Rixoffice assumes the network is a nice-to-have. Editing is offline-first: open the app on a plane, in a dead zone or behind a strict firewall and every editor works exactly as it does online. This page maps out what runs locally, what politely waits for a connection and how to make AI itself offline so even the smartest features never depend on a signal.
What works with no connection
The full editing surface is local:
- RixDocs — write, style, tables, charts, track changes.
- RixSheets — formulas, pivots, charts, conditional formatting.
- RixSlides — canvas editing, animations, SmartArt.
- PDF Editor — annotate, sign, fill forms, edit text.
- Markdown Studio — everything, it is plain text.
Files open from and save to your own folders. Autosave writes to disk as you work. Nothing about opening, editing or saving a local file touches the network, and nothing changes in behavior when the connection drops — the app does not even need to know.
That also means the file formats themselves carry no cloud dependency. A .docx you edited offline is a normal .docx: you can email it, move it to a USB stick or open it in another word processor later. Offline work produces standard files, not a proprietary sandbox you have to escape from when the internet returns.
Making AI offline with Ollama
The one feature that usually depends on the cloud is AI — unless you run it locally:
- Install Ollama from ollama.com.
- Pull a model, for example: ollama pull llama3
- In Rixoffice Settings, choose Ollama as the AI provider and pick your model.
- Disconnect from the internet and try the composer — it works.
With Ollama, documents, prompts, agent reasoning and responses all stay on your machine. The complete setup is in Ollama local models, and the privacy implications in AI privacy. Together with offline editing, this makes a laptop with Ollama a complete office that works at 35,000 feet.
What waits for a connection
| Feature | Offline behavior |
|---|---|
| Editing and saving local files | Fully available |
| AI with Ollama | Fully available |
| AI with built-in Rix AI or BYO cloud keys | Pauses until you are online |
| Cloud project sync | Edits continue locally; syncs on reconnect |
| Web and image search | Pauses until you are online |
| Sign-in and plan checks | Waits; you can keep working |
| Auto-update | Checks again when back online |
The pattern is consistent: local-first by default, cloud features resume rather than fail. Nothing loses data because a request could not reach a server, and nothing blocks your editing because a service is unavailable.
It is worth being precise about the sign-in case too: if your subscription session expires while you are offline, the editors do not lock. You keep working on local files, and account checks resolve themselves the next time you are connected. An expired session pauses cloud features, never your documents.
Cloud projects, offline
Synced Rixcart projects do not lock you out offline. You open and edit the local copy of a document, workbook or deck as usual, and your changes sync to the cloud automatically when the connection returns. The app works on your copy and reconciles when it can, so a flight or a train tunnel is a non-event. Details in cloud projects.
The same logic covers interruptions of any length. A dropped connection mid-edit, a router reboot, a whole weekend away from Wi-Fi — the editor neither knows nor cares about the size of the gap, because it was never writing to the cloud in the first place. Sync is a background courtesy, not a condition of operation.
A fully offline day
- Leave the Wi-Fi off and launch Rixoffice.
- Open yesterday's report from the recents grid — or any file from your folders.
- Edit, build tables, fix the deck, sign the PDF.
- Run AI through Ollama for rewrites, summaries and analysis.
- Reconnect when you choose; cloud projects sync and updates check themselves.
Nothing in that day needs a single byte of connectivity until you decide otherwise.
Why this design
Offline-first is not nostalgia; it is how documents behave in the real world. Connections drop, conference Wi-Fi fails, secure environments block the cloud, and planes spend most of their time over oceans. An office suite that degrades to read-only when a network hiccups is a liability, so Rixoffice treats the network as an enhancement layer — for sync, cloud AI and search — rather than a dependency.
There is a privacy dividend too: the same architecture that lets you work offline is what keeps local processing possible, so the answer to "what happens to my data when I am offline" is simply "less traffic than usual."
For IT evaluators, offline-first also answers the continuity question: a user with no connectivity for a day produces exactly the same files, in the same formats, at the same quality, as a user on gigabit fiber. Nothing about the output degrades when the input — the network — disappears.
What to explore next
- Ollama local models — complete the offline picture with local AI.
- Cloud projects — how sync catches up after you reconnect.
- Auto-updates — how updates behave when you are mostly offline.