[Feature] Offline Support for iOS App

[nhemnt]

Problem

The iOS app requires the laptop backend to be running. I have to turn on my laptop just to log my medication/mood at night.

Proposed solution

Add offline support so data can be recorded on the iOS app and automatically synced when the server is back online.

Alternatives considered

No response

Affected surface

iOS app (v1.5+)

Additional context

No response

Pre-flight checks

• I confirmed this is not a duplicate of an existing feature request.
• I'm proposing a feature, not asking a usage question (those go to Discussions or the docs).

[MBombeck]

Thanks, that is a fair pain point: logging a dose or a mood at night should not depend on a laptop being awake. Some groundwork already exists on the server side: since v1.37.18 every create and update the app sends carries an idempotency key, so a queued offline write can be replayed safely without producing duplicates, and entries carry their own recorded-at timestamps, so a late sync does not shift your data to the sync moment. What remains is the client half: a local queue in the iOS app that records while offline and drains once the server is reachable again. I have put that on the iOS backlog for evaluation. No date promised yet, but the request is noted and the server will not be the blocker. Refs #795

[MBombeck]

A correction to my earlier answer, and it is good news: the client half already exists. I said what remained was a local queue in the iOS app that records offline and drains when the server is reachable. That was wrong — I checked the iOS source rather than my memory of it this time.

The app has carried a persistent, encrypted outbox since v0.13.0 (June 2026), with a dead-letter queue, write-ahead persistence, an account lease so a queued write cannot land in the wrong account after a login change, and four separate drain triggers (foreground, background task, reachability, and explicit sync). Medication intake and mood are both fully wired into it — the queue carries takeMedication, logMood and logMedicationIntake kinds along with their edit and delete counterparts. Logging offline should give you optimistic UI with a "queued" indicator, and the replay uses a persisted idempotency key against the idempotent server routes, so a drain that is interrupted mid-flight does not duplicate anything.

There is a small irony in the details: the one queue kind that is not implemented is HealthKit sample sync. The outbox is not the HealthKit path at all — it is exactly the manual-entry path you are asking about.

So the open question is no longer "build it", it is why you did not experience it, and that is now what the iOS ticket is tracking. Three candidates, and you can help rule out the first two:

1. App version. Which HealthLog version does Settings → About show on your iPhone? Anything before v0.13.0 genuinely has no queue.
2. Cold start while offline. Was the app already running, or did you launch it fresh with the server unreachable? Launch needs a few gates to pass and those have to fail open when there is no network; if one of them fails closed, you would be stopped before you ever reach the logging screen — which would look exactly like "the app needs the server".
3. An empty local store from some earlier state.

If it is (2), that is a real bug and a much more useful one to have found than a missing feature, because it would mean the queue works and something in front of it does not let you reach it.

No date promised and nothing closed here. But you should not have to wait for a feature that shipped fourteen months of releases ago — I would rather find out what actually happened to you.