---
title: The app looks out of date or is behaving oddly
slug: the-app-looks-stale
category: Troubleshooting
url: https://alaga.io/help/article/the-app-looks-stale
audiences: business_owner, manager, staff
updated: 2026-08-18
source: Alaga Help Center
---

# The app looks out of date or is behaving oddly
Alaga stores a copy of itself on each device so it opens instantly and keeps working through a weak connection. The trade-off is that a device can carry on running an older copy for a while after we release a change.

That is what you are seeing when a feature everyone else is talking about is not there, or when the screen looks subtly wrong.

## The update prompt

When a new version is ready, a small **Update available** bar appears at the bottom of the screen with a refresh button. Pressing it takes a few seconds and puts you on the current version.

Alaga checks for a new version when you open it and once an hour after that. If you dismiss the prompt, it comes back at the next check — dismissing does not skip the update permanently.

## Forcing it

If you have not seen a prompt and something looks wrong, take these in order. Most problems stop at step one.

1. **Reload the page.** On Windows use Ctrl and F5; on a Mac use Cmd, Shift and R. This is a harder reload than the refresh button and is enough most of the time.
2. **Close every Alaga tab, then open it again.** The stored copy is only replaced once all tabs are shut, so leaving one open in another window can keep the old version alive all day. This is the step people skip.
3. **Close the app completely on a tablet or phone.** Not just switching away from it — swipe it out of the recent-apps list and reopen.
4. **Clear the site data for alaga.io** in your browser settings, as a last resort. You will be signed out and will need to sign in again. Nothing about your business data is stored on the device, so nothing is lost.

## What this cannot cause

Being on an old copy affects what the app *looks like*, not what is *true*. Your appointments, clients, invoices and payments live on our servers, and every device reads the same records.

So if a booking is missing, an invoice is wrong, or a payment has not appeared, refreshing will not change it and the cause is elsewhere — do not spend time on this article for those.

The exception worth knowing: a very old copy can send a request the server no longer expects, and an action may fail with an unhelpful error. If a button seems to do nothing at all, work through the steps above once before reporting it.

## Shared devices

A front-desk tablet that stays signed in for weeks and is never fully closed is the most likely device in your business to be running something old. If one machine behaves differently from the others, that is nearly always the reason — and it is worth closing the app on it properly at the end of each week.

## Still wrong after a hard refresh?

Then it is not a stale copy. Tell Support what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead, and mention that you have already hard-refreshed — it saves a round trip.