App to Save Website into Single File
It’s been a long holiday week in South Korea, and with long holiday, I had some tinkering to do on all of my browsers. Safari on both macOS and iOS do support ‘read later’ feature with possible options to sync over cloud and save locally. It is a feature handy for short term usage, but with Apple’s “it just works” approach to the feature itself, it lacks reliability needed for long term storage and usage.
SingleFile is a free, open-source, browser extension available for Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari that saves all the necessary information to recreate currently active web page into a single .html file. To put it simply, it creates a file that closely mimics the said page on the browser unlike PDFs. On Safari, the browser has its own proprietary .webarchive format, and while it works, I very much appreciate the customizations SingleFile offers.
There isn’t much needed to be said about the extension itself. It generates an HTML file that can be opened by browsers (likely already a default setting on most operating system), and the saved contents are independent from remote sources. It is most handy when the contents in question need to be saved in cold storage for actual “later”. Again, because it is in HTML format, the saved page from Safari, for example, can still be opened from Firefox, or vice versa. The results are browser agnostic.
After the extension has created a HTML file, it will prompt for download just like any other links to download a file. On iOS, however, the downloaded file may not immediately available on the Files app, in which case it is still in Safari’s Downloaded list under Page Settings.
I would also suggest enabling audio and video download from the settings, should it be necessary as part of the web page. It’s harder to navigate the settings page on the iOS side, as it is hidden away under Settings > Apps > Safari, instead of being able to access it directly from the Safari browser itself. Otherwise, my experience with the extension was cohesive throughout different browsers.