Sync changes when devices or collaborators are not online at the same time #187
Description
Right now, syncing in Reflection seems to require both sides to be online at the same time. If two devices, or a device and a collaborator, are never online simultaneously, changes don’t get exchanged. From a user perspective, this can be quite limiting. For example:
- If I edit a document and then close the app, those changes won’t reach my other devices or collaborators unless they happen to be online at the same time.
- If a collaborator edits a document while I’m offline, I won’t see those changes automatically when I open the app later.
This makes asynchronous collaboration and multi-device use harder than expected, especially if devices are used at different times of the day. Ideally, it would be possible for changes to be exchanged even when peers are not online at the same time, so that everything eventually syncs once everyone reconnects.
One possible direction (and this is just an idea from a user point of view) could be having something that stays online and acts as a bridge between devices. For example, this could be something you install on a home server or a small VPS. I don’t know whether that makes sense technically or how it would fit with the current architecture, but conceptually it would allow changes to be picked up later instead of requiring simultaneous connections.
This is meant as a discussion rather than a concrete proposal. I’m mostly curious whether asynchronous syncing is something you’re thinking about, and what approaches might make sense while staying true to Reflection’s local-first goals.