Gmail has pushed a new feature for its email service called Offline Gmail. It basically lets you cache your emails locally on your computer using Google Gears thus providing you with access to your mail even when not connected to the internet. This can be very handy in many situations. One that I can think of is while on a plane with no internet access, you can still compose new messages, play catch up on unread messages, and best of all, you can search your entire email database!

As it stands now, the feature is being pushed to Gmail users in phases so if you don’t have it yet, don’t despair, it will arrive hopefully sooner rather than later. If you are one of the lucky ones that already have the option (like moi), it can easily be activated from Settings>Labs>Offline Gmail. After this you will see the “Offline” option and you can click there and install. Pretty easy, though if you have a lot of emails it may take a while.

Pretty neat Google, pretty neat!