Updating Offsite

Offsite ships as two things that update separately: the app on your device, and the host components on each machine that runs your sessions. They speak a versioned protocol to each other, so they have to stay compatible.

The app

The Mac app checks for updates on its own and offers Update Offsite when one is available. It downloads the new build, verifies its signature, and swaps itself.

The iPhone app updates through the channel you installed it from.

The host

Host components live in ~/.offsite on the host machine and are updated from the app: open the host’s settings and use Update next to the host version. Refresh versions re-checks both without changing anything.

Updating the host restarts its agent. Your sessions are not killed by this — they live in tmux, which outlives the agent process. Connected clients drop and reconnect.

Why the versions matter

Each release carries a protocol version, plus the oldest protocol it still accepts:

Field	Meaning
protocol_version	what this build speaks
minimum_supported_client_protocol_version	oldest app a host will serve
minimum_supported_host_protocol_version	oldest host an app will talk to

If your app is older than a host’s minimum, the host refuses it. The failure is not always loud: the symptom people hit is “my typing does nothing” or “an update seems to fail” against a host that is otherwise healthy.

Before assuming a transport bug, check the two version numbers. If they are incompatible, fully quit and restart the app — a running app keeps its old protocol even after the bundle on disk was replaced.

Note

Update the host and the app together when you update either. They are released as a pair, and the release notes for a version describe both.

Release notes

Every version has an entry on offsite.sh/releases. The in-app update prompt links to the same anchor.

Details

• Current release: app 0.1.66, runtime 0.1.66, protocol 23, minimum supported client and host protocol 19.
• Compatibility policy (UPGRADE_PATH.md): new fields may only be added when older clients and hosts keep working; existing field meanings never change without a protocol bump; host state migrates forward and a schema mismatch must never silently delete data; destructive resets are always an explicit user action, never an upgrade side effect.
• Host artifacts are pulled from get.offsite.sh over HTTPS. The setup health check has an Update Server row that verifies exactly that reachability.
• If an update download fails immediately after a release is announced, the binaries may not have finished publishing. Retrying a minute later is the fix.