How to enable offline cache (offline browsing) in Chome?

Question

Google appears to have removed the flags option "Enable Show Saved Copy Button" (the #show-saved-copy flag) in Chrome. I don't know when they did it, but I'm not seeing it in version 75. Is there another way of enabling viewing of pages in your cache (ie: you've been there once, now you are offline... ) ?

I'd had been using it for years with a single page web app (SPA) that needs to function offline. I built the app and there are tons of pages that reference it as recently as 2018.

https://www.howtogeek.com/263577/how-to-enable-offline-browsing-in-chrome/

https://www.itllc.net/how-to/tip-of-the-week-no-internet-you-can-still-view-cached-web-pages-in-chrome/

How can I restore this functionality in Chrome?

Perhaps this would be an integrated feature? I tested and it does not work.

chrome://flags/#enable-new-download-backend does not appear to give offline functionality.

My testing involves: CNN.com (any random website), letting it fully load, then closing Chrome. Next, I disconnected my wifi, opened chrome, and went to CNN.com ... I got the standard 'offline' error message.

Answer 1

Since July 2019, the old Show Saved Copy Button flag is no longer available in Chrome for working offline, although Chrome still caches viewed pages. So a trick is required which involves a dummy proxy server:

• Download and install the extension Quick & Dirty Proxy Flipper
• Click the extension’s icon in the top right of Chrome to choose a proxy server. The default (shown below) is system which means the current Internet connection.
• To browse offline, select the third option http://localhost:8080 (unless you are already running a proxy server on your PC)
• Internet requests will now be routed to your own PC so you are effectively working offline. They will fail with an error page "unable to connect to proxy server". Saved webpages and videos or those in your history can be displayed if they are already cached in Chrome.
• To return to normal work online, click the extension icon again and select system.

EDIT: See my comment below.

Answer 2

This might work: chrome://flags/#back-forward-cache. (I'm using Chrome 88). If you set it to enable force caching all pages (experimental), it might work similarly to the #show-saved-copy flag.

Answer 3

--not working by default-- In lastest version of chrome it automatically displays the offline version if no connection is available.

--update-- I actually had a custom script running in background that were producing the files locally, i can confirm once script was terminated offline cache is not available. My current recommendation would therefore be to also install an third party app to handle cache viewing, not the prettiest alternative but really does get the job done :)