The internet went down during the service: what keeps working and what to do

You notice Offline in the bottom bar, or the phone remote stops responding. The short version: keep going. The projector doesn't depend on the internet, and if the plan was prepared, the room won't notice a thing.

What keeps working

• songs, plans and themes from the copy on the computer,
• the projector, the stage display on a cable and the operator monitor,
• Black, Clear, Logo, the countdown, messages and timers,
• the Bible from an installed translation,
• media and presentations that Prepare service or Keep offline already downloaded,
• plan changes: they're saved on the computer and marked "not sent yet",
• the OBS overlay and NDI, on this computer and on the local network.

That last one covers only the lower third. The stream itself still needs a connection to reach viewers.

What stops

• The phone remote. Commands travel through the server, so the phone can't reach the computer, even on mobile data.
• Text on phones. People see Waiting to begin, or Reconnecting… if their phone lost the connection too. After about two minutes without the computer, the page says The presentation has ended. They don't need to do anything: the words come back by themselves once the computer is online again.
• Lead the musicians and the stage display in a browser. The app keeps trying and joins again when the connection returns.
• Following on phones and tablets. Pages stop turning by themselves, but songs and plans are saved in the app, so musicians can carry on by hand.
• Band click. On iPhone and iPad, a click that's already running keeps playing on each device, because each one plays it itself. Tempo changes and Stop no longer reach people who lost the connection. Anyone can use Mute on my device. Starting the click for the band needs internet.

What to do, in this order

1. Keep going. Watch the wall, not the status bar.
2. If someone was changing slides from a phone, tell them, and take over at the keyboard.
3. Tell the band with a message: press M, type "no following, turn pages yourselves", press Enter. This goes down the cable to the stage display, so it works without internet.
4. Look ahead in the plan. A song is safe. A presentation or a picture that was never downloaded isn't: you'll see Slide 3 — file missing, or a plain background. Decide now what you'll do at that moment.
5. A reading without an installed translation shows No offline pack and no connection. If the preacher has the text, open Bible (⌘4), switch to Own text, type the Reference and the text, and click On screen now. On Windows, use Ctrl instead of ⌘.
6. Between items, not in the middle of a song, you can connect the computer to a phone hotspot. When the network is back, the status bar returns to Online · live sync. A click on Offline tries again straight away.

What not to do

• Don't sign out. Without internet you can only sign in with an email and password that have already worked on this computer. If you normally use Apple or Google, you won't get back in until the connection returns. Restarting the app isn't needed either.
• Don't edit songs. Saving needs the internet. You'll get "No connection — saving a song needs the internet", and your text stays in the editor. A typo can wait.
• Don't change the theme. Themes can be previewed, but not saved.
• Don't look for files to add. Presentations and files from your disk can't go into a plan without internet.
• Don't reach for Prepare service. It's greyed out offline, and that's expected.
• Don't switch to a plan nobody prepared. Its songs will work, but its media may not.
• Don't announce it from the front. Only the people who depend on the phones need to know.

When the internet comes back

You don't have to do anything. Plan changes go to the server by themselves, and "not sent yet" disappears. The remote, Text on phones and Lead the musicians reconnect on their own, and the room code stays the same. If someone changed the plan in the meantime, you'll see Plan updated from the server. If the item on screen changed, click it in the plan to show the new version.

So this never hurts

Everything above assumes the preparation was done while the internet worked: signing in with a password, an installed Bible, and Prepare service the day before. The full list is in Sunday without internet. A test with Wi-Fi off takes ten minutes and shows you exactly where the gaps are.

What's next

• Sunday without internet
• Sunday morning: a checklist for the person at the projector