What we learned building offline maps

The ROVE desk

What we learned building offline maps

Devin Reyes · Jul 14, 2026 · 5 min read

Offline is not a feature. It's a promise you make at 12,000 feet with no signal.

Cache the route, not the world

Nobody downloads a planet. They download the next three days, the next 40 kilometers.

Sync when it's easy

The hard part isn't caching — it's merging two weeks of offline edits without losing a single photo.