SilverBullet is designed as an Offline-First mindset — that is: your content should be available to you, whether you have an Internet connection or not.
Depending on the edition of SilverBullet that you use, Sync functions slightly differently. When you use the Server directly via the browser, your content will be synced to your browser’s local storage (IndexedDB). After an online load and initial sync, cached pages can be read and edited without a connection. Edits reconcile when the Server is reachable again. Documents have separate caching settings below.
Desktop spaces can optionally be configured with Desktop Sync.
Regardless of the client, sync happens in near-real time when connected. Saves are throttled to about 2 seconds, after which the page is saved and synced immediately.
In the browser, Sync runs in a service worker and therefore only runs when the service worker is active. The service worker is automatically kept active for as long as you have a SilverBullet tab or window open. Some browsers slow web apps down when they are in the background or not in an active tab. This may also affect whether sync happens in the background. Most browsers (including mobile ones), keep service workers running for a little while (perhaps up to a minute), even when e.g. the screen is locked, or another app is activated.
If sync takes longer than a second, a black circle progress indicator will appear in the Top Bar.
When multiple clients change the same file around the same time, the server merges them automatically where it safely can. When it can’t (both sides touched the same words), it writes the file with a resolvable in-editor conflict, and you will be notified in the UI when this happens. See Collaboration for the full picture.
You can tweak what files are synced locally via a few config.* configuration options.
note Note Sync related configuration need to be done in the ^Library/Config page specifically. If they are configured elsewhere they will not be picked up.
By default all your pages are synced, but Document are not. They are fetched on demand. If you would also like to sync documents (so you can access them when offline), you can do so by setting the following in a Space Lua block in ^Library/Config:
config.set("sync.documents", true)
In addition, you can fine-tune what files you do not want to sync using gitignore pattern syntax assigned to the sync.ignore option, which accepts either a single string, or a list of strings. The space folder’s actual .gitignore file is not read:
config.set("sync.ignore", {
-- Don't sync PDFs and MP4 files
"*.pdf",
"*.mp4"
})
After making changes to these options, you need to reload your client and wait for a sync cycle to kick in until they are applied.