Jul 16 – 21, 2026
Europe/Madrid timezone

Towards a Local-First Desktop

Jul 16, 2026, 2:06 PM
25m
25 Minute Presentation - In Person Community Building and Diversity

Description

In this talk we'll introduce the newly formed Modal Collective, and the ongoing effort to bring local-first sync to the GNOME ecosystem. So far, this has mostly been focused around Reflection, a local-first collaborative notes app, easier APIs for third party apps, and GObject bindings for p2panda. This year we're expanding this with a prototype for a system sync service, which any app can use to easily get peer-to-peer connectivity.

We'll explain all the moving parts required to build an app with local-first collaboration, how it can be done today, what needs further work, and how you can get involved!

Author(s) Bio

Tobias is a member of the design team, the Circle committee, and Modal Collective. Most recently he's been working on Reflection, a local-first collaborative notes app built on p2panda. He's a fan of ultrabold type, coherent spatial models, and keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

Presentation Type In Person
Pronouns he/they
Photo usage consent Yes

Author

Julian Sparber

Co-author

Tobias Bernard (Modal)

Presentation materials