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I currently use Google Gears with Gmail and Google Calendar to keep an offline copy of my mail and calendar. I use Firefox 3.6, but I'm looking at upgrading to Firefox 4.

I read that HTML5 has similar features as Google Gears, and that Google is shifting it's effort to HTML5 instead of Google Gears. On the Google Gears Issue Tracker, issue 1023 also suggests that Google has abandoned Google Gears.

Firefox 4 supports HTML5, and HTML5 supports offline storage. Does Google Mail and Calendar support offline storage with Firefox 4?

Update 7/1/2011: We're getting there. As @Kaveh points out, Google says they will support Offline Mode in some browsers later this year. However, I don't see Firefox 4/5/6 in that list.

Older updates below.

Update 9/28/2010: I am now running Firefox 4 Beta 6, and there is no option to use DOM Storage or Web Storage with Google Mail, Google Calendar or Google Docs. At least, not out of the box.

According to http://html5test.com/ , Firefox 4 Beta 6 (Running on MacOSX 10.5.8) gets a score of "204 and 9 bonus points out of a total of 300 points". For storage, this browser received the following scores:

> Storage           10/20
> 
> Session Storage   Yes ✔
> Local Storage     Yes ✔
> IndexedDB         No ✘
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    Here is an update: offline GMail will be available in the 3rd quarter of 2011.
    – Kaveh
    Jun 8, 2011 at 9:12
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    Update: this is 2014, and gmail offline has been available for a few years now on chrome, chromium and co. About other browsers, as far as I know, there is still no solution. The "Install offline gmail" button in the settings redirects all users to the chrome webstore, where they are greeted with an error if their browser is not chrome or one of his siblings.
    – T. Verron
    Aug 12, 2014 at 18:08

3 Answers 3

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Neither Gmail nor Google Calendar support offline HTML5 support. From my (limited) discussions from people who work at Google it's eventually on their roadmap but not a priority. Naturally they could not comment on specific details. :(

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  • Part of the problem is probably that two different approaches for offline database storage were devised by different parties: IndexedDB and Web SQL Databases. The latter, which I think is in Safari, was turned down in favor of the former that can be found in Firefox, by the HTML 5 committee. Google probably wants to wait for IndexedDB to be in all the modern browsers so they can just write this thing once and people can use it for good.
    – JohnnySoftware
    Apr 20, 2011 at 20:23
  • Yes, and in the meantime we're all suckers for hoping that offline will work when in fact, it doesn't. Not unless you install an old version of a browser.
    – Johan
    Sep 5, 2011 at 13:47
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Still no word regarding offline support for Gmail or Google Calendar.

According to the "Update on Google Docs offline and the new Chrome Web Store" on the Google Docs blog, Google Docs will support offline mode in 2011:

In addition, at the event today, we were excited to demonstrate a feature that we expect to deliver early in 2011 -- the return of offline support for Google Docs. For those who used offline, we are bringing back the much improved feature by taking advantage of advancements in modern browser technology like HTML5.

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You can check out stored values of browser local storage.

For example in Chrome: Press F12 to see Developer Tools. Then from 'Resources' tab, click 'Local Storage' to see what is stored locally for this website.

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