Working offline through your Chromebook

You can work offline to perform various tasks through your Chromebook. For example, you can create and edit Google Drive documents offline. This document can help you practice using Chromebook to edit a document offline. To demonstrate offline editing, you can concurrently edit the same document through both Chromebook and any other computer.

Temporarily taking Chromebook offline

To test working offline through your Chromebook, you can temporarily disconnect its Wi-Fi.  To take your Chromebook offline, do the following:

1. Click your user icon at the lower-right corner of the Chromebook screen to display a window similar to Figure 1.

   

   Figure 1 - Click your active network to start disconnecting it.

2. Click Connected to (your_network_name) to display a window similar to Figure 2.

   

   Figure 2 - Click your network name to continue 
   disconnecting Wi-Fi (if online), or to connect it (if offline).

3. Click your_network_name to display a Connected window similar to Figure 3.

   

   Figure 3 - Click "Disconnect" to take your Chromebook offline.

4. Verify that Automatically connect to this network has been selected (check marked). Note: This automatically reconnects Wi-Fi when you boot your Chromebook.
5. Click Disconnect to take your Chromebook offline.
6. Continue according to the Using Chromebook offline section below.

Placing Chromebook back online

Any time after going offline according to the Temporarily taking Chromebook offline section above, you can place your Chromebook back online as follows:

1. Click your user icon at the lower-right corner of the Chromebook screen.
2. Click no network to display a window similar to Figure 2.
3. Click your_network_name to reconnect Wi-Fi and put your Chromebook back online.

Using Chromebook offline files

Even while your Chromebook is offline, you can use its Google Drive app to create and/or edit files in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Drawings. You can see these files only while Google Drive is open. When you go back online, your internal (offline) Drive files sync with your external (online) files.

As shown in Figures 4 through 6, I have experimented with Chromebook writing and editing, both offline and online, and with a separate computer. To make similar experiments, try the following:

1. Take your Chromebook offline according to the Temporarily taking Chromebook offline section above.
2. Open the Google Drive app, and create or edit a test document, such as offline test. Because your Chromebook is still offline, you cannot yet see your offline test, or its edits, through a separate computer, such as a Linux PC.
3. Place your Chromebook back online according to the Placing Chromebook back online section above. You should now be able to see, and edit, offline test through a separate computer.
4. To make and observe more edits to offline test, repeat steps 1 through 3 as often as necessary.

Figure 4 - Writing through Chromebook, offline then online.

Figure 5 - Adding a third paragraph through a separate computer,
and then a fourth through the offline Chromebook.

Figure 6 - The green marker indicates that I am a separate user.