Read online content when you are offline with Offline browser

Our friend Estel asked for Android help as he needs an app to read stuff from online sites when he is offline.

Some apps like the Verge or the BBC let you download the text on the app so you don’t need to be online to read the articles. You only need a couple of minutes online to let the app download the content. Then you can turn the Wi-Fi off and keep reading.

This is useful. On the other side, some other news apps like TechCrunch are really slow when you need to download the content. So there is a solution for this site or other sites that we want to read when offline.

Steps to read offline the online content

1. Find, download and install from Google Play the free app called Offline Browser

2. Open the browser, accept the terms of use and add a page by pressing the big Plus button.

3. Write the link of the page (just type www.thepageyouwanttodownload)

4. Write also a Title of the page and press Ok & Download (if you are on Wi-Fi).

Your page will download on your phone; you can see a percentage when downloaded. When finished, you can read the page when you are offline.

More options on Offline Browser

You can select to download or not the photos of the page. If you want the photos, your page will look as it is online but it will take more time to be downloaded. I select to download the photos as sometimes you need to see the picture to understand what this article is all about.

You can set the Max Depth level for links to 1 or 2, not more. 1 means that the app will download the first page and the articles linked from that page. If you put 2, almost all the site will be downloaded. Keep it to 1.

You can also set to download flash objects. You must avoid flash objects as they are big MB consumers and they don’t offer you much. But that depends on the site you want to download.

You can increase or decrease the number of links per page downloaded, that depends on the size of the page. If you want to download Daily Mail, there are more than 100 articles on the first page. You can increase this number to150. Also let total number of links per site to 500. You don’t want your download to last for ever except if you will see a Wi-Fi in a week.

Every time you open the app you can see the list of the sites you want to download and two buttons, add and download.

How to use the app

When you are on Wi-Fi press the download button to download the newer version of the sites.

If you are offline, press on the titles to read the sites offline. The embed codes won’t download to your phone.

The app also doesn’t work with sites that require authentication like facebook, gmail, bank account) and youtube.

Offline browser is a great solution to read stuff offline. I also use it on my daily short travel beneath the earth (on the sub).