strategy for offline use

punkish

so I see a lot of requests for offline functionality of some sort, but no development from the Cronometer team to report on. It so happens I am going to be mostly offline for a month starting next week. What should I do to continue tracking my intake. What has worked for others?

On a related note, lack of offline data entry and syncing is seriously making me consider leave Cronometer (I am a paying member). I realize there is not much competition in the offline functionality area but I've found one (MyNetDiary) that does seem to offer offline usage. My problem with Cronometer is its heavy dependence upon a really good network connection. If my network is even the least bit flaky, Cronometer just conks out and restarts. The iPhone app is rather unusable not just in the offline area but in other ways as well (try entering or finding a custom recipe in the mobile app – it is a futile exercise in frustration).

Marie_Eve_Cronometer

Hello @punkish ,

Thanks for the feedback! We cannot offer an offline mode at the moment. The databases need to be accessed and are very large. Plus license agreements won't allow us to let you have them stored on your device.

Are you getting any specific error messages when your network connection is bad? Would it be possible to email us some screenshots at suppport@cronometer.com?

Kind regards,
Marie-Eve

punkish

Hi, I wish I could mail you screenshots, but there really is nothing to mail. When the network is flaky, the symptom can be any of the following:

the apple will spin and spin and then there will be a network timeout message

or

the entire page will reload as if the app has "crashed"

Dubuque

Limited offline would be a great feature. I prefer Cronometer to MFP. However, I use MFP because it has an off line mode.

Cassie5535

Thanks for the clarification

KPM

We cannot offer an offline mode at the moment. The databases need to be accessed and are very large. Plus license agreements won't allow us to let you have them stored on your device.

This is no reason to not allow for limited offline capabilities. I understand not being able to access NCCDB or similar datbases, but I can't think of a reason why we shouldn't be able to access our custom recipes or at least view our diary. Both of which really ought to be stored on our devices already.

As it is, due to the login screen the app is completely useless without the internet. Surely I can't be alone in needing to view my diary when I'm offline? And if we could also have access to our own custom recipes, then it would open up all kinds of possibilities in terms of planning ahead for when we know we're going to be offline for an extended period of time.