✦ Strivli help Back to the app

Help › For parents

Adding it to a home screen, and using it without internet

How to put Strivli on a tablet or phone home screen, what keeps working when the internet drops out, and the one thing that doesn't.

The short version Strivli can be added to a tablet or phone home screen so it opens like an app. If the internet drops out part-way through a session, your child can carry on to the end and their work is saved — it syncs by itself next time they're online. The only thing that needs the internet is asking Smarty Pants a question.

Putting it on a home screen

An icon on the home screen makes a real difference with a reluctant child: practice becomes something they tap rather than something they have to go and find.

  1. On an Android tablet or phone (Chrome)

    After your child has done a few sessions, a quiet strip appears on the home screen: Keep Strivli on your home screen. Press Add it and confirm. If you'd rather not, No thanks makes it go away for good — it won't ask again on that device.

    You can also do it any time from Chrome's own menu (⋮) → Add to Home screen, without waiting for the strip.

  2. On an iPad or iPhone (Safari)

    Apple doesn't let a website offer this itself, so there's no button to look for. Open Strivli in Safari, press the Share button (the square with an arrow), scroll down and choose Add to Home Screen.

  3. If your tutor has their own branding

    The icon and name that land on the home screen are your tutor's, not ours — the same name and colour your child already sees in the app.

What happens when the internet drops out

This comes up more than you'd think: a car journey, a train, a house with patchy broadband, or a tablet that has quietly fallen off the wifi.

Keeps working A session already under way — your child can finish every question and see their results. Their score, their streak, the activity squares and everything on the scorecard are stored on the device, not fetched from us. The Warm-Up works completely, including the Trick of the Day. And when a wrong answer has a teacher's worked method from the original paper, that still appears — it's part of the question, so it doesn't need the internet at all.
Needs the internet Asking Smarty Pants. The explanations Smarty Pants writes are generated when your child asks for them, so with no connection there's nothing to fetch. Rather than leaving your child pressing a button that quietly fails, the app says so: "Smarty Pants needs the internet, and there's none right now. Everything else still works." Follow-up questions are switched off for the same reason, and switch straight back on when the connection returns — no need to reload anything.

Everything else is kept on the device after the first visit, so your child can open Strivli and start a completely new session with no internet at all. The one thing that needs a connection is the very first time they use it on that device — after that it's theirs to use anywhere.

Does their work get lost?

No. Everything is saved on the device as it happens, and that copy is the one that counts. If your child is linked to a tutor or to your parent portal, their sessions are sent up separately in the background — and if there's no connection, that just waits and tries again later. Your child is never asked to do anything about it and never sees an error about it.

Using it on more than one device

If your child practises on a tablet and a laptop, ask your tutor (or use your parent portal) for a fresh join code for the second device — codes work once each. When they type it in, their whole history comes with them: scores, streak, activity squares and scorecard all appear on the new device within a few seconds of connecting.

After that the two devices keep each other up to date whenever they are online, so practice done on the tablet shows up on the laptop and the other way round. Nothing is ever overwritten — if both devices did work while one was offline, both sets are kept.

One thing worth knowing Progress lives on the device it was done on. If your child practises on a tablet and you look at your parent portal on a phone, the tablet needs to have been online at some point for you to see the latest. Usually that's the next time they open the app on wifi.

← All help