Offline Desktop Application

Suggestion Box
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This is THE biggest issue missing in tools like Coda and Notion. If there was some kind of desktop application that could save all of my workspace data locally that would be amazing. Knowing that I can still access my critical information if I’m traveling or if the internet goes out would be a huge relief for me and my business. And if this application could sync with your online workspace once connectivity is restored, that would be mind-blowing.

Honestly, if you were able to achieve this feature, I might never leave this tool and I know lots of other people would drop their current note-taking apps for Coda in a heartbeat.

2 Likes
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Hi @C.R_Rowenson :blush: !

You might want to add your vote here :blush: :

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Thank you! I did a search for Offline and didn’t find it. I’ll check it out :slight_smile:

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Hello @C.R_Rowenson ,

Not exactly desktop, but if you have (and keep) your Coda doc open when you go offline, you can keep using it and it will sync back with the ‘cloud’ version when you get a connection.

Personally, I am glad it does not work as a desktop application with local storage: we use Coda to collaborate and collect data; syncing back a few (or many) offline copies after having been off the grid for a couple of hours would be a disaster for our way or working.

We have had to deal with that situation when we were in a remote mountain area and we have had to build some custom subroutines to deal with (sort of) duplicate records when multiple users came back on line.

I am sure there are situations where this is less of an issue, I am just mentioning this to illustrate it is not so straightforward as one might think.

Greetings,
Joost

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And also a serious security challenge.

Unlike SaaS systems which have one point of attack, Desktops have many attack vectors that can be exploited including physical and logical paths to wreak havoc. And even if they got away with what’s only stored locally, the broad array of risks mount up quickly. Hackers (which are generally not humans) could:

  • Delete your data locally, then a sync would destroy it in the Coda mother ship.
  • Change your content by injecting words and data that could easily spread to many other documents through dependencies.
  • Extract your Coda credentials, possibly your API tokens, and really make a mess of the entire Coda account.

I like your suggestion, but I like the security my team currently enjoys and I understand local storage is a nightmare for the SaaS providers.