Why haven't local-first apps become popular? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#151

Post by fellowniusmonk » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:00 PM UTC

Romario77 wrote: post #145

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> distributed systems are hard. While this may be true, the central issue is a different one: most users and/or developers are not very privacy-conscious, so they don't consider it to be worth the effort to solve the problems that go in hand with such distributed systems.

In the case the author presents there is one solution - last write wins. Which while simple to implement is not really satisfactory for many use cases. Someone could write a whole slew of changes locally and someone else can eliminate all their work because they have an outdated copy locally and they made a simple update overriding the previous person's changes. That's why git has merges and conflicts - it doesn't wa…

I think anyone going down the path of distributed editing would be well served to start with Loro and an instance of chatgpt to answer questions.

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#152

Post by miladyincontrol » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:02 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #109

em-bee wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Local-first apps" are the worst of everything - crappy, dumbed down web UI along with no privacy. which apps are you talking about here? that description doesn't make any sense to me.

Aren't "local-first apps" in this context the ones where you vist "example.com", and it caches a bunch of HTML and Javascript and saves data locally using the "local storage" APIs? And then periodically makes requests back to "example.com" to check for updates, sync data, etc.?

While I hesitate to agree with that definition of local-first, I agree with your notion thats what the author by large is talking about and unfortunately many such an web-app have the worst of both worlds.

Most uses of the term local-first I see regularly mean to say, "an app that doesnt require 3rd party servers outside of your control to function", within some level of reason. Sometimes agnostic to how it's data is synced, sometimes meaning its an exercise left to the user entirely, sometimes meaning fully self-hosted and hardly local to the device being used to access the app.

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#153

Post by trashb » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

pixelpoet wrote: post #120

mhuffman wrote: post #114

Some people might say that the browser you are using to look at your webapp or ask chatgpt for something is a local-first app ... making it pretty damn popular.

That's a bit like saying we live in outer space because earth is in outer space.

no, this does not make sense. The "outer" in outer space suggests an inner space. In this case earth because we have historically held a earth centrist view since humans primarily live on earth. The case that earth is inside of outer space is assumed.

Also I believe the original comment is right as your browser (HTTP) operates fundamentally on a request reply basis. You request resources, you receive an answer, while you are displaying the most recent answer the state on the server might change. You can have a browser that caches the resources for you and only retrieve the new state after for example a timeout or for example a archiving proxy.

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#154

Post by pbronez » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

This is content marketing for a open-source SQLite extension called `sqlite-sync` [0]. It seems pretty cool, implementing CRDTs and some networking directly in SQLite.

Unfortunately this extension "is tightly integrated with SQLite Cloud." It doesn't support peer-to-peer syncing or self-hosting a central source of truth. The project is really just a client for the sqlite.ai cloud service.

[0] https://github.com/sqliteai/sqlite-sync

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#155

Post by carlosjobim » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

poisonborz wrote: post #149

carlosjobim wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem are you solving with that? I can not think of a single workflow that would be advantaged by self-hosting apps vs using local apps with sync.

I meant both. What do you sync with if no central server (main client)? Anything else is unreliable, on/off all the time. And some simpler workflows don't need native apps.

Both what? What problem are you solving?

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#156

Post by pbronez » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

There's a bit of No True Scottsman happening here. Isn't every iOS app backed by iCloud's CloudKit [1] a "Local First App"?

[1] https://developer.apple.com/icloud/cloudkit/

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#157

Post by pbronez » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

gejose wrote: post #45

Shameless self plug, but my workout tracking app[1] uses a sync engine and it has drastically simplified the complexities of things like retry logic, intermittent connectivity loss, ability to work offline etc. Luckily this is a use case where conflict resolution is pretty straightforward (only you can update your workout data, and Last Write Wins) [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/titan-workout-tracker/id644949...

Which sync engine are you using?

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#158

Post by sumuyuda » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #79

As a user the simple answer is that I'll always use a regular application instead of a "local-first" web app when I have the ability. "Local-first apps" are the worst of everything - crappy, dumbed down web UI; phoning home, telemetry, and other privacy violations; forced upgrades; closed source, etc. At work, I don't have a choice, so it's Google Docs or Office 365 or whatever. And in that context it actually makes…

Local first isn’t limited to web apps. It’s a style of application development in which you locally store and operate on the data rather than fetching it from a cloud backend every time. For native apps that means a local database or individual files on the file system.

> phoning home, telemetry, and other privacy violations; forced upgrades; closed source, etc.

This describes proprietary software developed by capitalist companies. This has nothing to do with local first.

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#159

Post by skydhash » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

blacklion wrote: post #44

robmccoll wrote: post #34

I wonder about the categories of apps for which offline first with potentially infinitely delayed sync provides a better experience and how large those really are. It seems like most of those are apps where I'm creating or working on something by myself and then sharing it later. The online part is almost the nice-to-have. A lot of other apps are either near-real-time-to-real-time communication where I want sending t…

> It seems like most of those are apps where I'm creating or working on something by myself and then sharing it later. It is interesting. I've thought about things I don in non-messaging apps (which are online0first for obvious reasons), and all of them create something, which can be EXPORTED to on-line presence, but doesn't require connected app. Code? I write it locally and use separate app to share it: git. Yes, c…

Or offline only. I can use an online drive and share a link to the result. Email is there for easy commenting. Or chat for quick collaboration.

Re: Why haven't local-first apps become popular?

#160

Post by afavour » Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

The primary reason IMO is simply that users don’t care that much. If they did, offline functionality would be a selling point. But it isn’t, and it isn’t immediately simple to implement, so it isn’t worth it.