OneDrive finally catches up to Google Drive and iCloud with an offline mode – here’s how to set it up

Microsoft OneDrive has finally introduced a feature long considered a staple of Google Drive and iCloud: an offline mode. The mode will be rolled out to students and professionals from today onwards, allowing users to save and edit work whether they have an internet connection or not. 

Offline mode for the web version of OneDrive will now let you open your files in the various sections of the program, like your shared folder and meeting views, as well as edit your documents, rename them, and sort them – all without needing an internet connection. 

All these changes will be ‘saved’ offline and implemented once you regain internet connectivity with your changes synced to the cloud. Files will be marked as ‘available offline’ as they are in Google Drive. 

How to set it up

If you want to use the new offline mode for OneDrive, you’ll need to install the OneDrive app on your Windows or Mac device. Once you’ve done that, you need to head over to OneDrive on your web browser of choice. 

You should be prompted to complete the one-time setup for offline mode, and voila! You’re all set! You should bear in mind that there are limitations on what you can and cannot do with offline mode at present. As MSPoweruser reports, offline mode only includes support if you have 250,000 files or fewer – hopefully, you do! – and the feature is currently only supported for OneDrive for work and school (although a wider rollout is presumably in the works). 

While long overdue, this is a great chance for Onedrive users who have to work on the go and make last-minute changes to work, and it helps take the stress off those unfortunate times when your Wi-Fi crashes and you worry about losing all your progress! Hopefully, this will tempt more people to try the file management program – now that it’s finally up to speed with basically every other alternative

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YouTube Music’s web app now gives you offline downloads for travel tunes

YouTube Music’s browser app is giving Premium subscribers the ability to download songs for offline listening.

Details of this upcoming change originate from a Reddit user who posted multiple screenshots of the altered service. There’s not much to go off at the moment. The images show there will be a new blue Download button in between Save to Library and the three-dot expandable menu above an album’s tracklist. Clicking it causes a Downloading window to pop up in the bottom left-hand corner denoting progress. 

Downloads on Web App from r/YoutubeMusic

Once finished, you can head on over to the new Downloads tab on the Library page to find the song. A line of text underneath states music will stay on your device indefinitely so long as it connects to the internet “once every 30 days.” 9To5Google in their report states the feature will have filters allowing users to sort content by “Playlists, Podcasts, Songs, and Albums.”

Limited roll out

It’s important to mention that offline downloading may only be available to a handful of people. We happened to be one of the lucky few to have received the update on our YouTube Premium subscription (YouTube hasn't made any official announcement). If you look closely at our screenshot, the Download button is actually white instead of blue.

YouTube Premium with Offline downloading

(Image credit: Future)

Some online reports claim people are unable to download podcasts. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case because we were able to grab a couple of episodes. All you have to do is click the three-dot menu to the right of the play button and select Download. The podcast will show up in your Library soon after. This is a big deal as Google Podcasts will be shutting down this April in the United States, forcing listeners over to YouTube Music. It looks like the platform is preparing for the inevitable flood of new people migrating over.

Downloading podcast off YouTube Music

(Image credit: Future)

It’s unknown when this feature will officially roll out, although judging by its recent appearance, a release may be happening soon. YouTube Music users seem to be looking forward to getting the patch. On another Reddit post talking about the update, you’ll see multiple comments talking about how excited they are that offline downloading is just over the horizon.

In our opinion, you can't listen to music without a good pair of headphones. For recommendations, check out TechRadar's list of the best headphones for 2024.

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Here’s how you can save Wordle offline and play for years to come

While Wordle has been bought by the New York Times for an undisclosed amount, a method has been discovered to play the game offline for years to come, while still being able to share your daily results as normal.

Since the debut of Wordle in November 2021, which was meant by Josh Wardle to be used as a way of keeping in touch with his partner, it’s grown into over 300,000 users playing a day. Sharing your score to Twitter has been a big part of this, with it being unlikely to log on to the social website and not see a tweet with green and white dots.

But some users have been anxious as to how their winning streak would continue, once the buyout by the New York Times is complete. In the past, some games have moved behind a paywall, requiring you to sign up. But while Wardle mentioned in a tweet that saving your streaks is in progress, users have already found alternate ways if the dreaded scenario comes true.

However, with countless copycats having appeared on the App Store, but still appearing on the Google Play Store, there’s a risk that we could see an influx of these once the sale is done.

A time capsule of January 2022

Across the years there have been other games that have taken off, similar to Wordle. Eventually, they either slowly faded away or were bought by another company.

Flappy Bird was one such game in 2013 before the developer took it down from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Stores. There was also Temple Run back in 2011, where there would be leaderboards between my friends and family as to how far we could run.

But Wordle has a userbase that wants to keep the daily routine of solving a word, then sharing it with friends and family. Users have discovered that saving the page in a web browser, will also store the words that are to come for many years.

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Launching this on Safari on my MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) loaded up Wordle with no issues. I switched off the Wi-Fi, just in case it was trying to reach the site, but sure enough, the latest word was ready to be solved.

The only downside is that my streak is reset – but it’s a small price to pay for the changes that may be coming to Wordle soon.

Playing Wordle offline on a MacBook Pro

(Image credit: TechRadar)

I’m expecting a dedicated app to appear on most platforms – from the App Store to the Nintendo Switch in time. The New York Times will want to make the game available on more platforms than just the web. But as long as you can share those green and yellow marbles on social media, users may have no issue with this.

For the time being, Wordle is still the same as it was in December, but if you want to move to your PC or Mac to get ahead of the curve for the changes that may happen to the game in the coming months, it wouldn’t be a bad move.

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