Offline Reading is not preferred for most of us and not going to give you the full experience of the source website. But there are some situations in which we are forced to be offline readers, whether we like it or not. Worry not, this will not hinder you from reading your favorite site. Some extensions will come to your rescue. Extensions are tools which enhance a web browser’s capability. The browser Extensions and apps are capable of providing websites offline.
These extensions bring the offline version of your desired website not only on your PC but also on your phones (or mobile devices). The variety of these applications and extensions are available for almost all your favorite browsers like Chrome, Safari or Firefox.
Apps to Read Websites Offline
The apps which help to keep up with the stream of news by making them available offline has grown in popularity. Most apps of this sort are not stand alone. To attain the full potential, they make use of extensions. These apps not only give you the offline version of websites on the PC but also on your mobile devices. You can sync on all your devices so you can read all your articles without feeling overwhelmed by the stream of information online.
Evernote
Evernote is famous as a note-saving app. Also, it has the power even to save video files. But its capability to make websites offline ready is less known, and we are going to focus on the same. Since it is a popular tool you might have an Evernote account already, then all you need is to learn how to activate Evernote’s offline capability. First, you have to head to the Evernote website, sign into the account (register if you do not have an account already).
Download Evernote’s Web Clipper, an extension which helps you to download any content to your Evernote account. Now you can access the saved web pages on your PC or mobile phones. Before you can access them offline, you have to go to Settings> Offline notebooks and select the notes of your choice from the list, while you are online. This will keep a local copy of that files on your device. Furthermore, Sharing options are provided in Evernote apps.
Evernote App: Windows | Mac | Android | iOS | Evernote Extension: Chrome | Firefox | Safari
The Pocket is very similar to Evernote and was formerly known as ‘Read It Later.’ Similar to Evernote, Pocket can save multimedia files and sync them across all your devices. As in the case of Evernote register for an account by heading to the Pocket page. Now get the Pocket extensions to save the pages you would like to read later. Pocket has apps for Mac, Android and iOS platforms, but not for Windows. This means you cannot access offline content on Windows PCs. But you can make ‘Pocket files’ available offline on remaining platforms. You have options to share the files in Pocket.
Pocket App: Mac | Android | iOS | Pocket Extension: Chrome | Firefox | Safari
Extensions to Save Websites Offline
Stand-alone extensions is an alternative way to make websites of your preference offline. Unlike the read-it-later apps discussed earlier, extensions for offline access cannot sync the articles across all your devices. If you are a person who is comfortable with reading on PC screen extensions will not trouble you at all. These offline saving extensions are better than to take snapshots or screenshot of your screen. Using these extensions help you to have the experience of being online even if you are offline.
Cleansave
Cleansave is an extension available only for Chrome. It has a unique capability to edit web content before it is saved. This makes it possible to add notes, change the font size and remove images. After the editing (or skipping the step) you can print the page, email or save it to Google Docs. Cleansave is imperfect when it comes to page formatting, which sometimes causes missing of headers. But if you desire an easy way to read or print articles from the web, then Cleansave can serve you.
Chrome Extension: Cleansave
SingleFile
SingleFile is a free, lightweight Chrome extension. It is in the applications that do not compromise the performance of Chrome browser. SingleFile saves a web page into a single HTML file. This is important because in typical situations when a web page is saved from the option in the context menu, there will be multiple files (since Chrome will separate CSS, JS and so on). SingleFile will only make minor changes to the code of the page and embedded images.
Chrome Extension: SingleFile
ScrapBook
If you are a Firefox user and looking for an extension to make web pages available offline, ScrapBook is a choice you should consider. It can cache a local copy of a web page accurately. Apart from that, it is light, fast and supports multiple languages. You can save a single web page, a snippet of a web page or even an entire web page. Most noteworthy features of ScrapBook are, Download linked files and In-depth save. If you wish to download linked images on a web page, you can utilize the Download linked files options. You can even download audio, video and archive files with the help of Scrapbook feature. Then we have the In-depth Save option, which would help us to download an abundant portion of a website. Using the website download feature you can download the current page and every linked page from that page.
Firefox Extension: ScrapBook
SaveComplete
SaveComplete is yet another Firefox extension. Web pages may look like a normal word document with images and other media inserted into it. On the front end it feels so, but at the back end, it is slightly more complicated with CSS, Flash, JavaScript and so on. These stylesheets and other components is a hindrance when it comes to effectively saving a web page. SaveComplete can be a remedy for this problem. This efficient Web page saver can save a complete web page, with all images, stylesheets, flash, and JavaScript. It is not an issue for SaveComplete that if the style sheets are imported, or images are referenced in stylesheets, it still saves the complete page you require.
Firefox Extension: SaveComplete
Reading List for Windows and Mac
The two largest PC manufacturers have similar solutions when it comes to making your favorite articles available offline. On both platforms, it is named ‘Reading List.’ Reading List is an inbuilt feature available on default browsers for Windows and Mac, that is on Microsoft Edge and Safari. The primary function of the Reading List is to cache the web page offline for future use.
On Mac, a web page can be added to Reading List by selecting the ‘Add to Reading List’ option in the share menu. This will not only create an offline copy of the web page on that device but also sync that offline copy across all your Mac/iOS devices. If you are a Windows user, you can find the ‘Reading List’ option by clicking the favorites icon(star icon) on the menu bar. The web pages added to Reading List will be synced across your Windows PCs and mobile devices.
The technology has evolved to the level of providing a near online experience even when we are offline. You can skim through your favorite articles on the web offline using tools such as extensions, apps or even inbuilt browser features. Explore the possibilities mentioned here and make full of your time even when you are off the grid.
