SingleFile

SingleFile

SingleFile is a Web Extension compatible with Chrome, Firefox (Desktop and Mobile), Chromium-based Edge, Vivaldi, Brave, Waterfox, Yandex browser, and Opera. It helps you to save a complete web page into a single HTML file.

Table of Contents

• Demo
• Install
• Getting started
• Additional notes
• SingleFileZ
• Command Line Interface
• Release notes
• FAQ
• File format comparison
• Known issues
• Troubleshooting unknown issues
• Statistics (Firefox)
• Integration with WebKit
• Privacy policy
• Contributors
• Icons
• Code derived from third party projects
• License

Demo

Install

SingleFile can be installed:

• via the Firefox Add-ons website: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/single-file,
• via the Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mpiodijhokgodhhofbcjdecpffjipkle,
• by downloading the zip file (https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/archive/master.zip) and installing it manually.

Getting started

• Wait until the page is fully loaded, you may need to scroll down the entire page to be sure all elements are loaded.
• Click on the SingleFile button in the extension toolbar to save the page.

Additional notes

• To save multiple tabs, select them first and click on the SingleFile button.
• Open the context menu by right-clicking the SingleFile button in the extension toolbar or on the webpage. It allows you to save:
  • the current tab,
  • or the selected content,
  • or the selected frame.
• You can also process multiple tabs in one click and save:
  • the selected tabs,
  • or the unpinned tabs,
  • or all the tabs.
• The context menu also allows you to activate the auto-save of:
  • the current tab,
  • or the unpinned tabs,
  • or all the tabs.
• You can interrupt the saving progress by clicking on the SingleFile button when processing a page.
• With auto-save active, pages are automatically saved every time after being loaded (or before being unloaded if not).
• Right-click on the SingleFile button and select "Options"/"Manage extension" to open the options page.
• The default save folder is the download folder configured in your browser, cf. about:preferences in Firefox and chrome://settings in Chrome.
• You can use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Y to save the current tab or the selected tabs. Go to chrome://extensions/shortcuts to change it in Chrome.
• See the extension help in the options page for more detailed information about the options and technical notes.

SingleFileZ

SingleFileZ is a fork of SingleFile that allows you to save a webpage as a self-extracting HTML file. This HTML file is also a valid ZIP file which contains the resources (images, fonts, stylesheets and frames) of the saved page. This ZIP file can be unzipped on the filesystem in order, for example, to view the page in a browser that would not support pages saved with SingleFileZ.

More info here: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFileZ

Command Line Interface

• You can save web pages to HTML from the command line interface. See here for more info: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/cli/README.MD.
• You can also convert MAFF pages to HTML. For this, you must use specific versions of SingleFile CLI and Firefox. See here for more info: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile-MAFF2HTML.

Release notes

See https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file/versions/

FAQ

See https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/faq.md

File format comparison

	HTML (SingleFile)	HTML (SingleFileZ)	MAFF	MHTML	Webarchive	HTML+folder
Pages are saved as a single file	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
HTML and styles are minified	✓	✓
Unused HTML and styles are removed from files	✓	✓
Binary resources are not encoded in base 64		✓	✓		✓	✓
Files are compressed		✓	✓
Files can be viewed without installing any extension	✓	✓*		✓**	✓***	✓
Files can be viewed without running JavaScript	✓		✓	✓	✓	✓
Files can be unzipped to extract resources		✓	✓
Files contains the text of the page (plain or formatted) which can be indexed	✓	✓****		✓	✓	✓

	Notes
*	a switch must be passed from the command line in Chrome and an option must be enabled in Safari
**	only in Chromium-based browsers and Internet Explorer
***	only in Safari
****	an option must be enabled in the extension

Known Issues

• All browsers:
  • For security reasons, you cannot save pages hosted on https://chrome.google.com, https://addons.mozilla.org and some other Mozilla domains. When this happens, 🛇 is displayed on top of the SingleFile icon.
  • The last saved path cannot be remembered by default. To circumvent this limitation, disable the option "Misc > Save pages in background".
  • The following characters are replaced with _ in filenames: ~, \, ?, %, *, :, |, ", <, >
    
• Chrome:
  • You must enable the option "Allow access to file URLs" in the extension page to display the infobar when viewing a saved page, or to save a page stored on the filesystem.
  • If the filename of a saved page looks like "56833935-156b-4d8c-a00f-19599c6513", disable the option "Misc > Save pages in background". Reinstalling the browser may also fix this issue.
  • Disabling the option 'File name > open the "Save as" dialog to confirm the file name' will work if and only if "Ask where to save each file before downloading" is disabled in chrome://settings/downloads.
• Firefox:
  • The "file name conflict resolution" option does not work if set to "prompt for a name"
• Waterfox
  • When opening pages saved with the option "group duplicate images together" enabled, duplicate images are not displayed. It is recommended to disable this option.

Troubleshooting unknown issues

Please follow these steps if you find an unknown issue:

• Save the page in incognito.
• If saving page in incognito did not fix the issue, reset SingleFile options.
• If resetting options did not fix the issue, restart the browser.
• If restarting the browser did not fix the issue, try to disable all other extensions to see if there is a conflict.
• If there is a conflict then try to determine against which extension(s).
• Please report the issue with a short description on how to reproduce it here: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/issues.

Statistics (Firefox)

See https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file/statistics/?last=90

Integration with WebKit

• Here is a Swift application (for macOS) made by @captaindavepdx that illustrates how to use SingleFile with WebKit: https://github.com/captaindavepdx/SingleFileMacOS

Privacy Policy

See https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/privacy.md

Contributors

• Chinese translation done by yfdyh000 (https://github.com/yfdyh000), KrasnayaPloshchad (https://github.com/KrasnayaPloshchad), frostblazergit (https://github.com/frostblazergit)
• Traditional Chinese translation done by frostblazergit (https://github.com/frostblazergit)
• German translation done by womotroll (https://github.com/womotroll)
• Japanese translation done by Shitennouji（四天王寺) (https://github.com/Shitennouji)
• Polish translation done by xesarni (https://github.com/xesarni)
• Russian translation done by rstp14 (https://github.com/rstp14)
• Spanish translation done by strel (https://github.com/strel)

Code derived from third party projects

• csstree: https://github.com/csstree/csstree
• postcss-media-query-parser: https://github.com/dryoma/postcss-media-query-parser
• UglifyCSS: https://github.com/fmarcia/UglifyCSS
• parse-srcset: https://github.com/albell/parse-srcset
• parse-css-font: https://github.com/jedmao/parse-css-font

Icons

• Icon made by Kiranshastry from Flaticon is licensed by CC 3.0 BY

License

SingleFile is licensed under AGPL. Code derived from third-party projects is licensed under MIT. Please contact me at gildas.lormeau <at> gmail.com if you are interested in licensing the SingleFile code for a commercial service or product.

Suggestions are welcome :)