A few weeks ago Google announced a host of updates and tweaks to Gmail, including the ability to read and respond to messages while you’re offline. A number of the changes were made live then, but that offline mode wasn’t quite ready. Last week during the company’s annual developer conference, Google officially made offline mode available for Gmail users. Here’s how to give it a try
Offline mode is only available for people using Chrome, so if that isn’t currently your browser of choice you’ll need to download it in order to make this happen.
Get the new Gmail: In order for this to work you need to have switched over to the “new” Gmail. To do that, click the Settings menu on the top right side of Gmail and then select “Try New Mail” from the drop-down menu.
Once you’ve enabled the new version of Gmail, tap on that Settings icon again and then select Settings from the drop-down menu.
Scroll to the “Offline” menu option from the top toolbar (this is the same place you’ll see General, Labels, and Accounts and Imports options), and then check the box beside “Enable offline mail”
When you do, you’ll be prompted to select how many days of messages you’d like to sync with your computer. If you get a ton of mail, then you probably want to be conservative with this selection.
Yes, it would be great to have access to your whole inbox while you’re offline, but your whole inbox is probably pretty huge. A week is probably best for most folks.
Once you’ve made your selections hit “Save Changes” and you’ll be good to go.
In order for this to work offline you’ll need to have an instance of Gmail open on Chrome before you go offline, so make sure you load that up using the airport WiFi if you want to spend your next flight on a quest to inbox zero.