Access Gmail without an internet connection by using Google Gears.

Gmail is a fantastic free email application that can be accessed over the web. It performs a lot better than most of the other free alternatives and has clean usability features. Until now, Gmail can only be used if you have a better internet connection. Even if the connection is a bit sloppy, Gmail tends to show its ugly face.

Not any more. Gmail now has offline support so you can access Gmail without an active internet connection. That’s a great news but, of course, there are limitations.

Gmail uses Google Gears to create an offline cache for your Gmail messages and uses the cache when your internet connection is flaky or if you don’t have an internet connection at all. It allows you to do most of the tasks that you are pretty much used to with Gmail like viewing your existing emails, compose and send emails, star and label emails, convert emails to tasks and much more, and will synchronize the changes when it detects an active internet connection. This means that you can even send messages while in offline mode, but Gmail will store your sent messages in its offline cache and will really send the emails when it detects an usable internet connection.

Enough with the background information…let’s see how you can enable offline access in Gmail. Keep in mind that this feature  is not rolled out to all the Gmail users. If you don’t see the feature yet on your Labs tab, keep checking.

Step-1: Navigate to Gmail Labs

Click on the green jar icon on the top right side of the Gmail page to navigate to the Gmail Labs page.

Step-2: Enable Offline Gmail

If you see an Offline section on your Labs page then make sure to click on the “Enable” option. Scroll all the way down and click on the “Save Changes” button.

Step-3: Reload Gmail

This is an optional step. Once you hit the “Save Changes” button on Step-2 Gmail will reload the Gmail page so you should be able to see the “Offline” link at the top right side of the Gmail page.

If, for some reason, Gmail didn’t refresh by itself then make sure to hit the Refresh button or F5 or “View >> Refresh” options manually to reload the Gmail page.

Step-4: Install offline access for Gmail

Click on the button at the top right of the Gmail page.

Gmail will popup an “Install offline access for Gmail” dialog. Click on the Install button to install Google Gears to enable offline capabilities on Gmail.

Step-5: Install Google Gears

Gmail will take you to the Google Gears page. Click on the Install Gears button and finish installing Google Gears on your computer. It’s pretty straight forward and if you have any questions on installing Google Gears please let us know in comments.

Step-6: Allow Gmail to use Google Gears

The above steps requires a browser restart. Once the browser restarts and you reload the Gmail page you’ll be prompted with the Gears Security Warning dialog which basically asks your consent to allow Gmail to use Gears. Click on the Allow button.

Step-7: Gmail Shortcut

Gmail then creates a shortcut so it can be accessed offline when you don’t have an internet connection. Check the options of your preference to create shortcuts on your Desktop, Start menu and Quick Launch Bar. Hit the OK button once done.

Step-8: Gmail Synchronization

Gmail then synchronizes to download all your online messages to the offline cache. Allow it to finish downloading all the messages. Once all the messages are downloaded you can click on the Gmail desktop shortcut to launch Gmail when you don’t have an internet connection.

Offline Settings

If you ever wanted to change your Gmail Offline settings you can click on the Settings link at the top right side of the Gmail page and navigate to the Offline tab.

Offline support in Gmail is a very useful feature that brings it closer to the desktop versions of Outlook, still giving the users the flexibility to access their email from anywhere. Remember, offline support is only available on the computer where you’ve installed Google Gears and allowed Gmail to download your emails to its offline cache. You can still access your emails from any other computer when you have an active internet connection.

If you have any questions/comments regarding this please let us know in comments.