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
• singlefile2trilium - Tool to save faithful copy of a web page as a Trilium note with SingleFile: https://github.com/nil0x42/singlefile2trilium
• SingleFileMac - Integration of SingleFile in a swift application using webkit: https://github.com/david-littlefield/SingleFileMac
• 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 :)