Local-first software keeps the primary copy of your data on your own device. The network becomes a way to sync and share, not the place where your work actually lives.
Harder to build, easier to live with
Conflicts have to be merged instead of simply overwritten, and being offline is a normal state rather than an error screen. But the result keeps working when a company changes its pricing, gets acquired or shuts a service down.
- Your notes open on a plane.
- An outage elsewhere is not an outage for you.
- Leaving the service does not mean leaving your data.
More tools are moving in this direction, simply because people are tired of renting access to their own thoughts.
Mira HoltEditor at Bet on Future
Writes about tools, habits and the quiet craft of keeping things running.
