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There are situations when I require to save a "complete" web page for offline reading. I can easily do that on Windows by saving the web page, but not on Android.

I am using Chrome on Android and I don't see a "Save" option. Instead, I see "Save link" which, I believe, saves "only" the "pure HTML" version of a site of which the link leads to.

I have tried this, but when I view it in the HTML Viewer, a lot of necessary CSS formatting and all the images were lost, which made the information misleading and incomplete respectively. I thought I downloaded the complete page and the fault was that of the HTML Viewer for not rendering everything, but I was wrong, as the desktop Chrome also displayed the "only HTML" version when I transferred those pages to my laptop through Bluetooth.

So, my question is: How can I download "a complete" web page on my Android smartphone? It's OK if I can't view it on my smartphone, but everything should be in place when I view it on my laptop after transferring it. It is also OK if it is saved as a PDF file.

P.S. I'm asking this as I use the internet very often on my smartphone because my laptop is not connected to the internet. Also, I want to transfer it to my laptop because I don't want to view those "important" pages on a small screen, it's inconvenient.

3
  • 1
    For me, Chrome's "Save Link" actually works rather well. Especially for blog entries with many comments, where the formating in the PDF is not mobile-friendly.
    – heiner
    Commented Sep 26, 2015 at 0:44
  • 1
    Nowdays chrome can save pages - just tap the download icon, and then it shows up in "Saved pages". Commented Dec 23, 2017 at 18:51
  • Duplicate: Viewing web pages offline
    – endolith
    Commented Nov 25, 2019 at 2:09

10 Answers 10

16

In Chrome for Android, you can save the opened web page as a PDF. To do that, you have to install the Google Cloud Print application to do this.

Once you have installed it, first open a desired web page in Chrome.

Then, click on the menu icon and select on Print option. There, you can select the Save as PDF option.

Select the location and click on the save button. This should save a PDF of the current web page which you can read by using any PDF viewer that came with your smartphone.

4
  • 1
    @Switch Okay this works only if you have the Google Cloud Print application. Edited this answer to say that. Commented May 1, 2015 at 9:33
  • Or if you have the Adobe Acrobat app.
    – Nadav S.
    Commented May 1, 2015 at 19:56
  • @Sri Harsha Chilakapati thanx =) i had to use a diferent method though. But da trick was to install Cloud Print. Thanks again =)
    – user104843
    Commented May 5, 2015 at 6:14
  • PDFs have page breaks in the middle of images though :(
    – endolith
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 19:17
8

You can save as PDF on Firefox too. Just go to Menu -> Page -> Save as PDF

6

Or maybe : Offline Browser - Google Play

Download the Web Pages for Offline Viewing

If you want to keep a web page for later on Android, you need Offline Browser. To use it, just open it up and tap the plus sign to add a new page to your library

How to Save Web Pages for Offline Access Later - Android

2

On Android's stock browser, you have the option "Save for offline viewing" available from the menu. I'm using it on a daily basis.

1
  • 1
    The stock browser varies from phone to phone. Which one do you mean?
    – endolith
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 19:16
1

UC Browser:

Apart from the "Save to PDF" addon, there's another UC Browser Addon which is Save Page. It allows you to save a webpage as a complete HTML or a text file. Save as HTML for saving with images in the desired directory of your choice and transfer the saved .mht file to your computer for viewing later. The default directory is the UCDownloads folder.

Screenshot - Click to enlarge

Opera Browser:

Opera allows saving offline pages but is not viewable on the desktop. Use this if you just want to view the page on your smartphone when you are not connected to the internet.

In Opera Mobile and Opera Mini browsers, open any page and press the + sign at the top left corner of the address bar, select the "Save for offline" option, and it will display "Page saved" toast message notification. To open the saved page, go to the Speed dial page and select the Saved pages speed dial icon to open the list of saved pages.

1
  • 1
    Looks like the "Save Page" addon for UC Browser has been pulled off from Play Store, thus it might only be accessible for those who have installed it before.
    – Andrew T.
    Commented Jul 21, 2023 at 8:44
1

Try using UC Browser. It has an add-on to download web pages as PDF. The add-on can be installed from Web to PDF add on for UC Browser.

1
  • Looks like the addon for UC Browser has been pulled off from Play Store, thus it might only be accessible for those who have installed it before.
    – Andrew T.
    Commented Jul 21, 2023 at 8:45
1

Following the comments of heiner and Jonas:

Chrome for Android has a "Download" button (pictured below) where you can save a page for offline viewing and access via the Three-dot menu -> Downloads. This works amazingly well on mobile.

If you want to view it on a desktop/laptop, you can find that file in your downloads (storage/emulated/0/Download/page_name) and send it to your computer. I sent this example via "Nearby share" and it was viewable on my laptop after appending .html to the filename.

This preserved all images and worked well at first, but the page seems to timeout somehow and corrupt the page. Looking into a better solution in that case.

Chrome for Android Desktop Chromium (Edge)
1
+500

Using Kiwi Browser (and hopefully with any other Chromium based browser having Extensions support) and the extension named SingleFile you can download any page into a self-contained HTML file. You can then open the file in Chrome, or Kiwi Browser, or whichever app in your phone supports that file type.

Instructions:

  1. Install Kiwi Browser
  2. Go to SingleFile's extension page
  3. Tap on "Add to Chrome" and wait for the installation to complete
  4. Tap on three-dots vertical line right next to where you see number of opened tabs in the address bar
  5. Tap on "Extensions" option
  6. Locate SingleFile extension on the page and click on "Details"
  7. Scroll down and click on "Extension options"
  8. In the dialog scroll down to "Auto-save" and uncheck any option you see checked already.

Now, you are ready to save a page. Load whatever page you want to save. When the loading has completed tap on that same three dots line → at the bottom find SingleFile named entry and tap on it.

When you do that nothing significant in terms of UI changes would happen. SingleFile would begin its phases of preparing and saving the file. It would show a small overlay at the bottom-left that would show its phases like the one in the image.

enter image description here

Once the processing is done the file would be automatically saved and you should see a notification for the downloaded file. Try to open the file in Chrome or Kiwi Browser. It should work.

Tested on Kiwi Browser v116 running on Android 11 of OnePlus 6.

0

For offline web view, use Save as Web Archive. To access web page sources and for editing, Save For Offline by JonasCz is good.

1
0

HTTrack Website Copier mentioned in this answer could be helpful as the bounty specifically calls for

I would like to save a complete webpage for offline reading, similarly as in desktop, so that it creates the page.html and page_files/ directory where are especially images

(Emphasis supplied)

This app hasn't been updated for 6 years but surprisingly works on Android 13. It is from the stable of web site copier by the same name for web.

The major pro I found is that it is browser independent (tested on Chrome, Firefox, Brave). The major con is that if the site has several links it may take a long time and some of them may not work off-line. Also all sites do not permit copying - this site doesn't:). For reasons see FAQ. But the rich menu of options (screen shot below) may help overcome some of the limitations.

enter image description here

For this site copied using the app (screen shot at end of answer)

  • Path for images /storage/emulated/0/HTTrack/Websites/Aa/static.theprint.in/wp-content/uploads. Here's a screenshot of images directory

enter image description here

  • Path for htmlfiles /storage/emulated/0/HTTrack/Websites/Aafor the site with project name Aa and category "try" using this app.

You can see the copied site on the app by tapping "browse sites" on the left bottom.

I copied the HTTrack folder to PC and can view the websites as it was possible on the web version.

enter image description here


Additional Information

  • A fragment of html file

<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <meta name="description" content="HTTrack is an easy-to-use website mirror utility. It allows you to download a World Wide website from the Internet to a local directory,building recursively all structures, getting html, images, and other files from the server to your computer. Links are rebuiltrelatively so that you can freely browse to the local site (works with any browser). You can mirror several sites together so that you can jump from one toanother. You can, also, update an existing mirror site, or resume an interrupted download. The robot is fully configurable, with an integrated help" />
    <meta name="keywords" content="httrack, HTTRACK, HTTrack, winhttrack, WINHTTRACK, WinHTTrack, offline browser, web mirror utility, aspirateur web, surf offline, web capture, www mirror utility, browse offline, local  site builder, website mirroring, aspirateur www, internet grabber, capture de site web, internet tool, hors connexion, unix, dos, windows 95, windows 98, solaris, ibm580, AIX 4.0, HTS, HTGet, web aspirator, web aspirateur, libre, GPL, GNU, free software" />
    <title>Local index - HTTrack Website Copier</title>
  <!-- Mirror and index made by HTTrack Website Copier/3.49-2 [XR&CO'2014] -->
    <style type="text/css">
    <!--

body {
    margin: 0;  padding: 0;  margin-bottom: 15px;  margin-top: 8px;
    background: #77b;
}
body, td {
    font: 14px "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    }

#subTitle {
    background: #000;  color: #fff;  padding: 4px;  font-weight: bold; 
    }

#siteNavigation a, #siteNavigation .current {
    font-weight: bold;  color: #448;
    }
#siteNavigation a:link    { text-decoration: none; }
#siteNavigation a:visited { text-decoration: none; }

#siteNavigation .current { background-color: #ccd; }

#siteNavigation a:hover   { text-decoration: none;  background-color: #fff;  color: #000; }
#siteNavigation a:active  { text-decoration: none;  background-color: #ccc; }


a:link    { text-decoration: underline;  color: #00f; }
a:visited { text-decoration: underline;  color: #000; }
a:hover   { text-decoration: underline;  color: #c00; }
a:active  { text-dec
  • css files are at /storage/emulated/0/HTTrack/Websites/Brave/fonts.googleapis.com. A segment below
  font-family: 'Open Sans';
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 400;
  font-stretch: normal;
  font-display: swap;
  src: url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/opensans/v35/memSYaGs126MiZpBA-UvWbX2vVnXBbObj2OVZyOOSr4dVJWUgsjZ0B4gaVc.ttf) format('truetype');
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'Open Sans';
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 600;
  font-stretch: normal;
  font-display: swap;
  src: url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/opensans/v35/memSYaGs126MiZpBA-UvWbX2vVnXBbObj2OVZyOOSr4dVJWUgsgH1x4gaVc.ttf) format('truetype');
}
  • Screen shot of site copied

enter image description here

  • Screenshot as displayed on the app (I realized much later that it was taking a long time to copy and with more errors because Adguard was blocking. After disabling Adguard it was much faster with lesser errors)

enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

The third screenshot shows a link that couldn't be copied, hence can't be opened off-line but can be browsed online. This could probably be fixed by configuring the options, which I didn't try since I lack understanding.

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