I've been working with the Graph Desktop for many months and today when I opened the desktop and started my local database (successfully), I cannot open the browser. The "Open" button is grayed and the Graph Apps tab is empty. I had several Graph Apps there before. I have tried to reinstall the desktop but these things are still missing. I'm trying to avoid uninstalling because I have many favorites and databases configured and do not want to lose them. Yes, I know about the export but hadn't done one recently. The desktop says it is "Offline Mode Enabled".
I am able to open the web version of the browser in Edge with it connected to my local database successfully.
Not sure, we've had some reports of this. I know that there was an issue with neo4j.com being down and the online check might have failed and put Desktop in Offline mode. But that wouldn't explain why all of the Graph Apps would disappear.
First you could try to disable offline mode again in the settings and see if that changes anything.
If the Graph Apps are still gone, you can go into %USERPROFILE%\.Neo4jDesktop\ and find Application\persist\graphApps.json and remove that file and also remove the Application\graphApps directory. This will reset your Graph Apps and they should be reinstalled when restarting Desktop.
BTW, if you have specific graph apps installed, you can move the Application\graphApps directory to another location and then use the cached *.tar.gz files to reinstall missing Graph Apps by dragging and dropping them on the install section in the Graph Apps pane in Desktop.
I disabled offline mode and restarted and all my apps appeared. Not sure how offline mode got enable as I didn't even know it existed until yesterday. What does Offline Mode do exactly?
Offline mode is meant as a way to turn off "system requests" to the public internet for things like software updates. The system will switch itself into offline mode if these requests are failing, as may have happened recently when neo4j.com itself was down temporarily.
While it may automatically switch to offline mode, the system doesn't automatically go back online when the internet is back. Desktop would need some extra logic to decide when and whether to try going back online.
