The most popular word game right now is Wordle, a simple game that gives you six chances to guess the five-letter word of the day. I have already shown how you can add a real Wordle app, not a fake clone, to the home screen of your iPhone or Android phone. But there’s also a way to keep Wordle playable offline for years to come.
Why save Wordle for offline play?
The New York Times recently acquired an online game for a small seven-figure sum, and you probably know how it ends. The web app will remain freely available online for a while, but will eventually move to the paid NYT platform like most other content. If you’re not subscribing to a publication, you’ll need to keep the offline version of Wordle running longer than you want to play.
What’s interesting about the Wordle web app is that it runs completely on the client side, so every time you load a web page, the game’s code and all of its puzzles sit right next to it. There are over two thousand five-letter words built into the code, which means over five years of gameplay that you can play offline.
Because everything is right there in the code of the web page (images, text, JSON, JavaScript, HTML, etc.), news site after news site says you can save the complete Wordle web app as a standalone page in your web browser. desktop. The instructions below are for several browsers on macOS, but other browsers and other operating systems will be similar.
With the Wordle web app open in a browser:
- Safari: Right-click the page and choose Save Page As – or click File in the menu bar and choose Save – then change the format to Web Archive and save it anywhere.
- Chrome: Right-click the page or click File in the toolbar, click Save Page or Save Page As, change the format to Web Page, Completed, and save it in a new Wordle or Wordle folder offline.
- Firefox: Right-click on the page or click “File”in the toolbar, click “Save Page As”, change the format to “Web Page, Completed”and save it to a new “Wordle”or “Wordle Offline”folder.
Then you must open the file. webarchive (Safari) or. html (Chrome, Firefox) where you saved it and the game should open in your default web browser as a new tab.
However, what if you want to play real Wordle offline on your smartphone for free?
Skip to section: Save to Safari on iPhone | Save to files on iPhone | Save to Chrome on Android
Save Wordle Offline in Safari on iPhone
First, to make sure Safari loads the offline copy of Wordle, as well as any other web page you add to your reading list, go to Settings -> Safari. Then turn on the “Automatically save offline”toggle in the “Reading List”section, if it’s not already checked. Safari will now store anything you save in Reading List in iCloud, and it should even be in future iCloud backups of your iPhone.
Secondly, it’s time to save the offline version of Wordle. In Safari, go to powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/, click the share button in the toolbar, and select “Add to Reading List”from the options.
If you don’t already have the “Automatically save offline”toggle turned on, you may receive a prompt asking if you want to “Automatically save reading list articles for offline reading.”Click “Save Automatically”to activate the feature.
To play it, open a new tab in Safari, then look for “Wordle”under the Reading List heading on the start page. If you don’t see the Reading List section on the start page, you can turn it on in Safari’s start page settings.
Alternatively, tap the book icon in the toolbar on a new tab, then select “Wordle”from your reading list. If you don’t see it right away, use the search bar to find it. If you still don’t see it, click “Show All”at the bottom to display all read content, not just unread ones. Then play the daily word as usual.
You can even verify that Safari saved the word correctly using Safari’s Web Inspector. Go to Settings -> Safari -> Advanced, then make sure Web Inspector is enabled.
Then, connect your iPhone to your Mac with a Lightning cable, open Safari on Mac, click Develop in the menu bar, select your iPhone, and choose Word – Daily Word Game to view its content. If you don’t see “Develop”in the menu bar, click “Safari”in the menu bar, then “Settings”and make sure “Show Develop menu in menu bar”is checked in the “Advanced”tab.
Please note that if you are connected to the Internet when accessing an offline Wordle game in your Reading List, Safari may attempt to download the current online version of the game from the URL. If the game no longer exists, you’ll probably get an error, but unplugging your iPhone and accessing Wordle from your Reading List in Safari should open the cached offline version without any problems.
Save Wordle Offline to Files on iPhone
If you’re worried about Wordle getting messed up by Safari’s reading list, there’s another way to save Wordle for offline play on iPhone. As before, go to powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/ in Safari and click the share button in the toolbar; only this time, click Options at the top. From the Options menu, select Web Archive and click Finish.
Then select “Save to Files”on the “Sharing”sheet. Find a suitable location to save the file. web archive. You can save it to the On My iPhone folder, but it will only be available locally. If you want to play it on your Apple devices, choose “iCloud Drive”instead.
Click “Save”when you find a suitable folder, such as “Games”.
To play Wordle on iPhone, open Files, find the file. webarchive and tap it. However, if you don’t have an application that opens files. webarchive, you will most likely only see empty previews in the files. So, you need to “share”it with an application that supports it.
Press and hold Wordle. webarchive in Files, then click Share. You can also click the Share icon after opening an archive on a blank page in Files.
You’ll notice that Safari isn’t listed in the list of sharing extensions on the Share page, and that’s because there’s a rendering bug that Apple hasn’t fixed yet, so you need to choose a different tool.
Google Chrome and DuckDuckGo don’t seem to like web archives, and browsers like Firefox don’t even show up on the Share page, but the following apps work:
Once you have selected an application to open it, from now on, pressing on. webarchive from “Files”can be opened directly in this application. For example, my web archives always open in Documents by Readdle.
Save Wordle Offline in Chrome on Android
If you’re using an Android phone and have Chrome installed, you can save offline versions of web pages just like Safari. However, I was unable to get it to load all the elements, which makes the game impossible. Maybe you’ll have better luck. Try:
Open Chrome, go to powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/, tap the vertical ellipsis icon, then hit the download button in the menu. It should let you know when the download is complete and even give you an “Open”link to try it right away. To open it later, tap the vertical ellipsis in a new Chrome tab, tap Downloads, and select Wordle.
I tried to do the same on Samsung Internet, Microsoft Edge, and other Android browsers, but I get the same result when certain elements are missing from the game.
Pros and Cons of Playing Wordle Offline
Whether you play Wordle offline on your computer or smartphone, you will have the same experience. Some are good, some are far from perfect. However, in general, this is enough if you just want to solve a given word every day.
Pros:
- You still get a new word every day.
- You can still share solved puzzles.
- Hard mode still works.
- The dark theme still works.
- Colorblind mode still works.
Minuses:
- This will not save your stripes.
- Sharing puzzles will not result in pretty graphics like on the web.