Wondering how you can use your Chromebook offline? Here are six things you can do without an internet connection.
Create and Edit Documents
As you might expect, Google is at the forefront of adding offline features to Chrome OS. Google Drive had offline support for a while, and it’s great to use. You can create, view and edit files, with changes automatically synced back to the cloud as soon as connection is restored.
Search Through and Write Emails
With Gmail Offline and its optimizer extension installed on your Chromebook, you can compose new emails and search through a cache of older ones, though obviously you can’t do any sending or receiving until you’re back online. First, select the Allow offline mail prompt to start downloading messages.
Catch Up On Your Reading
Pocket has an integrated offline mode available, which mean you can catch up on your read-it-later queue on your Chromebook without even a hint of WiFi. The syncing happens automatically when you launch the Chrome app, although it doesn’t work with videos for rather obvious reasons.
Play Games
Plenty of Chrome OS games work offline. To find them, go to the Chrome Web Store, and choose Games, then Chrome Apps, then Runs Offline from the left-hand pane. Once you’ve installed the games of your choice, they will load up on Chrome OS with or without an available internet connection.
Edit Photos
If you have photos stored locally on your Chromebook that need editing offline, then Pixlr Touch Up from Autodesk is one of the simplest options out there. There are plenty of other alternatives. Take a look at Polarr Photo Editor 3 or Piconion Photo Editor, for example, which come with more advanced features.
Play Movies and Music
You can open movie and music files from local storage, but there’s more than that. In the Google Play Movies app, for example, each of your purchased titles shows a small download button you can use to sync it for offline viewing later on (head to the settings page to configure the download quality).
Source: Everything You Can Do Offline with a Chromebook by David Nield, published in Gizmodo AU