Writing offline Beta
Lose the connection mid-sentence and nothing happens: you keep writing, every chapter of your book is already on your device, and it all syncs itself the moment you're back. It's new, so I'm calling it beta. Here's exactly how it behaves, including the edges.
How it works
When you open a book, the whole manuscript comes with it, every chapter, not just the one on screen. As you type, your words are saved to your device every couple of seconds, and to your account whenever there's a connection. Offline, the save indicator changes to “On this device”; when the connection returns, Galley works through every chapter you touched and sends each one up, then the indicator settles back to “Saved.” There's no button and nothing to remember.
A quiet bonus even when you're never offline: because saving to the device happens every couple of seconds, a crashed tab or a force-quit costs you a sentence at most, not minutes.
Install it, and even a reload works offline
Galley can be installed from your browser, look for the install icon in the address bar (Chrome and Edge show it; it's called “Install Galley”). Installed, it opens in its own window with a dock icon, and typing the address or reopening the app works with no connection at all: the writing room itself is kept on your device, not just your words. Without installing, offline writing still works, just keep the tab open while you're disconnected.
What works offline, and what can't
- Works: writing, everywhere in the book
- Type in any chapter, switch between chapters, use focus and typewriter modes, find & replace, everything on the page runs on your device.
- Needs a connection: structure & files
- Adding, renaming, reordering or deleting chapters; importing a manuscript; uploading images; exporting PDF and EPUB (books are built on the server); signing in on a new device. These grey out or say so rather than half-working.
Two devices, one chapter
If you wrote on your laptop offline and also edited the same chapter on another computer, Galley never makes you merge anything and never throws either version away. The words you wrote most recently win the page, and the other version is kept in that chapter's History, labelled “Kept from another device”, compare or restore it any time.
The honest limits
- One first visit per device. A computer that has never opened your book has nothing to show, open Galley once with a connection and you're covered from then on. (Every writing tool ever made shares this rule; native apps just hide it behind “install first.”)
- Each browser is its own device. Chrome's copy and Safari's copy are separate. Write offline in the browser you normally use.
- Private/incognito windows keep nothing. Close one and its offline copy is gone. Your account copy is untouched, but words written offline in a private window that was closed before reconnecting can't be recovered.
- Days offline are fine; forever isn't. Your device holds many novels' worth of writing, but the account copy is the master, reconnect now and then so it catches up.