Flour Power

It took some time, but the Google folks finally did it. It is now possible to use Gmail while offline:

Today we’re starting to roll out an experimental feature in Gmail Labs that should help fill in those gaps: offline Gmail. So even if you’re offline, you can open your web browser, go to gmail.com, and get to your mail just like you’re used to.

Offline Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of the mail and as long as there’s an active Internet connection, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When the connection is lost, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored locally instead of sending/fetching it across the network. It’s possible to access almost all of Gmail’s features while offline, and those will be automatically synchronized with Gmail’s servers when there’s an Internet connection available. There are some features missing, though: it’s not possible to add attachments, the contact manager is not available offline, and it’s not possible to customize which messages to download. Gmail uses some algorithms to determine which messages to cache locally: in my case it downloaded 3 months of email (some labels were downloaded completely, while Spam and Trash were ignored), including attachments, which amounted to about 280MB.

This should come in handy for those that rely a lot on email but can’t be connected all the time. It’s now possible to get some inbox cleaning done while commuting, or on an airplane. And as the Gmail team point out, it’s a good solution for those with crappy connections:

And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use “flaky connection mode,” which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background.

The setup couldn’t be easier. Just go to Settings > Labs, enable it (you’ll have to install Gears if you don’t have it yet.) and after the browser is reloaded press the “Offline” link on the top right menu. It will take some time downloading everything, though.