Chromebooks used to be very cloud-based. If you recently switched to a new Chromebook from a Mac or PC, you might be concerned about what you can do offline. The good news is that you can still perform many common tasks on your laptop without connecting to the internet. In fact, you can accomplish pretty much anything offline on a Chromebook that you can on a Mac or PC.

Whether you want to respond to emails, work on some spreadsheets, or use Android games offline, you can still get plenty of work done without the internet. That's on top of saving your own files offline, like music and photos. In this article, we'll look at the most useful Chromebook tasks you can perform offline. Of course, you technically need the internet to do most of these tasks first since they involve downloading content, but once you do, you can get started offline.

Read and respond to email

The first thing you can do with your Chromebook offline is read email. While you can't fetch new email messages when offline, you can read and respond to synced messages using Gmail offline. Here's how to do it:

1. Open Chrome.
2. Go to Gmail's offline settings.
3. Check Enable offline mail.
4. Choose your settings, such as how many days of messages you want to sync.
5. Select Save changes.

To use Gmail when you’re not connected to the internet, go to mail.google.com. Note that when you send emails offline, your email goes into a new "Outbox" folder and gets sent as soon as you get back online.

You can also bookmark your inbox to make accessing your email offline easier. Here's how.

1. In Chrome, open your Gmail inbox.
2. To the right of the address bar, click the Star.

Watch movies offline

When your Chromebook is now connected to Wi-Fi, you can watch movies offline by downloading a movie or show to view later. There are many streaming apps that allow you to download content for later, but the default choice is Google TV. To download a show or movie from Google TV, you need to buy the content you want to watch. Here's how.

1. In the corner of your screen, select Launcher.
2. Search for Google TV.
3. Search for or select the content you want. You might have to buy an episode to view it offline.
4. Go to Your Stuff.
5. Go to Library.
6. Tap the Download button.

Of course, if you have a paid Netflix account, you can download content to watch from the Netflix Android app as well. In addition, if you have YouTube Premium, you can save YouTube content to enjoy offline as well. Remember that you can use a docking station to connect your Chromebook to an external monitor for a more enjoyable media experience.

Listen to music offline

You can listen to music offline as well, but you usually need a subscription. While you can use pretty much any streaming service for this task, the default choice is YouTube Music. If you have a YouTube Premium subscription, you can save music for offline listening using the YouTube Music app. A similar process also works for services like Spotify and Tidal if you have a subscription. If you want to ensure you always have offline tunes available, you can use YouTube Music's smart downloads feature. Here's how to use it.

1. Open the YouTube Music app.
2. Tap your profile photo.
3. Tap Downloads.
4. Tap Settings.
5. Turn on Smart downloads.

Once smart downloads are turned on, music will be automatically downloaded for you based on your listening history. You can view, pause, or delete your watch history to improve your recommendations and which music gets downloaded for you.

Play Android games offline

There are many great games on ChromeOS you can play. Perhaps the best way to enjoy games offline on a Chromebook is via Android apps. All you have to do is navigate to the Google Play Store on your Chromebook.

1. Open the ChromeOS launcher.
2. Search for Google Play Store.
3. Click Games.
4. Look for the games you want to download. You also can search by clicking the Search for apps & games section at the top and entering your desired game.

Most Android games won't require you to connect to the internet to work properly. You can typically read the Google Play listing to see if they'll work offline.

Productivity tasks

What if you need to get some work done offline on your ChromeOS device? You can take notes, edit spreadsheets, and even read webpages you've previously saved using Google Drive. This includes Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other files. Here's how.

1. Go to your Google Drive settings.
2. Look for Offline and click on the box.
3. Wait a few minutes for Offline mode to turn on.
4. Select Done.
5. You can then make select files offline in Google Drive. Just open the Files app, choose Google Drive in the sidebar, and select the file you want to use offline. Then, at the top, turn on Available offline. You'll know when the file is offline as you'll see a checkmark next to the file name.
6. Open the ChromeOS launcher, select the Files app, click Offline and select the file you want to work on.

If this isn't working for you, then you can use Google Keep to type up something offline. Open the app, and after your Chromebook saves your notes, you can edit them or write new notes offline. Any changes you make will appear in Google Keep the next time you’re online. Reading webpages offline is also possible. Right-click the page, select Save as, then save the page as an HTML file.

File Sync with Chromebook Plus

Finally, we touch on something relatively new. If you purchased a Chromebook Plus model, you have access to a new feature called File Sync. This feature is exclusive to Chromebook Plus devices. With this, you can ensure that your Google Drive fields are always accessible. It will automatically download your drive files locally for you to enjoy. To enable it, do the following.

1. Connect your Chromebook to the internet, initially.
2. Launch the ChromeOS Settings app
3. Click Advanced in the sidebar.
4. Choose Files.
5. Choose Google Drive.
6. Turn the toggle for File Sync to On.

Once this is enabled, any Google Drive files will save to your Chromebook locally, allowing you to access them when you disconnect from the internet.

ChromeOS is an incredibly versatile operating system, running on a variety of hardware. You can do just about anything you want offline on a Chromebook. As you can see, movies, music, games, and productivity tasks are all readily available. It's important to prepare your Chromebook for offline work or media consumption. Make sure to download your favorite shows, songs, and games for access the next time you're offline. Set up your Gmail and Keep Notes account to allow offline access to email and note-taking on the go.