As you work on your file, the system will display a Saved To This Device indicator to the right of the file name in the upper left as you make changes. Now, you've completed the basics. When you're connected to the internet, your system will sync recent Gmail and Drive files and make them available for offline access. When online with an article or post you want to read later displayed in your browser, select the Star icon in the upper right then choose Add To Reading List to save the contents offline Figure G , top.
Select an article from the list to read Figure G, bottom. Access the list from the right side of the bookmark bar bottom. Many Chromebooks allow you to install Android apps, and many Android apps store data for offline use by default. Notably, while the Google Calendar web app is view-only, the Google Calendar Android app allows you to create and edit appointments and then syncs when reconnected to the internet. As a precaution, I recommend you check the sync status go to Gmail and Google Drive in Chrome and make sure the circle with a checkmark displays, as shown in Figure I immediately before you go offline to ensure your data is current.
Similarly, for Android apps, open the app and give it time to sync before you disconnect from the internet. Review the sync status for Gmail top and Drive bottom.
If the system displays animated arrows, instead of the underlined and circled checkmark, that indicates a sync is in progress. After you've completed all the above steps, you may take your Chromebook offline anytime: Click on the time in the lower right , select Settings the sprocket , then move the slider next to Wi-Fi to the left i. If you use a Chromebook, how often do you use it without internet access? Do you actively take it offline in order to get work done?
Have you found offline access to data and apps helpful when you travel? Are there specific Android apps you use when offline? Let me know how you use your Chromebook without internet access, either with a comment below or on Twitter awolber. Delivered Fridays.
All the web apps can run locally and independently in the browser window. These web apps are not like Microsoft or Apple software, which can be used as standalone. Web apps are very lightweight and made for primary tasking.
Google and other third-party web app developers have made many Chrome apps that are sufficient to perform the necessary task on your Chromebook. So while looking at the Chrome store , you can find an option on the left side as offline apps.
That can help you to get the necessary apps for doing productivity jobs on the Chromebook as offline uses. Google is trying hard to make the Chromebook work offline. We can see most of the apps created by Google works offline on Chrome OS.
Gmail Offline web app works fine on Chromebook while offline. You can compose mail, and it will be sent when the Chromebook gets the data connection. Moreover, Gmail offline can fetch mail for Chromebook offline use. Both Google Drive and Google Docs have the same facility.
You can have the files and docs synchronized locally for offline use. You can also make documents, presentations, and other official tasks on the Google Docs app while offline by some simple setting tweaks. So all the prepared doc gets stored online when the data connection comes. Google photo offers us to keep safe our cherished memory snapshot into Google drive cloud, but all the images can also be saved locally into the Chromebook for later uses.
There are many other third-party productivity apps like Wunderlist , Evernote , Writer for lightweight doc editing, Sunrise for calendar synchronization, and many more in the business and productivity categories on google chrome store.
Chrome store is having some lightweight web apps, which can perform some necessary graphic design tasks. To use this graphic design chrome apps, you have to store the local drive images first. Here you can find some best-reviewed graphics design web apps. First of all, the Polarr Photo Editor application is impressive.
You also have other options for using Sketchpad for more natural-looking digital art masterpieces, and Pixlr Touch Up , which has an impressive array of quality features, runs very effectively right in your browser window. Piconion Photo Editor is another option worth considering.
Chrome store also offers a lot of games that can be appreciated offline on Chromebook. Chromebooks can handle various media files, photos, and music by their native player, right out of the box. Chromebook has its standalone media player to do video watching and enjoy music. To be fair, some of them did have nuggets of reality back in the platform's earliest days , when it was still a small-scale, beta-like project within Google.
But for years upon years now, Chromebooks have been capable productivity tools that offer ample advantages over traditional desktop operating systems and work just as well as any other computers offline. When it comes to offline effectiveness, the key — just like with a Windows or a Mac system — is a healthy dose of planning and preparation. Some cloud-centric services require a touch of setup before they'll be functional offline, and some common work tasks need specific third-party software in place in order to be handled without an active internet connection.
None of that, however, is difficult to do. And it's certainly not impossible. If you're using a Chromebook for work , think through the following four areas to make sure your computer is offline-ready and primed for productivity before the need arises. Then, when your next business flight takes off hopefully soon?
Google's core productivity apps are completely offline-capable — but in most cases, it's up to you to take the initiative and set them up appropriately. Setting Gmail up for offline use takes all of 30 seconds to do. Click any image in this story to enlarge it.
There's just one more step, and it's an important one: Set a bookmark in your browser for Gmail by pressing Ctrl-D — or, easier yet, create a shortcut for the site in your Chrome OS shelf by clicking Chrome's three-dot menu icon while viewing Gmail, selecting "More tools," and then selecting "Create shortcut. One check of a box, and all your recent Docs, Sheets, and Slides files will be available even without an internet connection.
Just like with Gmail, you'll need to make sure you have a bookmark or shortcut created to pull up Drive when your Chromebook isn't connected. You'll also need to double-check that the specific files you want to work with are set to be available offline ahead of time — as, rather annoyingly, Drive stores only a vague collection of "recent files" by default, and you don't want to assume that whatever you need will be included.
It's a rather confusing distinction to have to make, I realize, especially given how blurred the line is between Drive and the Docs-branded productivity apps. Hey, that's Google for ya. For any non-Docs, -Sheets, or -Slides files from your Drive storage that you need to be able to access offline:.
You'll then be able to access those files from that same Files app anytime you're offline. And, of course, any files you've manually downloaded or copied to your Chromebook's local storage will already be available for offline use.
Chrome OS comes with a handful of offline-ready basics, such as a calculator and a plain text editor. The aforementioned Files app is fully offline-friendly, too, and it includes a simple image viewer and editor along with an audio player. Your Chromebook probably also came with Google Play Movies; that'll allow you to download movies and TV shows to keep yourself sane during a long flight provided you're willing to pay to rent or buy the videos, of course.
Google's official Chrome Web Store has a wide variety of other offline-capable Chrome apps , but that native Chrome app form is set to be phased out and eliminated in June of , so it's not the most advisable long-term option to get invested in at this point.
Though it's still technically a cloud-centric platform, Chrome OS supports all sorts of apps these days — and odds are, you'll be able to find whatever you need among the software's more traditional-seeming app options. The first category to consider is the progressive web app, which is a fancy way of saying an app that relies on the web and your browser to operate but looks and acts like a regular, standalone packaged program.
When an app you need is available as a progressive web app, that's generally the fastest, simplest, and most effective form to use. The problem is that progressive web apps don't all work offline, and at this point, it's mostly a game of trial and error to figure out which ones do. Google had been working toward a requirement that'd force all progressive web apps to feature offline support in order to be compatible with Chrome, but that plan has been delayed indefinitely — so it's still annoyingly hit and miss as of now.
To see if a service you use has a progressive web app available in the first place, go to the associated service's website in Chrome. Look toward the right end of the address bar and see if you find an icon that looks like a computer screen with a downward-facing arrow on top of it. When you sign into the task management website Todoist , for instance, you'll see that icon appear. And when you do, you can click it to install the site's progressive web app — after which point it'll appear in your launcher and be almost indistinguishable from any other type of program.
Todoist offers an offline-capable progressive web app that works perfectly in the Chrome OS environment. By embracing Android apps on your Chromebook , meanwhile, you can use both Google Keep and Google Calendar offline — something no other desktop platform supports. You can also stay connected to your data in services such as Evernote , OneNote , and Trello with or without an active internet connection, and with the right subscriptions, you can even download videos from YouTube and Netflix for offline viewing another perk that isn't possible on lots of regular laptops — here's lookin' at you, MacBook!
Basically, if an app works offline on Android — which most do — it'll work offline on Chrome OS, too. With the Google Calendar Android app installed, your entire agenda is always at your fingertips — even when the internet is not. For even more powerful possibilities, you might want to take the time to think about some Linux apps for your Chromebook — provided you have a recent enough system to handle such utilities.
It's definitely power-user terrain, but it's not impossible to navigate.
0コメント