How to Work Offline With a Chromebook

My daily driver on the desktop is a Chromebox.

Although I have also a Chromebook, my mobility needs are pretty limited and I don’t move the device much, not even across rooms. Therefore, since I have an excellent Internet connection and good Wi-Fi at home, I virtually never use Chrome OS offline.

But I found JR Raphael’s guide to using a Chromebook offline useful and I encourage you to read it, especially because working offline with Chrome OS devices is a little known, often misunderstood feature. The key insight is working offline with a Chromebook requires some preliminary steps:

  1. configuring Google’s web apps for offline use
  2. bookmarking the web apps you need
  3. downloading the Google Drive files you plan to work on

The guide provides all the details and a few more tips, for example for finding Android or Linux replacements for web apps that, like Google Calendar, don’t provide offline support.

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