Just right-click on each document and toggle the “Available Offline” switch. Luckily, you can simply manually mark specific Docs for offline access. Of course, this doesn’t give you specific control over which files will be available offline. Now, any recent documents will still work, even if there is no internet. Then just go to /drive/settings and toggle this setting on. This is available for PC, Android, and iOS, but we’re focusing on desktop here.Īlthough there is no standalone Google Docs application you can download, you can in fact enable offline use of Docs through your Chrome browser.Īll you need to do is install this official Google Chrome extension. Google provides offline syncing functionality for Google Drive (and thus Docs), but it’s not on by default. This is a quick way to get an offline copy of a document, but why not enable offline Google Docs functionality instead? Enable offline access in Google Docs You’ll either have to upload the new edited local document to your Drive, or copy the updated content back into the existing Doc. Keep in mind that this creates a new copy of the document, which won’t be synced to your Google Doc.

Just click File>Download and choose the format you want. It’s not the most elegant solution, but you can simply download your Google Doc to your local machine. However, that doesn’t mean you have no recourse for the times when the internet isn’t an option, such as flights or when you’re trying to avoid Star Wars spoilers and don’t dare connect. I know that’s not the answer that you were looking for, but these Google apps are cloud-based. The short answer is, well, there isn’t one.

Google docs for desktop