Seasonal guide
Going cloudless on a trip: what works, what doesn't.
Quiles never stores your kid's data on a server. Rules keep running anywhere; edits travel through a blind relay that cannot read the content. The only thing that depends on the moment is the live stuff: live location and real-time SOS need both phones online at the same time.
How Quiles communicates, in one sentence.
The parent's phone and the child's phone talk over two complementary transports. When there's network, a persistent encrypted WSS connection to a Cloudflare relay delivers each change within seconds, wherever you both are. When there is no network but you're nearby, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) kicks in as a direct phone-to-phone fallback.
The relay is a blind drop-box: it sees a random familyId, the packet size, a timestamp, and the direction. Never the content, because it's end-to-end encrypted (AES-GCM with an X25519 key only the two phones share). And it discards each envelope about 30 seconds after delivery. That's how your kid's data never lands on any server in readable form.
In practice that means two things, one good and one nuance, both important to know before a trip:
What does work, on any beach in the world.
Rules already set keep running
Schedule, daily caps, app allowlists, wind-down, every rule you set before leaving keeps executing on the child's phone whether you're in the same hotel or in different countries. Quiles doesn't need any network connectivity to enforce. It's like a car engine: once started, you don't need to keep pushing.
Uninstall protection stays active
Your kid cannot remove Quiles or swap the default launcher without your password, on a trip or not. Android Device Admin works without a network.
Rule changes travel even when you're far apart
If you decide to extend the daily cap by 30 minutes from a hotel, or whitelist a new app, the relay delivers the encrypted envelope to the child's phone in seconds, wherever they are. If their phone happens to be offline, the envelope waits in queue and applies the moment it reconnects. Usage logs come back the same way, so when you regroup you'll have the minute-by-minute history without ever needing to be in the same room.
The nuance: what does depend on the moment.
There's one class of features that only works if both phones are online at the same time: live location (watching the child's dot move on the map) and real-time SOS (intercom, panic video). They need an open channel at both ends; they're not the kind of thing the relay can usefully "save for later".
If your kid runs out of battery, coverage or data, those features wait until they're back online. Everything else (rules, schedules, allowed apps, audit log, more-time requests) keeps working normally: whatever you push in the meantime gets delivered the moment they reappear.
This is deliberate. The relay is blind on purpose and discards envelopes within seconds: it's not a buffered mailbox holding weeks of traffic for whenever it suits you. That's the price of not having a server that could be hacked, sold, or subpoenaed to reveal your child's activity.
The kid down the street on Family Link or Qustodio gets rule changes pushed in real time from a server in Iowa that also keeps their history. Yours gets the changes just as fast when there's network, but over a transport that has no idea what's inside. That's the trade-off.
How to prepare: the Travel profile.
Changes travel remotely, but it's still worth setting things up before you leave home: fewer taps from an airport, everything verified on a stable connection. Build a "Travel" profile and use it like this:
Define the Travel profile the day before departure
More daily screen than at home (4h instead of 2h, airports, rain, hotel evenings exist). Keep the night cutoff (sleep is part of resting). Drop the school-hours lockdown (no school).
Pre-approve likely apps
If your kid will use Google Maps to navigate for you, a translator app, a train ticket app, add them all to the allowlist before you leave. Nothing worse than needing a boarding pass app 200 km from home and finding it's blocked.
Activate Travel and verify the sync
On your phone, switch to "Travel". Verify the child's phone shows the "profile updated" pulse before you leave the house. With network on both ends it applies in seconds through the relay; without network, BLE delivers it as soon as you're a few metres apart. Leaving the door with the green confirmation in hand spares you airport surprises.
On return, switch back to normal
The day you're back, tap "School" or "Summer" and it applies in seconds. No need to wait until you're on the same Wi-Fi: the change goes out over the relay and lands on the child's phone right away.
What if I need to change something from afar?
You can. Surprise birthday, three days of rain, an app you didn't anticipate needing: edit the profile on your phone and the change reaches the child's phone over the relay in seconds. If theirs is offline, the encrypted envelope queues up and applies the moment it reconnects.
"Ask for more time" requests from the child travel the same way. They land on your screen even if you're not close, you approve or deny, and the answer comes back. The only thing you can't do remotely is what needs both phones alive at the same time: watching their location move in real time, opening an SOS intercom. For that, the other end has to be online right then.