show what you last saw and queue changes. Notes and to-do apps are where I'd take fewer features every time. For anything shared, I agree with Aleksandr: keep the offline edits, but make it obvious they haven't synced yet.