After Google Docs and Google Reader, Gmail has got an offline mode so that you can access your e-mail even when Internet connection is not available. The offline mode is currently Labs feature and to enable it, look under labs settings in Gmail.

The offline Gmail feature uses Google Gears to download mail messages to your hard disk and lets you access your e-mails while you are offline or your Internet connection isn’t working.

[Image via: Lifehacker]

When you’ll enable this feature, you’ll see a offline link in top bar of Gmail, click on it to start Offline mode. Gmail will start maintaining local cache of your Gmail messages and while you are connected, this cache will be automatically synchronized with Gmail servers and once your Internet connection hangs up, Gmail will switch to offline mode and you can then do all the things that you used to do with online Gmail.

Besides reading, labeling the messages, you can even compose a message and send it in offline mode, The sent message will be temporarily stored in outbox and once you get online again, Gmail will automatically send those messages.

And if you are on an unreliable connection like public Wifi’s or your neighbor’s, then you can use flaky connection mode so that Gmail always looks for connection availability and once it founds one, the local cache is synchronized.

Here’s a video showing how offline Gmail works:

This feature is currently in experimental mode and don’t worry if you experience few problems using this feature. Also, this feature is being rolled out to all Gmail users in a day or two and will soon reach your Gmail settings if haven’t yet.