Chromebooks are often They tout their tight cloud integration: they’re essentially a window onto the web and not much else. This has a number of benefits, like never having to worry about losing unsaved documents, but when you’re not connected to the internet, a Chromebook isn’t as useful as a Windows or macOS laptop.
But it’s not true that your Chromebook is completely useless when it’s offline: advances in web app and browser technology mean that you can get quite a lot done on your Chromebook even when you’re not connected to the internet, and all your work will re-sync when Wi-Fi is available again.
Obviously, you can’t send email or stream videos while disconnected from the web, but you can work with documents and emails in offline mode, and cache content to watch while offline, as described here.
Use Gmail offline
It’s perhaps not surprising that Google, the developer of ChromeOS, has been at the forefront of making web apps work offline for the convenience of Chromebook users. Gmail is one well-known app that works offline to some degree: you can’t send or receive emails without an internet connection, but you can still work with email.
From the main Gmail interface on the web, click the gear icon (top right), Show all settingsOpen off-line In the tab, Enable offline mail Once you open Settings, you’ll see a few new options, the most important of which is a drop-down menu that lets you choose how much email you want synced to your Chromebook. 7, 30or 90 The higher the value, the more messages you can process, but the more storage space you’ll use. You can see how much storage space Gmail is currently using on the same screen.
On the same page, you’ll have to choose what happens if you sign out of your Google account in the ChromeOS browser: you can choose to keep your synced data (useful when you sign back in, but a risk from a security standpoint) or delete it from your Chromebook (a more secure option, but you’ll have to sync all your messages again when you sign back into Google).
click Save changesand you’re done! When you’re offline, you can search and read your cached emails, or compose new emails and save them as drafts. You can even send completed emails without actually sending them – they’ll be stored in a newly created Outbox folder and will be sent as soon as web access is restored.
Use Google Drive offline
You can use Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Google Slides, and certain features of the Google Drive app offline, but like Gmail, you’ll need to make arrangements in advance. In Google Drive on the web, click the gear icon (top right) and then setting.
