Pre-bundle strings and load Crowdin updates in background

[ronnieotieno]

Goal:
Reduce the splash screen time by showing pre-bundled translations immediately, and update them from Crowdin silently in the background.

Expected behavior:

The app launches instantly using bundled translations.

When Crowdin fetches updated strings, it replaces the existing ones in memory or on next launch.

Users should not see missing or empty strings even on the first launch.

Additional context:
Currently, the app appears to wait for Crowdin to fetch translations before proceeding, which increases launch time. If the user is offline or the locale was not previously downloaded, it causes empty UI text.

Is there a recommended way to implement this flow with Crowdin's Android SDK?

[andrii-bodnar]

Hi @ronnieotieno, the behavior you described is the standard for the Crowdin SDK, as it works asynchronously by default.

While the splash screen feature allows for synchronous downloads, this option must be explicitly enabled. You can find instructions in our guide on Synchronous Mode.

[ronnieotieno]

Hi @andrii-bodnar thanks for the reply, so currently its showing for default string which is english, even if the context has been updated with another language. I would expect it to use the bundled strings e.g pt-PT if the context locale is set to that when app starts.

[andrii-bodnar]

The bundled translations will always be used as a fallback if no translations are received from the Crowdin distribution.

[ronnieotieno]

Okay, so that means we cant fall back to locale specific translations?

[andrii-bodnar]

This is the system's default fallback behavior; no specific fallback login is defined within the SDK.

[ronnieotieno]

Thank you so much.