Totara Mobile: what the app does, and what offline learning really covers

A nurse between shifts, a technician in a basement plant room, a sales rep on a regional flight. The people who most need training on a phone are often the ones with the least reliable connection.

Totara describes Totara Mobile as putting training content in your learners' pockets, available anywhere and anytime, and delivering a seamless learning experience across devices, even offline. That is the right ambition, and it is worth understanding precisely, because "even offline" covers something narrower and more useful than most product pages explain.

This guide covers what the Totara Mobile app does, which content your learners can download and complete without a connection, how their progress gets back to the server, and the limits worth testing before you promise offline learning to a frontline workforce.

Totara Mobile is one of the three components of the Totara Suite, alongside Totara Learn and Totara Perform. If you are new to the platform, start with our overview of Totara LMS.

What the Totara Mobile app is

Totara Mobile is an iOS and Android app that connects to your organisation's own Totara site. It is not a separate learning platform with its own content. Think of it as a second front door to the same building: the courses, programs, certifications and learner records all live on your Totara site, and the app gives learners a faster way in from a phone.

Once signed in, learners land on their current learning, where they can see assigned courses, programs and certifications laid out for a small screen. They can also search and filter the course catalogue and self-enrol where you allow it.

Most activities and resources open inside the app in a responsive view with simple forward, back and close controls. SCORM packages are the exception. They run in the app's own native SCORM player, which is what makes offline SCORM possible.

Core features

• Access to current and past learning, including programs and certifications
• Search and filtering of the learning catalogue, with course self-enrolment
• A native SCORM player, including offline attempts
• Push notifications, so reminders and assignments reach learners on their phone
• Your own branding, so the app carries a consistent learning experience alongside your Totara site, including a branded login and app theme
• Course downloads for offline access, with learner-controlled sync settings
• A built-in PDF viewer for PDFs added as File resources, with the device's native share options

Signing in, including single sign-on

The app is switched on and configured by your site administrator, and mobile authentication is set up separately from desktop login.

Totara offers three sign-in workflows for the app. The native workflow keeps the whole login inside the app and supports manual accounts and LDAP. Every other method, including single sign-on, runs through the webview or mobile browser workflows. In practice, that means an organisation using SSO can put the app in front of learners without creating a second set of credentials, which removes one of the most common reasons mobile adoption stalls.

If your site asks users to accept a policy or complete a required profile field, the app hands them to the mobile browser to finish that step first, then brings them back.

Offline learning: what actually works

Here is the part most guides skip. According to Totara's current documentation, the app supports offline access for these activity and resource types:

• SCORM packages
• Pages
• Labels
• Certificates the learner has already earned
• Files in common formats: PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, CSV and text documents, MP4 video, and JPG, PNG and GIF images

Learners can download a whole course or pick individual activities. Courses with downloadable content show a download icon on the course tile, along with a count of how many activities can be taken offline. Before anything downloads, the app shows the total file size and checks the device has room, and it pauses rather than fails if storage fills up mid-download.

Downloaded content sits in a Downloads tab. It stays on the device when the learner logs out and is still there when they log back in, which matters for teams that share devices on a ward or a shop floor.

Anything not on that list, for example quizzes, assignments, forums and seminar sign-ups, needs a connection. If your compliance content is built as a Totara quiz rather than as SCORM, it will not be available offline, and that is worth knowing before you design the course.

How progress syncs back

When the device is back online, offline progress and completions sync to your Totara site. Learners choose how that happens:

• Auto sync on or off. With it on, progress syncs in the background whenever a connection is available. With it off, the learner starts the sync themselves.
• Sync over Wi-Fi only. With it on, syncing waits for Wi-Fi, so learners on limited data plans are not caught out.

If two records conflict, Totara uses the most recent progress timestamp. If a sync fails, the learner sees an error and can retry.

The limits to test before rollout

None of these are reasons to avoid Totara Mobile. They are the reasons to test your own content on the app before you announce it.

Downloaded courses do not update themselves. If you change an activity, add one or remove one after a learner has downloaded the course, their offline copy stays as it was. They need to sync, remove the download and download it again. New activities added later can be downloaded individually. For compliance content that changes with regulation, plan how learners will be told to refresh.

Changing phones can lose unsynced work. Totara's documentation is explicit that offline progress does not carry over to a new device, and that offline SCORM attempts are saved on the device. Learners should sync before they switch phones.

Certificates are not issued offline. A learner can open a certificate they already hold, but the app will not generate a new one offline even when every completion criterion has been met. It arrives after sync.

LTI content is not officially supported in the app. Some LTI tools may work, but Totara does not test or guarantee them on mobile, and certificates or files delivered through LTI may not download. Totara recommends its standard certificate activity instead.

PDFs behave differently depending on how they are added. A PDF uploaded as a File resource opens in the app's PDF viewer with share options. A PDF linked inside a description opens in a web view with no share option.

Who gets the most from it

Totara Mobile earns its place where learners are away from a desk and connectivity is unreliable: healthcare staff on shift rotations, field service and utilities teams, retail and hospitality floors, and members of associations completing continuing education on their own time. It is also a practical fit for recertification, because assigned programs and certifications are visible in the app and reminders arrive as push notifications. You can read more about how Totara handles certifications and recertification for compliance.

What Lambda Learning adds

The app comes with the platform. Getting it right for your workforce is the work.

• Configuring mobile authentication against your identity provider, including SSO
• Server-level setup the app depends on, such as passing authentication headers correctly through the web server, handled as part of managed hosting
• Applying your branding to the app
• Reviewing your course library for mobile and offline suitability, including which content should be rebuilt as SCORM to work offline
• Testing on real iOS and Android devices before rollout, and a plan for refreshing downloaded content when courses change

If the app needs to talk to other systems in your stack, see our guide to Totara integrations.

Frequently asked questions

Does Totara have a mobile app? Yes. Totara Mobile is an app for iOS and Android that connects to your organisation's Totara site. It requires Totara 13 or later with Totara Learn enabled.

Can Totara courses be completed offline? Partly. SCORM packages, pages, labels, already-earned certificates and common file types can be downloaded and used offline. Quizzes, assignments, forums and seminars need a connection.

Does offline progress count toward completion? Progress and completion data sync to your Totara site when the device reconnects, either automatically or when the learner triggers a sync. Sync before changing devices, because unsynced offline work does not transfer.

Does the Totara app support single sign-on? Yes. SSO runs through the app's webview or mobile browser sign-in workflows. The native in-app workflow covers manual accounts and LDAP.

Can the app be branded? Yes. Totara Mobile can be customised with your own branding, so learners get a consistent experience between the app and your site.

Does downloaded content update when a course changes? No. Learners need to remove the download and download it again to get the updated version. Newly added activities can be downloaded individually.

Can several people share one device? Yes. Downloaded content stays on the device across logouts, so shared devices on a ward or shop floor do not need to download everything again for each user.

See Totara Mobile on your own content

Bring a course you are thinking of taking mobile, and we will show you how it behaves on the app, online and off. If Totara is not the right fit, we will say so.

Book a demo: https://www.lambdalearn.io/schedule-a-meeting-lambda-suite

Talk to a specialist: https://www.lambdalearn.io/schedule-a-meeting-lambda-suite

Totara, Totara Learn, Totara Perform and Totara Mobile are trademarks of Totara Learning Solutions Ltd. Lambda Learning Inc. is a Totara Platinum Partner.