Purple Native apps still work when your device isn't connected to the internet. However, there are some limits to what you can do without an internet connection. This article explains offline behaviour and how you can define an offline view to let your users know that they are currently not online while using your app.

Purple Native Apps still work even if your users' device isn't connected to the internet. However, there are some limits on what you can do without internet connectivity.

The first time using the app, the user needs to be connected to the internet.
Once something in the app has been viewed, it's cached so it can be viewed again without an internet connection.

When signing in or signing out, the cache is cleared, and content will disappear or queries will not be resolved. This happens because some options within the app change depending on the login status.

When trying to sign in or sign out in offline mode, it's likely that the user won't be able to see views while staying offline.

Some searches won't work offline unless you've already looked at them online at least once, even if you set them to only show things you've saved. 

To ensure consistent usability while being offline, we recommend creating a view that displays all content that is completely or - depending on your desired behavior - partially available for offline usage.

To ensure your users can easily find this view, you can trigger a message if the device is online and link directly to the aforementioned view. 

This view may show content you've explicitly saved and content you've viewed online. 

1) In Experience Builder -> views.json, you can create a view to display downloaded content, including partially downloaded elements: 

Note that the actual value of the emptyMessage is controlled via messages.json. For further details on that, see 

2) You can now create a message that will be triggered if the device is offline. To ensure maintainability, this should be done in two steps: 

a) Creation of a view with the desired message and behaviour. Not depicted, but possible is to add further tracking parameters to that view as well (see 

 for details). You are free to add CSS accordingly to style that part to your need. 

b) Inserting that view into any other view where you want to display the message

With this approach, you can make significant changes to the message without manually altering many views. You also get the freedom to integrate other elements that you trigger on specific conditions. 

Purple Native Apps still work even if your device isn't connected to the internet. But there are some limits on what you can do without internet.

Offline behaviour