How to Use Gmail Offline
Read This Before You Start
As you may have guessed, Gmail Offline can be used only with Google Chrome. You should never set it up on public or shared computers as the emails are stored in your browser’s storage. For some reason, if you have to, remember to delete the app when you’re done as detailed in a later section.
Obviously, you need a working internet connection to set it up first before you can start using it offline. Once you set it up, you can browse through your emails, search, archive, or delete them. You can even compose emails and queue them and they’ll be sent as soon as an internet connection is available.
Now that you are familiar with the basics, here’s how you can get started.
How to Start Using Gmail Offline
Open the Gmail Offline app in the Chrome Web Store. Click Add to Chrome > Add an app. Next, type chrome://apps in the address bar and hit enter. Find and open Gmail Offline.
Enable Gmail Offline
The first time you open the app, you will be asked to allow offline mail as shown below.
Select Allow Offline mail and click Continue. It will now begin syncing your emails for offline use.
Configure Gmail Offline
By default, emails from only the past week are synced. If you’d like to sync older emails, click the gear-shaped Settings icon at the top-right of the screen. You can select to download emails from the past week, 2 weeks, or a month. Click Apply to save changes.
In the same settings pane, you can choose to set up a Vacation Responder. It is an auto-response message you can send out as a reply to any incoming email. This lets you notify people that you are currently away from the internet and might take a while to get back to them.
Since you’re using Gmail Offline, there’s a good chance that you do not have access to the internet. In such a case, it’s a good idea to setup Vacation Responder. Here’s how you do it:
Toggle the Vacation Responder switch to the ON position.
Specify a start date and an end date. The auto-response message will be sent out as a reply to incoming emails automatically during this period.
Enter a Subject and a Message.
Enable Only send a response to people in my Contacts.
Click Apply to save the changes.
How to Access and Use Gmail Offline
To open the Gmail Offline app, type chrome://apps in the address bar. Find and click Gmail Offline. Alternatively, you can drag the icon to the Bookmarks bar to pin it for faster access. (Remember to keep Chrome’s Bookmarks bar organized, though!)
The Gmail Offline app’s interface is based on Gmail’s tablet interface. The interface features a dual-pane setup. The left pane lists all the incoming emails. To access other folders, click the menu button (three horizontal lines) on the top-left. Here, you can check your Sent Mail, Drafts, Trash, Spam or filter your emails using Labels.
To search your emails, simply type in your search query in the search bar and hit Enter. The Gmail Offline app strips a lot of Gmail’s functionality, but fortunately, you can still use Gmail’s advanced search operators to narrow down your search
To compose a new email, click the Red Compose icon. After you type the message and enter the recipient’s email address, hit Send. The message should now be queued up in the Outbox folder. The email will be sent out as soon as your computer is connected to the internet.
The right pane displays the content of the message that you select in the left pane. To Reply or Forward a message, scroll to the bottom of the message. Here, click Reply to reply to the sender, or click Forward to forward the email.
You can Archive or Delete a particular email using the buttons on the top-bar. To view additional options, click the small arrow-down icon beside the Delete button. Here, you can choose to move the email to a folder, assign a label, mute, report spam, etc.
If you’d like to process multiple emails at once, select the emails using the checkbox provided beside them. Click Archive or Delete. Any actions you perform will be synced with Gmail once your computer connects to the internet.
