Sure, many things on a Chromebook can only be done online, but let’s stop pretending that’s unique to Chromebooks. If you just want to kill some time, you can also install games that run offline. You can even purchase TV shows and movies from Google Play Movies & TV and download them to watch them offline, too.

Use a Chrome app like Google Keep to compose notes or manage your to-do list with an app like Wunderlist or Any.DO. Setting up some of Chrome OS’s offline capabilities.īeyond the basics, you can download Kindle eBooks, videos, music, and PDFs to view offline. Edit documents in Google Drive? You got it.

Read your Gmail and compose new messages? Sure. Yes, you can work offline on a Chromebook. When Google is done, Chromebooks will be able to access a whole new universe of software without any hacks whatsoever. This feature is very likely to keep improving, so apps that don’t work perfectly now should eventually work better. Windows users could use Office Online to get an official Microsoft Office experience for free, and they let desktop Linux users use an official version of Microsoft Office without hacking around in Wine, too. These web apps aren’t just for Chromebook users, though. Microsoft even makes these apps available in the Chrome Web Store. Microsoft offers a completely free web-based version of Office called Office Online, complete with Word Online, Excel Online, and PowerPoint Online. But unless you’re an accountant, you probably don’t need all those fancy features. Microsoft likes to trumpet how Chromebooks don’t have the full desktop version of Microsoft Office, and that’s true.

Photoshop will be integrated with Google Drive, so you can easily keep track of your files.Ĭurrently, this feature is in beta and available only to “select North America based Adobe education customers with a paid Creative Cloud membership.” But it should eventually come to all Creative Cloud subscribers. When you use demanding functions, they can be sped up because they’re running on Adobe’s servers-they won’t drain your laptop’s battery faster or send modest Chromebook processors screaming. It sounds unnecessarily complicated (and means an Internet connection is vital), but Photoshop is actually such a demanding application that this could be useful.

Can i use word on a chromebook