Facebook has shown before that it’s interested in making sure that folks on slower connections have a quality FB experience. For example, emerging markets have access to the Facebook Lite app, which takes up a small amount of your phone’s storage and uses a more stripped down UI. Now Facebook is working to optimize its News Feed for use on slow or non-existent connections.

Facebook says its improving its News Feed to show relevant stories when you’re on a slow connection. Normally when you launch Facebook on a slow connection, you’ll see a spinner while you wait for FB to retrieve new posts. With this updated News Feed, the Facebook app will look at posts that you’ve downloaded in the past but didn’t look at and then rank them based on how relevant it thinks they are to you. You can then view these stores until you return to a solid connection, at which point you can download the latest posts. Facebook is also working to make it so that the app can download up-to-date posts throughout the day when you have a good connection so that, if you happen to go offline, you've got fresh content to look at.

Facebook is also making it so that you can comment while you’re offline. If you find yourself without an Internet connection, you’ll still be able to comment on posts, and your comments will then automatically be posted when you regain a connection.

It makes sense for Facebook to optimize its apps and features for slow connections, because it doesn’t want you to open your FB app and then immediately leave it because you can’t load up your News Feed. With these News Feed and commenting optimizations, you’ll still have some content to view and interact with, even if you have a poor connection. 

Facebook says that it’s currently testing these News Feed updates and that they’ll be rolled out “over time.”