Capturing offline
In Capture, a grade saves without a connection. A museum basement, a car on a back road, a house with the internet down. Save it as normal, and the app holds it on your device until it can send it.
What you will see
Instead of the usual confirmation, Capture says, for example, Grade saved for Maya. It goes to Records once you are online. The grade is written to your device and queued. There is nothing to do next, and nothing to remember to press later.
A photo needs a connection to upload. If there is none, Capture says so before it closes and keeps your photo in the form: Photos need a connection. Reconnect and this will save in a tap. A note, or a lesson or an exam in Plan, needs a connection too, and Capture says so.
When the connection returns the queue is sent on its own. Your records then update the way they would have at the time.
Why records look unchanged until it syncs
School days, hours, and grades are worked out from what has reached your account. A capture still sitting in the queue has not arrived yet, so a day recorded offline this morning may not appear in Records until the sync goes through. Nothing has been lost in the meantime.
Sending the same thing twice
You cannot, by design. Each queued capture carries its own identifier, and the server uses it to recognize a capture it has already stored. If a sync is interrupted halfway and retries, the retry is matched to the original rather than filed as a second copy. A flaky connection costs you nothing but time.
“Captures need attention”
Occasionally a queued capture cannot be filed once it reaches the server, usually because the thing it belonged to has changed underneath it. A subject deleted while you were offline is the common one. The app says how many are affected and why, and holds them on the device rather than discarding them quietly.
You can clear unsynced captures deliberately from the same screen. That one is permanent, so it is worth reading the reason first.
What needs a connection
Generating a PDF, exporting your data, scanning a book’s contents page, and account changes like billing all happen on our servers, so they need you online. The pages need a connection to open too, since they read your family’s records from there, and so does ticking off a block. The one exception is Capture in the phone app, which opens even with no connection at all. A grade is the part built to keep going when the connection drops, because that is the part with a deadline of today.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose a grade if I close the app before it syncs? No. A grade saved offline is written to your device and queued there, so closing the app, locking the phone or losing the connection entirely does not discard it. It sends itself when you are back online.
Can a retry save the same capture twice? No. Each queued capture carries its own identifier and the server matches a retry to the original rather than filing a second copy, so an interrupted sync costs you time and nothing else.
Can I export a PDF while offline? No. Documents are built on our servers, so exports, data downloads and billing all need a connection. A grade in Capture is the part built to work without one.
Where to go next
Exporting records covers the parts that do need a connection.