SingleFile
SingleFile helps you to save a complete web page into a single HTML
file. SingleFile is a Web Extension (and a CLI tool) compatible with Chrome, Firefox
(Desktop and Mobile), Microsoft Edge, Safari, Vivaldi, Brave, Waterfox, Yandex
browser, and Opera.
Table of Contents
- SingleFile
- Table of Contents
- Demo
- Install
- Getting started
- Additional notes
- FAQ
- Release notes
- Known Issues and Troubleshooting
- Command Line Interface (SingleFile CLI)
- Integration with user scripts
- File format comparison
- Projects using/compatible with SingleFile
- Privacy Policy
- Contributors
- Code derived from third party projects
- Icons
- License
Demo
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/396787/156664907-cc458e35-f41b-45ca-91eb-372213812b44.mp4
Install
SingleFile can be installed from the store of:
- Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file
- Firefox for Android:
https://addons.mozilla.org/android/addon/single-file - Chrome:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/singlefile/mpiodijhokgodhhofbcjdecpffjipkle - Safari (macOS and iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/singlefile-for-safari/id6444322545
- Microsoft Edge:
https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/efnbkdcfmcmnhlkaijjjmhjjgladedno
You can also download the zip file
(https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/archive/master.zip) of the project
and install it manually by unzipping it somewhere on your disk and following
these instructions:
- Firefox: https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/develop/temporary-installation-in-firefox
- Chrome and Microsoft Edge: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile-MV3
- Safari: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile-Safari-Extension
Getting started
- Click on the SingleFile button in the extension toolbar to save the page.
- You can click again on the button to cancel the action when processing a page.
Additional notes
- 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,
- the selected content,
- the selected frame.
- You can also process multiple tabs in one click and save:
- the selected tabs,
- the unpinned tabs,
- all the tabs.
- Select "Annotate and save the page..." in the context menu to:
- highlight text,
- add notes,
- remove content.
- The context menu also allows you to activate the auto-save of:
- the current tab,
- the unpinned tabs,
- all the tabs.
- 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 "Manage extension" (Firefox) /
"Options" (Chrome) to open the options page. - Enable the option "Destination > save to Google Drive" or "Destination >
upload to GitHub" to upload pages to Google Drive or GitHub respectively. - Enable the option "Misc. > add proof of existence" to prove the existence of
saved pages by linking the SHA256 of the pages into the blockchain. - You can use the customizable shortkey Ctrl+Shift+Y to save the current tab or
the selected tabs. Go to about:addons and select "Manage extension shortcuts"
in the cogwheel menu to change it in Firefox. Go to
chrome://extensions/shortcuts to change it in Chrome. - The default save folder is the download folder configured in your browser, cf.
about:addons in Firefox and chrome://settings in Chrome. - See the extension help in the options page for more detailed information about
the options and technical notes.
FAQ
See https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/faq.md
Release notes
See https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file/versions/
Known Issues and Troubleshooting
See https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/known-issues.md
Command Line Interface (SingleFile CLI)
You can save web pages to HTML from the command line interface. See here for
more info: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/single-file-cli.
Integration with user scripts
You can execute a user script just before (and after) SingleFile saves a page.
For more info, see
https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/wiki/How-to-execute-a-user-script-before-a-page-is-saved.
File format comparison
| | HTML | Self-extracting ZIP | MHTML | Webarchive (Safari) | 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 | ✓ | ✓¹ | ✓² | ✓³ | ✓ |
| Files can be viewed without running JavaScript | ✓ | | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Files can be unzipped to extract page resources | | ✓ | | | n/a |
| Files contains the text of the page (plain or formatted) which can be indexed | ✓ | ✓⁴ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Footnotes:
¹ When using the "universal" self-extracting file format
² Only in Chromium-based browsers, and Internet Explorer
³ Only in Safari
⁴ An option must be enabled in the extension
Projects using/compatible with SingleFile
- ArchiveBox - Open-source self-hosted web archiving:
https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox - htmls-to-datasette - Tool to index HTML files into a Sqlite database:
https://github.com/pjamar/htmls-to-datasette - Karakeep - Self-hostable bookmark-everything app with a touch of AI:
https://karakeep.app - KOReader - Document viewer primarily aimed at e-ink readers:
https://github.com/koreader/koreader - linkding - Bookmark manager that you can host yourself. It's designed be to
be minimal, fast, and easy to set up using Docker:
https://github.com/sissbruecker/linkding - Linkwarden - Self-hosted collaborative bookmark manager to collect, read,
annotate, and fully preserve what matters, all in one place:
https://github.com/linkwarden/linkwarden - obsidian-html-plugin - Plugin for reading HTML pages in Obsidian:
https://github.com/nuthrash/obsidian-html-plugin - Org-Dex.el - Emacs package designed to enhance Org-mode by integrating
SingleFile CLI: https://github.com/nitincodery/org-dex.el - Petal Cite Web Importer - Browser extension to save PDFs and capture web pages
in Petal Cite: https://github.com/ks-collab/cite-extension - Pocket Search Engine - Semantic search app for Android that works entirely
offline: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pocketsearchengine.app - Readeck - Bookmark manager and a read later tool: https://codeberg.org/readeck/readeck
- singlefile2trilium - Tool to save faithful copy of a web page as a Trilium
note with SingleFile: https://github.com/nil0x42/singlefile2trilium - SingleFile MV3 CDP Patched - fork of SingleFile patched to allow programmatic
control with Chrome DevTools Protocol: https://github.com/Cosmologist/SingleFile-MV3-CDP-Patched - SingleFile MCP - Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides intelligent web
content extraction using single-file and trafilatura: https://github.com/kwinsch/singlefile-mcp - Trilium-SingleFile - An addon for Trilium Notes to easily import SingleFile
html pages: https://github.com/rauenzi/Trilium-SingleFile - Trilium Simple SingleFile Renderer - A plugin to add a new Template note to
Trilium for render file created by SingleFile:
https://github.com/xnohat/trilium-simple-singlefile-renderer - web document - Browser extension for saving web documents locally, allowing
you to access them offline and quickly search for webpage:
https://github.com/wvit/web-document - Zotero Connector - Browser extension for Zotero, a tool to help you collect,
organize, cite, and share your research sources:
https://github.com/zotero/zotero-connectors
Privacy Policy
See https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/privacy.md
Contributors
See https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/contributors.md
Code derived from third party projects
- csstree: https://github.com/csstree/csstree
- postcss-media-query-parser:
https://github.com/dryoma/postcss-media-query-parser - postcss-selector-parser: https://github.com/postcss/postcss-selector-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
- Readability: https://github.com/mozilla/readability
- whatwg-mimetype: https://github.com/jsdom/whatwg-mimetype
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 :)