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Google Books for Chrome now lets you read offline

Google Books for Chrome now lets you read offline

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Google Books for Chrome now lets readers cache books to allow for offline reading. The feature, which was previously available on phones and tablets, now works on laptops and Chromebooks.

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St. Johns College (Cambridge) Library
St. Johns College (Cambridge) Library

So you're really enjoying War and Peace, but since you can't carry that tome around with you everywhere (it weighs like eight pounds, right?), you're reading whenever you get a chance on your smartphone, tablet, and laptop with Google Books. There's been one piece missing to that puzzle until now: unlike the phone and tablet apps, Google Chrome didn't offer offline reading. With a new update, you can hover over a book cover and click the "make available offline" checkbox, allowing you to read when you're stuck without an internet connection. It's especially good news for Chromebook users, as it gives them one more thing they can do without the internet. One thing to note, however: only EPUB books can be cached — those that are in PDF format are simply too big to cache for now.