Raspy

Install Raspy as an app and use it offline

Published · 3 min read

Because everything in Raspy happens on your device, a network connection is only needed to fetch the app itself. Install it once and it opens full screen, without browser chrome, on a plane or in a basement. Installing is a menu item, not a download.

iPhone and iPad

  1. Open raspy.rashmitaparmanik.com in Safari. It has to be Safari; other iOS browsers cannot add web apps.
  2. Tap the Share button, the square with an arrow.
  3. Scroll the sheet and tap Add to Home Screen, then Add.

The icon appears with the others. It opens full screen and shows up in the app switcher like any app. Photos open from the same picker the Photos app uses, including HEIC.

Android

  1. Open the site in Chrome.
  2. Tap the three-dot menu, then Add to Home screen or Install app, depending on the version.
  3. Confirm.

Samsung Internet and Edge on Android have the same option under their own menus.

Windows, Mac, Linux and ChromeOS

In Chrome or Edge, an install icon appears at the right end of the address bar when the site is open; click it and confirm. The app gets its own window, a Start menu or Dock entry, and can be pinned to the taskbar. Firefox and Safari on desktop do not install web apps in this way, but the site works in them as a normal tab, offline included.

What works offline

Everything. Opening a photo, every adjustment, crop, and saving. The first time the app loads it stores its own files, roughly a megabyte, in the browser's cache. After that it starts from the cache and checks for a newer version in the background when a connection is present. The HEIC decoder is fetched the first time a HEIC is opened, so open one while online if you expect to need it offline.

What the cache never holds

Photos. The service worker that manages the cache refuses to store any response that is an image, and its fetch handler steps aside entirely for image requests, so a photo cannot enter the cache by accident. That is a deliberate part of the privacy design and it is checked in the app's tests. The photo you are editing lives in memory for as long as the tab or app window is open, and is gone when it closes.

Removing it

Delete the icon as you would any app. On desktop, the installed app's menu has an uninstall option. Removing it deletes the cache; the three settings Raspy keeps in local storage (theme, sound, analytics choice) are cleared along with the site's data if you clear browsing data.