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Why does my live match say Reconnecting, and does it still work if my connection drops?

Wifi at the table isn't always reliable, and the live scoreboard is built to say so honestly rather than freeze without explanation. If it can't hear back from 8nOut for a moment, you'll see a small Reconnecting banner above the board. It's low-key on purpose — this is a normal, everyday hiccup, and it usually clears on its own within moments, the same way an ordinary refresh works.

If it keeps failing, the banner escalates automatically to Can't reach the server, with a proper Retry button. 8nOut never actually stops trying in the background in either state — Retry just gives it a nudge right now, instead of waiting for the next automatic attempt. Either banner clears the instant a refresh succeeds, whichever one caused it.

The moment you tap Point, Foul, Undo or anything else, it shows on your own screen straight away — 8nOut doesn't make you wait for the server to confirm it first. That same tap is also saved to your phone the instant you make it, before 8nOut has even tried to send it on — so a dropped connection, or even force-closing the app, never loses it. It's sent on automatically the moment your connection is back, including if that's only after you've closed 8nOut and reopened it later, not just while you happen to be sitting on the Reconnecting screen waiting.

There's one exception, and 8nOut always tells you about it. While your phone is offline, the match can change on the other phone: the other player scores, takes something back, or finishes the match. Your saved taps were made on a board that has moved on, so adding them could count the same ball twice or give it to the wrong player. So they're not added. Instead a banner says how many weren't added, for example "3 offline taps weren't added", and asks you to check the board. It stays until you tap OK or make your next tap. The other phone sees nothing, because its taps are the ones that count.

Worth being clear about what this isn't. It's not a fully offline mode where your phone and your opponent's talk to each other directly — both of you still need your own connection to reach 8nOut for a tap to actually land on the shared board. What's changed is that your own taps are kept safe on your phone if your own signal drops at the wrong moment, not that scoring keeps working with no connection at all. And it only ever reflects your own connection: if it's your opponent's wifi that's struggling rather than yours, you won't see a banner about it — your board will simply sit still for a while, because there's nothing wrong on your end for 8nOut to warn you about.

Separately, a match times out on its own if it goes quiet for long enough — one that never actually started within 20 minutes, or one that's gone 6 hours without either of you logging anything. Normally that's just the match being over, one way or another. But if it happened because of a genuine break in the connection rather than the two of you being finished, nothing about the match is actually thrown away.

When that's the case, either of you can be offered Resume this match? — tap it, and 8nOut picks the match back up exactly as it was: your score, the current rack, and whose turn it is are all left untouched, nothing is rebuilt or guessed at. It's never automatic — you have to be the one to tap it — and it stays offered until you do, or until you close it instead.

Occasionally a match really is gone for good. 8nOut only keeps a timed-out match's data for a limited time, and once that's passed there's genuinely nothing left to resume. If that's happened, you'll see This match can no longer be resumed instead of a Resume button that wouldn't actually work — 8nOut doesn't offer a Resume that can't succeed.

This is different from the prompt or banner that offers to jump back into a match that's still live and running, after you've switched away from 8nOut or reopened it — that one is about a match nothing has actually gone wrong with, just one you haven't returned to yet. This entry is specifically about a match that genuinely paused because of a break in the connection, long enough for it to time out.