Snipbook

Documentation

Offline use

How to install Snipbook as an app and what still works, or needs a connection, once you are offline

Snipbook is a regular website, but it can also be installed like an app. Installed or not, it's built to work without an internet connection — the technical name for this kind of app is a PWA (progressive web app), but all that matters practically is: install it once, and it opens and runs offline from then on.

Installing it

  • Chrome or Edge on desktop — open Snipbook, then click the install icon in the address bar (or use the browser menu and choose "Install Snipbook"). It opens afterward in its own window, like any other app.
  • Android (Chrome) — open Snipbook, then either tap the "Install app" banner if it appears, or open the browser menu and choose "Add to Home screen" / "Install app".
  • iPhone or iPad (Safari) — open Snipbook, tap the Share icon, then choose "Add to Home Screen".

You don't have to install it — Snipbook works the same way in a regular browser tab. Installing just gives it its own icon and window, and makes it easier to find.

What works offline

Once Snipbook has loaded on your device the first time, the app itself — the editor, its tools, and all your diaries and pages — works with no connection at all. You can open the app, create and edit pages, write, draw, and place stickers or photos you've already saved to your Pocket, entirely offline. That's because everything you make is stored on your device, not on a server, so there's nothing to fetch to use it.

Items in your Pocket work offline because Snipbook downloads them onto your device the moment you save them there. When you pick up a photo or sticker from the Store, Snipbook waits for the full image to finish downloading before it counts as pocketed — so once something is in your Pocket, it's genuinely on your device and placeable on a page with no connection, even much later.

What needs a connection

The one part of Snipbook that needs the internet is the Store, where you browse and save new photos and stickers into your Pocket. Browsing the Store's catalog and saving an item both talk to Snipbook's server, so if you open the Store with no connection, it won't be able to load anything new to browse — you'll only be able to use what's already in your Pocket.

There's one small, honest exception worth knowing about fonts: the handful of core text styles are bundled with the app and always available offline. Snipbook has more fonts than that, though, and the extra ones are only downloaded the first time you actually pick them — after that, they're remembered and work offline too. So the first time you try an unfamiliar font, you'll want a connection; every time after, you won't.

  • What Snipbook is — the short version of what the app does.
  • Privacy — what stays on your device, and what, if anything, leaves it.
  • Editor features — a fuller tour of the tools available on a page.