I've implemented multi-level undo/redo on both the desktop and the web, and the complexity is no different between the platforms. Client/server is a red herring

I've implemented multi-level undo/redo on both the desktop and the web, and the complexity is no different between the platforms. Client/server is a red herring, because what kills you is unexpected state changes, and a desktop app has to contend with that as well (e.g. what if you want to undo a file delete but a file has been created with the same name by another app?) The trick is to put everything in commands which keep track of the old ad the new state (or at least the parts you need), so that you can have a command history stack, and undo merely means "run the unexecute method of the command at the current position, and move the pointer to the previous command". If unexecute fails, you throw away all older commands (undo history). If execute fails during redo, you throw away all newer commands (redo history). Multi-level undo does need to be designed in from the start, but once you learn how it works it does not add that much complexity. The reason that you don't see many web applications that implement this is because web development did not branch off from desktop development, but instead branched off from unix systems administration (by creating glorified shell scripting languages to output html pages, and gradually improving on that). Web developers never learned from their senior desktop developers how to implement a multi-level undo/redo using a command pattern, because the vast majority of web developers never had a senior desktop developer to learn from. I only learned it myself because I did have such a desktop development mentor. Mobile developers are typically repurposed web developers, so no surprise that it suffers from the same affliction.