The Hidden Offline Browsing Feature
If you are traveling on an airplane or commuting through an area with no cellular service, losing your internet connection normally means you can no longer use Google Chrome. If you try to refresh a page, you will simply see the famous offline Dinosaur game. However, Google Chrome contains a hidden experimental feature (a “flag”) that allows the browser to aggressively cache entire web pages that you have recently visited. If you enable this flag and lose your connection, Chrome will silently load the cached version of the website from your hard drive, allowing you to read full articles and documentation even when completely disconnected from the internet.
How to Enable the “Show Saved Copy” Flag
Because this is an experimental feature designed for developers and power users, it is not available in the standard Chrome Settings menu.
- Open Google Chrome.
- In the main URL address bar at the top of the screen, type the following exactly as written:
chrome://flags- Press Enter. This opens the hidden experiments dashboard.
- In the “Search flags” box at the top of the page, type: Show Saved Copy Button
- The specific experiment will highlight in yellow. Click the dropdown menu next to it (which currently says “Default”).
- Select Enable: Primary from the list.
How to Use the Feature
Chrome will prompt you to restart the browser for the changes to take effect. Click the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen. Now, the next time you are offline and attempt to navigate to a website you have visited recently, you will still see the Dinosaur error page. However, there will be a brand new blue button beneath the error message labeled “Show saved copy.” Click it, and Chrome will instantly render the fully cached, offline version of the webpage, allowing you to continue reading your research uninterrupted.