Canvas built-in offline is now just one click away!
We are pleased to announce the Public preview of mobile offline for canvas apps on iOS, Android and Windows devices. Mobile offline has been available in Experimental Preview since May 2023. We’ve been listening to your feedback and we’re excited to make this feature available by default for Power Apps makers.
With this preview, you can make Dataverse data available offline in your app with the flip of a switch. Just build your app with normal Power Fx formulas and the offline feature handles all the complexity for you.
Canvas offline apps are easy. Here’s why.
Creating an app with data available offline is easy. Just enable the app for offline in the General Settings in the Power Apps Studio and you’re on your way.
Once enabled, here is what happens in the background: an offline-enabled Power App first downloads on the device all of the data it needs from the server – to determine the data that need to be downloaded, the system uses an offline profile. An offline profile is a set of filters and restrictions on the data your app loads to users’ mobile devices. You can build complex offline apps using custom offline profiles that help you to optimize your app’s performance by reducing the amount of data downloaded to the device. But don’t worry! We introduced an auto-generated mode for simple apps that will work great for small to medium-sized data sets. You won’t have to think about it!
Once your data is downloaded, your offline enabled canvas app works in an offline first approach – the app reads and writes data to a local store on the device whether or not the network is available. It doesn’t have to be connected to work. Then, your changes and changes on the server are regularly synchronized for you automatically in the background when the network is available.
Limitations and Availability
- Dataverse Files and Images are not yet supported for this feature. We know how important it is for users and we are doing our best to enable it as soon as possible.
- Non-Dataverse connectors like Sharepoint are not supported in offline.
Power Apps developers can turn on the canvas offline feature in the Power Apps Studio by navigating to the settings dialog of the canvas app (Settings > General ) and toggling “Can be used offline”.
We are looking forward to your feedback
Your feedback will help us make this new app even better. Share your feedback on our Power Apps forum.
You can also reach us by filling out this form and we’ll get back to you right away. We are particularly interested to understand how you are using offline in your apps.
For more details, see the documentation.
