Use the app with no signal

At-bats you record with no bars are saved on the phone and sent later — nothing is lost. Here is what waits, where to check it, and what your teammates see meanwhile.

The phone app is built for a dugout with no signal. It keeps its own copy of everything on the phone and draws every screen from that copy, so recording an at-bat, scoring a game play by play, making a game or fixing one all work with no bars at all. The save goes through there and then — the at-bat is in the game, the stats move, the screen is right — and the change waits on the phone until it can be sent. Nothing is lost and nothing has to be re-entered later. This is the question people are most often unsure about at the field, and the answer is the reassuring one: record the game, worry about the signal afterwards.

What happens to those waiting changes happens without you. Each one joins a queue on the phone, and the queue is sent whenever the app can reach the server: about once a minute while the app is open, the moment you bring it back to the front, the moment the signal comes back, and whenever you pull down to refresh a list. There is no upload button to remember and no step you can forget — a game recorded in aeroplane mode goes up on the drive home while the phone is in your pocket.

The website is the other way round, and cannot be otherwise: it asks the server to save every change as you make it. So the website has no offline mode and nothing to sync — what it shows you has already been saved — and with no connection it tells you so instead of pretending.

On your phone

  1. On Home, tap your initial in the top right to open Profile, and look in the APP group for Sync status. The row is quiet when there is nothing to tell you, which is the usual state and means everything you have recorded has gone.
  2. Tap it. The screen is Sync Status, and the card at the top holds the two readings that matter.
  3. Last updated is when the phone last heard back from the server: Just now, or 5m ago, or a date, or Never if it has not managed yet. A stale time with no bars is expected, not a fault.
  4. Pending appears only when something is waiting, and counts the changes not yet sent. A number here is not a problem — it is the queue doing its job — and it clears itself the next time there is a connection.
  5. Update Now pushes the queue and pulls anything new immediately, if you would rather watch it happen than wait. Pulling down to refresh any list does the same thing.
  6. The line at the foot of the screen is the promise in the app's own words: "Your data syncs automatically in the background and whenever you pull to refresh. Changes made offline upload the next time you're connected."

On the web

  1. There is nothing to check and no sync screen to open: if the page shows it, the server has it.
  2. If the connection drops while you are recording, the save fails out loud — "Couldn't reach the server — your at-bat wasn't saved. Try again." — and the at-bat is not in the game. Try it again once you are back.
  3. "Failed to save at-bat" is a different message and means something different: the request did arrive and the server refused it. Reloading the game shows which of the two happened, because its list is read back from the server.
  4. At the field, use the phone app. It is the half that works without a signal, and everything you record there turns up on the website once it syncs.

A badge on that Sync status row is the one case that wants you, and it is not the same thing as Pending. Pending means not sent yet. A badge means the phone tried, the server refused, and the app has stopped retrying — most often because what it was saving no longer makes sense, like an at-bat for somebody who has since been taken off the team. That is rare, and it is worth knowing it is reported rather than swallowed.

On your phone only

  1. A card edged in red on the Sync Status screen is a save the server refused. It counts the changes and says what that costs: "This is only on this phone. Your teammates can't see it until it goes through."
  2. Under that it names the game, the players in it and the server's own reason, which is usually enough to tell a blip from a real refusal.
  3. Try again puts the save back in the queue and sends it at once. If the refusal was temporary that is the whole fix; if it was not, the save blocks again rather than claiming a success it did not get.
  4. Discard throws away what you typed and keeps whatever the server already has. It cannot be undone, and the confirmation names the game — read that line before you tap it.
  5. You do not have to go hunting, either: a game with a refused save of its own carries a line saying so, with Fix it on it, which opens this screen.

Not available on the website.

The thing to take from all of this for a team is that being offline is invisible only to you. Your phone shows the night complete the moment you record it; your teammates' phones cannot show it at all until it goes through. So a scorekeeper who stays out of signal until Sunday is a scorekeeper whose team sees Saturday's game on Sunday — nothing is lost, but nothing is shared either, and it is worth a word to whoever is waiting on the box score.

A few things genuinely cannot wait for a signal, because they are questions for the server rather than records of your own. Joining a team with an invite code, claiming a roster spot, publishing a season wrap, putting a logo on a team and changing somebody's roster status all need a connection — the roster control says "Connect to change roster status" rather than appearing to work. And a team game somebody else recorded has to reach your phone before you can open it: with no signal you get "You appear to be offline. Reconnect and try again — the game will download as soon as we can reach the server."

Your own settings are gentler than that. A change to your player info, your language or your at-bat options is kept on the phone when the save cannot get out and sent again by itself later, so renaming yourself with no bars is not lost either. Until it arrives, the Player Info row on Profile says it is waiting to sync and the Sync Status screen names what is still to go; both clear by themselves once it has been sent.

The only real way to lose unsent work is to throw away the phone's copy before it has been sent. Signing out does not do that — it leaves everything on the device and sends it when you sign back in. Deleting your account does, and so does removing another account from a shared phone: both warn you when there is unsent work and both count the changes in the warning. If you see that, cancel, find a signal, let the queue empty, and then go back.

And if you are using the app without an account at all, nothing syncs anywhere: there is no copy on the server, no Sync status row to check, and the phone is the only place your season exists — so a lost phone is a lost season. Making an account brings everything you have already recorded with you rather than starting you over.

Related guides

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