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I would like to be able to save webpages to my Android device for offline viewing. I tried a few programs like Offline Browser, but they didn't allow me to view webpages that require authentication.

Vital:

  • Should be able to save webpages that require authentication
  • Should be able to search or organise my saved webpages

Nice:

  • Ability to crawl a bunch of links/websites
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4 Answers 4

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Not having tried it myself, but seeing the issue, I might recommend you some specific web browsers:

Opera Mini is a web browser optimized for mobile use. The "Mini" not only refers to app size (it's just a 1 MB download), but also to its data usage: all your browser-traffic is routed via a specific proxy, which optimizes content for display on mobile devices, including the resizing of images. And for your specific case, here's one item from its feature list:

Save pages - Save pages for reading later, or for times you’re not connected to the internet.

As the browser has to retrieve pages for display, the content is in its local cache anyway – even if you had to enter your credentials first. I've not tested it myself (so someone else, please confirm) – but the most logical way for such an app to "save pages for reading later" is to make their "cached versions" more permanent. Why should it retrieve them again? And saving it on Operas servers makes no sense "for offline use".

UC Browser for Android supports offline-reading via the Save page plugin. Same principles should apply as described for Opera above.

Nextep includes, amongst others, a web browser capable of storing content for offline use. Quoting from its feature list:

Search: Browser with integrated screen scissors, drag & drop webpage links, images, documents or videos into a category/subcategory.

So this would definitely cover your "organisation" part along the lines ;)

Web2PDF: There are multiple apps for this kind of feature (the link goes to a list of them). But it seems like none of them can deal with password protected pages: either you can only specify an URL, or content is grabbed via the "Share" menu from your browser, which results in the same problem: only the URL is available to the app.

Conclusion:

Best chances are the web browsers offering themselves an offline mode, as they can access the content after authentication directly from their own caches. Crawling a bunch of websites and links won't be possible this way, though: that would require a specific web-crawler app able to deal with password protected sites. From the PC, the best known application for this kind is HTTrack, so...

HTTrack Website Copier can download entire websites recursively for offline use. And yes, it can deal with password protected pages.

How would your requirements being met?

  • Should be able to save webpages that require authentication: All candidates of the first block (web browsers with offline capabilities) should meet this. While a Web2PDF app might be capable of this (providing the appropriate input fields), I've not seen any announcing this feature (or showing it in a screenshot). HTTrack definitely covers this.
  • Should be able to search or organise my saved webpages: The browsers include at least listings of stored content. I couldn't find any hint on "organisation features" (except for Nextep, see above), but would guess that works similar to bookmarks for them. Not sure about search here. For Web2PDF and HTTrack, organisation could be done by other means: As they store the retrieved content to your SDcard, you could use any file manager to organize it. For HTTrack, the content would even be seachable (as stored in plain-text), and the file manager used for the search should enable you opening your findings with your favorite web browser.
  • Ability to crawl a bunch of links/websites: From the candidates listed here, only HTTrack is capable of that.

So finally: HTTrack is the candidate matching most of your criteria – if "organisation and search" using a file manager is acceptable to you. If you rather favor "doing anything from within one app" over "crawling a bunch of links/websites", pick one of the web browsers.

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  • Opera seems to work well for me, even though I wish it had a better organisation
    – Casebash
    Commented Sep 16, 2014 at 8:31
  • Thanks for the feedback, Casebash! Yeah, hard to meet all your requirements in a single app – which is why I decided to list multiple possibilities, so you had a choice at least.
    – Izzy
    Commented Sep 16, 2014 at 9:25
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I use Pocket for saving webpages. It has an Android app, as well as Chrome and Firefox extensions so you could also save your webpages from any computer.

  • It saves an offline copy of the webpage so authentication should not be a problem*
  • You can easily search through the saved webpages, favorite, archive, and apply tags
  • It doesn't have a feature to crawl websites that I know of

Edit:

*It does not save pages that require username and password to access (it sends you back to the sign-in page). However, it works with pages that are only reachable from a closed network even if that network requires authentication.

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  • 2
    I'm using Pocket as well. But I didn't try it with pages requiring authentication: for those, the problem is not saving the copy, but obtaining the content: Have you tried if that works? If it cannot obtain the content, there's nothing it could save to be "read later" when offline.
    – Izzy
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 13:24
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    @Izzy I might have misunderstood what the OP meant with that point. I assumed that the user would have logged in before saving the page. I have used Pocket before to save a webpage that can only be accessed from an internal network. I can still view it in Pocket even when I am outside that network, and I am able to save text files from that webpage. However, when I open the same link with a browser, I get an inaccessible page. Have I misunderstood the requirement?
    – Tymric
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 13:32
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    I understood differently (but maybe the OP can shed some light). "Requiring authentication" usually means a web page that requires you to input username and password in order to access it. The case you describe doesn't require that: here the page is just unreachable from the outside.
    – Izzy
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 13:43
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    @Izzy just tested it with a website that requires username and password. It only saved the sign-in page. I'll edit my answer. Thank you :)
    – Tymric
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 13:50
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    That's what I was afraid of. AFAIK the pocket API works like this: URL (and optionally page title) get transmitted to their server, which then retrieves the content (and adjusts it for "small screen"), stores it to the users account, and syncs it back to the device. Your test seems to confirm this. I only use Pocket to save the URL from different sources (browser, Twitter, etc.) to have it available in Firefox on my desktop, never launched the app itself. If it can read online content, it might be saveable that way (pushing the locally optimized content to the account on the server).
    – Izzy
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 13:56
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You can save web pages for offline reading with Google Cloud Print.

Just open a desired web page, select print in the menu, or share with Cloud Print, and it will let you save that page as a .pdf file to your Google Drive.

cp cp

This not only allows you to save web pages as PDF, but also other document formats such as .docx.

Incase you download a .docx file and can't read it on your smart phone, you can convert it to PDF with Cloud Print.

Now you can mannage your converted web pages on Google Drive easily, and download whatever required. (Your web pages are saved in Drive, which is useful if you don't actually want them right now on your device. Then you will have to download it when required).

Also see: How can a complete web page be saved and viewed on an Android device.

The answer on that page says that Cloud Print lets us save it directly on our device, however that did not work for me. (Can anyone with more knowledge about this please edit this answer to address this issue).

Hope this helps.

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Acer Iconic A-1 7i tablet has an app Browser that comes with the unit that has Bookmarks, History and Saved Pages. The saved pages contain all the Web pages you saved for offline reading. The saved pages are in small images of the webpage. Once you access any saved Web page you can Go live thus activating current version of the Web page. I guess the saves are limited by your storage. You may delete any of the Web pages you don't need any more. Presence of save for offline reading option is a available on 4.1 version of Android or lower.

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