Working offline

What keeps working

• Your songs on this device: every tool, every view, playing, practising, recording and exports.
• Your Stab Cloud songs. The app keeps a copy of each of them on the device, so they open, play and save offline too. Edits wait on the device and go up by themselves when the connection is back (see below).
• Your purchase. The desktop licence is a signed file on the computer, checked there at every start; Stab checks it with its server about once a day when it can, and without a network the licence stands.
• Sounds and models already downloaded from the Sound Library, and the listening tools that use them: they run on the device.

What needs a connection

• Signing in to Stab Cloud, and anything that reaches it: songs moving to and from Stab Cloud, version history, share links, shared songs and their invitations, and Publish.
• Play Together from anywhere, which goes through Stab’s relay: see Hosting a session.
• Downloads: kits, instruments and models from the Sound Library.
• Help: these pages open in the browser. A YouTube reference video needs the connection too, as it plays from YouTube: see YouTube problems.
• Buying Stab or Stab Cloud, and entering a licence key, once per computer. Offline, the paywall says “Connect to buy; everything else keeps working.”

Stab Cloud songs while offline

A cloud song edited offline keeps its edits on the device. Its status says “Can’t reach Stab Cloud: edits go up when it’s back”, and the home’s Stab Cloud card counts the songs whose edits are going up. When the connection comes back, Stab sends them by itself; nothing needs doing. Closing the song or quitting doesn’t lose them.

If the same song was changed on another device meanwhile, both sets of edits are kept: where they touch different things they’re merged, and where they touch the same thing a conflict version is kept beside the song. See A conflict version appeared.

A song can also turn read only once the connection is back, if your Stab Cloud holds more than its plan keeps (a subscription that ended while you were offline, for instance). Stab says so in a notice ending “Your last edits are kept on this device and go up by themselves once it’s within its plan.” Nothing is lost: see Three free songs.

A song signed out of Stab Cloud says “Signed out: edits stay here until you sign in”: its edits go up once you sign in again with the same account.

On the web

The web app is kept by your browser once you’ve opened it, so it starts without a connection. But the web keeps no songs of its own: your songs are in Stab Cloud, and opening one, saving it and signing in need the connection. While the browser is offline, a strip under the title bar says so: “Offline: keep this tab open until it’s back”.

• A song you’re editing sends its edits to Stab Cloud shortly after you stop. If the connection drops, they wait in the page and go up when it’s back. They’re kept in the browser too: if the tab closes before they’ve gone up (a computer’s browser asks first only when an edit isn’t kept yet, in the moment just after you make it; a phone’s browser can close a tab in the background without asking), they go up the next time you open Stab in this browser, signed in to the same account. If the song changed elsewhere meanwhile, both are kept. A private window keeps nothing once it’s closed.
• A share link says “Stab Cloud can’t be reached. Check the connection, then reload.” when it can’t open the song.
• A Play Together session needs the connection throughout: when it drops, the page says “Connection lost: reconnecting…”.

To work on songs without a connection, use Stab’s app on your computer, tablet or phone: it keeps a copy of your Stab Cloud songs on the device.