Simon Willison’s Weblog

Do you need the feature in Dropbox mobile app that allows using the chosen files in offline mode? Why?

29th October 2013

My answer to Do you need the feature in Dropbox mobile app that allows using the chosen files in offline mode? Why? on Quora

I use this all the time. It’s especially useful for travelling (when you’re abroad you often don’t have inexpensive cellular data or access to WiFi). I use it for:

• Storing PDFs of my flight details and hotel reservations (using OS X’s print-to-PDF feature)
• Sometimes storing downloaded maps of the local area
• Storing details of my travel insurance
• Scanned copies of my passport

I usually combine it with Instapaper—I save Wikipedia pages about the places I am visiting offline on my phone with Instapaper so I can refer to them when I’m actually there.