Categories: TechTutorials

Use Gmail offline if you don’t have WiFi or your computer is very slow

Google’s email service is one of the most used and we can use Gmail offline to be able to consult it even when we do not have an Internet connection, do not have coverage or if you are going to travel by plane and need to read emails during the journey, for example. We can use it automatically without the need to be using a WiFi network or data rate or if we are connected to the Internet but we want to improve Gmail speed on a computer and quickly load all the emails that we have stored in the trays.

You must bear in mind that if you do not have an Internet connection, you will not receive new emails, but you can read the ones you already have in your inbox if you had them pending, without having to be connected to the Internet … One of the advantages to use Gmail offline is which will load faster on a computer that does not have much power or that runs slower on a regular basis. By having all your emails downloaded you will not have to wait for all emails, attachments to be fully loaded … They will already be loaded when you open the email.

What can I do offline and what not?

There are many things you can do offline but not fully utilize it. You can read the emails you have stored in the inbox and you can even consult the different labels or folders that you have saved and registered to organize all your pending emails. It also allows us to see all the attachments of the registered emails.

We can also compose emails that we want to send later. We cannot send them if we do not have an Internet connection but we can write normally and leave them in drafts or even in the outbox ready to be sent as soon as you connect to the Internet, for example. Not only write new ones but respond to all those that you have pending if you want to take advantage of a free time without coverage.

What can’t I do? Like is logic, you can’t send emails if you don’t have a connection. You can leave them written but not send them definitively. When you send it and you are not connected, they will be added to a folder called “outbox” and will be sent automatically when you already have Internet.

How to activate

You cannot activate Gmail offline in all browsers so try Chrome if the others do not allow you the option by following the steps that we are going to explain below. We must go to the browser and our Gmail account.

Open your Gmail account by logging in with email and password
Tap in the upper right corner of the screen and open the menu
Choose “Manage your Google account”
The section of Setting
Go to the tabs or options at the top of the screen
Look for the section “Without connection”

Once we have reached this point we will see a single button that allows us to check the “Enable offline mail” box. You must check this box that will automatically enable a series of settings and options.

Storage

You must bear in mind that the emails you save will take up space in the internal memory of your computer or the device you are using. The first thing we will see in the configuration of Gmail’s offline mode is the amount of storage gigabytes or megabytes that what we download will occupy. The first thing you will see in this Google mode is that it indicates “You are using X MB of XXX GB of storage available for offline mail on your computer ”. So you can get an idea about the space it occupies or if it is worth dedicating it to emails and their attachments.

Choose days

Another setting that allows us the Gmail offline mode is that of synchronization. We can choose from when the emails are saved, from what day to the present. We will find it just below “Storage” with the name “Synchronization settings”. You will see a phrase that indicates… “Save emails from the last X days”. Here you will have three different options: seven days, thirty days, or ninety days. You can choose the one you want and you can change it as many times as you need.

You will also see a box that allows you to mark or unmark if you want to download only the body text of the downloaded emails or if you also want download attachments that include. Keep in mind that this will mean more space occupied in the memory of the computer.

Safety

The third of the options or sections that Gmail allows us is the security one that will delete the data on the computer when you log out or not. There are two options: Keep the data offline on the computer or delete it after logging out with the Google account. The second it will give us greater security but it will be more annoying to have to sync data again and it may take hours to do so. The first will keep the data stored on the device when you log out and they will still be there even if you change the password. It is more useful if you do not have anything confidential in the mail but it is less secure if you share a device, for example.

Disable Gmail offline

If you are no longer going to use it, you can deactivate it from their settings by following the previous steps and unchecking the corresponding box:

Open the Settings section
Go to the tabs or options at the top of the screen
Look for the section “Without connection”
Uncheck the box that you will see at the top of the page

But keep in mind that this will not delete the stored data … To do so, you must go to browser cookies and delete them so that the data generated offline on your computer is eliminated, freeing up that occupied space.

Open the Google Chrome browser
Tap on the three dots in the upper right corner
Go to the Advanced Settings section
Go to the Privacy and security section
Choose “Cookies and other site data”
Go to “See all cookies and site data”
Look for those corresponding to Gmail or choose “Delete all”

You will have already deleted the stored data from your email.

Errors and possible failures

I may not always allow you activate offline mode in Gmail. For example if your email is not from Gmail even if you use this client. Also in the case of having a work or educational center account, you may see that it does not allow you to activate it and it is necessary to ask your account administrator to change it.

Another common failure is that you do not see the preview of attachments. Not being seen does not mean that you cannot see them in full. As they explain from Gmail itself, “When you don’t have a connection, you can’t preview attachments in Gmail. However, you can download and open them with an application installed on your computer ”.

The “insufficient offline storage error”Is another of the frequent problems and it is due to not enough space on the hard drive but it can also be due to using a Chrome incognito tab or a guest profile. In these last two cases, you should simply avoid using these modes. It may also be due to the fact that you have automatically configured cookies so that they are deleted when you close the browser window. But you can avoid it from the browser settings, adjusting this option: