5 Apps to Access Your Favorite Websites Offline — Best of

Whether you’re taking a flight tonight or planning to go to a remote vacation where you can’t access the World Wide Web, you may need to download your favorite websites. Maybe you just need to download a few coding tutorials or the new recipes from your favorite chef, a read-it-later app comes handy.

Whatever be your reason, I’ve got you covered. In this write-up, I’ve compiled the best apps (did I mentioned they’re free?) for downloading, accessing, and reading web pages without the Internet. Sounds interesting? Read on.

Pocket

Pocket is a popular read-it-later app that comes integrated in numerous apps such as Mozilla Firefox. It’s a blend of intuitive interface and powerful features designed to help you save, organise, and read the web content offline.

The app allows you to save articles, video links, and more in just a few clicks. You can explore popular items among various topics — a superb feature to find and read interesting posts. Moreover, its offline reader allows you to highlight text and change font size and background color; and more in its paid plan.

Pros

• Supports tags for organizing the saved items.
• Available by default in 500+ apps across all platforms.
• Allows you to share content and follow other curators.
• Features a text-to-speech feature for listening to content.

Cons

• No speed reading, so you can’t read a content at a fast pace.
• Its free plan doesn’t offer true offline experience, unlike others.

Supported platforms – Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Web, and many popular web browsers including Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

Instapaper

Instapaper lets you save unlimited content, organise it using folders, and read or listen to it at your leisure, like Pocket. It allows highlighting and commenting on the saved contents — even in the free plan, unlike Pocket. In comparison to Pocket, Instapaper offers more reading options and a variety of fonts.

Its premium plan offers more features like full-text search for the saved articles, speed reading feature, option to add unlimited notes, and many more.

Pros

• Allows you to discover content and follow users, like Pocket.
• Supports speed reading in its premium plan, unlike Pocket.
• Affordable than Pocket for a similar set of premium features.

Cons

• No support for tags for organizing content, but supports folders.
• No free text-to-speech playlists on mobile devices, unlike Pocket.

Supported platforms – Android, iOS, Kindle, Web, and the well-known web browsers such as Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox.

Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote is one of the best tools to take notes and create to-do lists. Its Web Clipper allows you to save articles and web pages and sync them on every device. You can take full-screen screenshots or clip them to store just the right content for future reference, making it different than the above tools.

Moreover, you can annotate and highlight the screenshots to add more info. Finally, you can add tags to notes and manage them in notebooks (like folders) to organize them perfectly. And these all features comes for absolutely free!

Pros

• Allows organizing content in notebooks (folders), unlike Pocket.
• Features free annotation and highlighting tools, unlike above tools.

Cons

• Limits access to just 2 devices for a free user.
• Limits data sync to only 60 MB/month in its free plan.
• No support for speed reading or text-to-speech, unlike above apps.

Supported platforms – Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and the popular web browsers like Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox.

SingleFile

SingleFile is a browser extension which allows you to save web content as HTML. It supersedes the default save feature of the browsers that saves a web page into multiple files by saving the page with all its elements as a single file.

SingleFile is designed to save the whole page including embedded audio and video files (but not a video embedded from YouTube). It avails an auto-saving feature, which automatically saves the web pages per the configuration.

Pros

• Costs absolutely zero with no paid plans, unlike the above tools.
• Helps save unlimited pages for free, unlike Evernote Web Clipper.

Cons

• No support for syncing the saved pages, unlike the above tools.
• No support for annotation or markup tools, unlike others.

Supported platforms – Web browsers: Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

Kiwix

Kiwix is an ultimate offline reading tool that lets you store and browse through a complete website without the Internet. It offers content packages that are pre-packages websites, helping free content become more accessible.

You can download and read websites like StackOverflow, TED Talks, Wikipedia, and many more websites. If you’re a school or university, its add-on tool — Kiwix-Serve — can help you deliver offline websites over your network.

Pros

• Free and open-source to use, unlike Pocket or Instapaper.
• Supports truly offline websites, unlike a few other tools.

Cons

• No support for taking notes, unlike Instapaper or Evernote.
• Limits offline access for a handful of websites, unlike others.

Supported platforms – Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and the popular web browsers: Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox (and their derivatives).