OfflineVault

For the week the internet is gone

When the internet is gone, the answers are still here.

A week without power. No bars after the storm. Someone hurt and no one to call. The water, food, first aid, medicine and repair answers you used to search for are already on your Mac, each one with the page it came from, and they work with Wi-Fi off.

Download for Mac, free See what's inside

Tested on 150 emergency questions. With the default model: 63 fully right, 73 partly right, 4 wrong, 0 harmful. Every wrong answer is published.

LIBRARYChatScenariosReferenceDocumentsMapsVideosSaved pagesMANAGEReadinessBackupShare on Wi-FiOffline · library on external SSDChatQwen3-4B · answers only from your librarySearch library⌘KHow do I make creek water safe to drink?Boil it if you can. If you can't, use bleach. A filter on its own is not enough.1. Boil it for one minute. Above 6,500 feet, boil for three minutes. Let it cool.[1]2. No way to boil: 8 drops of unscented household bleach per gallon, 16 if the water is cloudy. Mix, wait 30minutes.[1]3. Per quart, the Army manual says 2 drops of 5.25% bleach and a 30 minute wait, 60 if cold and cloudy.[2]4. Most portable filters remove parasites, not bacteria or viruses. Filtered water may still need treating.[1]SOURCES[1]Make Water Safe During an EmergencyCDC · Document · page 1Boil your water for 1 minute. At elevations above 6,500 feet, boil for 3 minutes. … Add 8 drops or a little less than 1/8 of a t…[2]ATP 3-50.21 SurvivalUS Army · Document · page 69Place 2 drops of chlorine bleach (5.25 percent sodium hypochlorite) for 1 quart of water and let it rest for 30 minutes. If col…Ask your library
How do I make creek water safe to drink?Boil it if you can. If you can't, use bleach. A filter on its own is notenough.1. Boil it for one minute. Above 6,500 feet, boil for three minutes. Let itcool.[1]2. No way to boil: 8 drops of unscented household bleach per gallon, 16if the water is cloudy. Mix, wait 30 minutes.[1]3. Per quart, the Army manual says 2 drops of 5.25% bleach and a 30minute wait, 60 if cold and cloudy.[2]4. Most portable filters remove parasites, not bacteria or viruses.Filtered water may still need treating.[1]SOURCES[1]Make Water Safe During an EmergencyCDC · Document · page 1Boil your water for 1 minute. At elevations above 6,500 feet, boil for 3minutes. … Add 8 drops or a little less than 1/8 of a teaspoon of 5%-9% uns…[2]ATP 3-50.21 SurvivalUS Army · Document · page 69Place 2 drops of chlorine bleach (5.25 percent sodium hypochlorite) for 1quart of water and let it rest for 30 minutes. If cold and cloudy, wait 60 min…

When you'd use it

Built for moments like these.

Each of these is a question you would have typed into a search box. Here is what happens instead.

Day three with no power.

Is the food in the fridge still safe? The Field Guide article opens first, word for word, with the FEMA page it came from. The assistant's own words come after, in a lighter style.

Power out 2 hours, fridge door shut. Is the food still ok?FROM THE FIELD GUIDE · HUMAN-CHECKEDWhen the fridge stops: food safety in a power cut2. During the outage: keep the doors closed. A fridge keeps food safe forabout 4 hours if the door stays shut. The freezer thermometer tells youwhen its contents have crossed 40 °F.3. Throw away perishable food (meat, poultry, fish, eggs, leftovers,anything that needs refrigeration) that has been above 40 °F for 2 hoursor more, or that has an unusual smell, colour or texture. When in doubt,throw it out. Do not taste to check.[1]Are You Ready?Open pageFEMA · Document · page 31Food in the refrigerator should be safe during a power outage if thepower is out for no more than four hours, and if you kept the door clo…THE ASSISTANT ADDSYes. Two hours with the door shut is inside the four-hour window. Trust thethermometer, not the smell.

Someone is bleeding and 911 is not answering.

Ask how to make a tourniquet from a belt. Every step carries a number. Click it and the Army first aid manual opens at that page, with the passage marked.

Improvised tourniquet from a belt, step by step2. Around the limb, between the wound and the trunk. Never over awound, a fracture or a joint. Upper arm, or above the knee.[2][2]FM 4-25.11 First AidOpen pageDocument · page 47Place the tourniquet around the limb, between the wound and thebody trunk … Never place it directly over a wound, a fracture, or joint.Medical topic. Read the cited source itself, not only this summary.

The phone has no bars.

A child is shivering after a night without heat. Search "hypothermia child" and one list shows the medical article, the manual page and the video you saved. No internet, and no assistant needed.

hypothermia child⌘KHypothermiaReference · WikiMedFM 4-25.11 First AidUS Army · Document · page 124A sign that is noticed immediately is shivering … their speech may be…Cold weather first aidVideo · 14:02when the shivering stops, that is the sign to act, not to relaxHypothermia in childrenSaved page · 2026-08↑↓ select ↩ open ⌘↩ ask the assistant

The tap runs dry.

Open the No safe water card. Six steps, each one checked against the CDC page it came from. Tick them off on screen, or print the card before the power goes.

No safe water2 of 6 done · tap the magnifier to open a line's sourcePrintStop drinking from the tap until the notice lifts.Stored water first. One gallon of drinking water per person perday.Boil other water for one minute. Above 6,500 feet, threeminutes.CDC, Make Water Safe During an Emergency, page 1No stove: 8 drops of unscented bleach per gallon, 16 if cloudy.Wait 30 minutes.Fill the bathtub and clean containers while pressure lasts.Label every treated container with the date.

What's on your Mac

The shelf, by situation.

Start with the Field Guide. It is free, a person wrote it, and every step names the manual it came from. The reference books behind it are the deep shelf.

Free, no account
The OfflineVault Field Guide: 95 articles on water, fire, first aid, medicines, food, shelter, power, hazards, evacuation, children and the elderly, hygiene, communications, navigation, mental health and pets. Beside it, CDC emergency preparedness, Ready.gov from FEMA, the US government preparedness manuals, MedlinePlus, the iFixit repair manuals and a map of the whole world.
Hurt or sick
WikiMed, the medical side of Wikipedia. WikEM, the emergency room wiki. MDWiki. The US military medicine manuals. The NHS Medicines A to Z, so you can look up what a pill does and what it must not be mixed with. Core plan.
Fix, grow, build
Appropedia for low-tech water, cooking and power. The Sustainable Living, Outdoors and Electrical Engineering Stack Exchanges. Wikipedia's top 50,000 articles. Core plan.
Everything
All of Wikipedia with pictures, about 127 GB. The whole world at street level, about 139 GB. Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Project Gutenberg's medicine, farming and military shelves, and thirteen more Stack Exchanges, on gardening, home repair, car repair, cooking, parenting and ham radio among others. Household plan.
Yours
Drop in PDFs and EPUBs, save web pages, keep YouTube channels with their subtitles. All of it lands in the same search.
ReferenceBooksDocumentsVideosFilter booksBOOKSNAPSHOTSTATUSWikipedia · top 50,000 articles2026-09InstalledWikipedia · every article, text2026-09InstalledWikipedia · everything with pictures2026-09AvailableWikiMed2026-10InstalledWikEM2026-10InstalledMDWiki2026-10InstalledUS military medicine manuals2026-08InstalledAppropedia2026-07InstalledReady.gov2026-06InstalledWater treatment2026-05InstalledStack Exchange · outdoors2021-06pre-AIInstalledStack Exchange · ham radio2026-03AvailableCIA World Factbook2026-01InstalledProject Gutenberg · medicine2019-11pre-AIInstalled

Every file is checked after download, and every book shows the month its copy was made. The full list, with the licence of every title, is on the Sources page.

How it answers

It shows you the page. It won't guess.

The assistant is a reader, not an expert. It answers only from the books on your Mac, and under every claim it shows the exact passage it read.

It shows the page
Every numbered claim opens the document at the page, with the passage it quotes. Medical, electrical and structural answers end with a reminder to read the source yourself.
It marks what it can't prove
A sentence with no passage behind it is labelled unverified, so you can tell the quote from the guess.
It says no
A child's medicine dose. Whether a mushroom is safe to eat. How much bleach to mix. It will not answer these from memory. It refuses, says why, and points you to the packaging, a pharmacist or the manual.
For the dangerous questions, no model at all
Bleeding, burns, poisoning, a chemical release. When a Field Guide article covers the question, the app shows that article alone and never asks the assistant.
Can I eat this mushroom? White cap, ring on the stem.I won't guess at this.Nothing in your library identifies a mushroom from a description, and awrong answer here can kill. The survival manual's rule on mushroomsis below instead.[1]FM 21-76 SurvivalOpen pageDocument · page 100Do not eat mushrooms in a survival situation! The only way to tell if amushroom is edible is by positive identification. There is no room fo…

We ask it 150 questions a person might type in an emergency, through the real app, and score the answers with a fixed rule, not another model. The default model got 63 fully right, 73 right but missing a listed fact, 4 wrong and 0 harmful, and it refused 10 of the 10 questions it should refuse. Muse Glimmer 30B, the biggest model Household offers, got 74 fully right and 0 harmful. Every wrong answer is printed in full.

Also on your Mac

Maps, videos, and a drill that proves it.

Everything here runs with Wi-Fi off. Run the drill before you need it.

The whole world, offline

Pan anywhere. Click for coordinates you can read over a radio, or type them to jump. Download street detail for the area on screen, or the whole planet at street level (139 GB).

39.74, -104.99GoMARKER39.74000, -104.9900039°44'24"N 104°59'24"WDownload street detail for this view

Videos with transcripts

Keep the channels you trust. The transcript sits beside the player, searchable, and the assistant can quote it.

…eight drops a gallon, then wait.Field water treatment, step by stepSaved 2026-09-14 · 12:40 · subtitles onbleach1 of 16:02Scoop from the surface,away from the bank.6:31If you can boil, boil. One fullminute.6:48Unscented bleach, eightdrops a gallon.7:03Stir, then let it stand thirtyminutes.

A drill that proves it

One button checks every book, every file, the maps, the assistant, your backup and your free space, with Wi-Fi off. Anything amber gets a fix button.

ReadinessLast run today, with Wi-Fi offRun againHelpersKiwix, llama.cpp, ffmpeg and yt-dlp presentReference booksEvery book opens and answers a searchDocuments and videosEvery file present, checksums matchMapsWorld map renders with no networkAssistantAnswered a library question with a citationBackupLast verified 94 days agoBack up nowFree spaceEnough for the next monthly refreshRosettaInstalled

Phones in the house get it too

Switch on Share on Wi-Fi and every phone on your network can read the library from the Mac. Read-only, off by default, included with Household.

Share on this Wi-FiScan with a phone camera, or openhttp://192.168.1.24:8780Read-only. Books, manuals, saved pagesand videos, with search. Only devices onthis network. Off by default.

Linux or Windows

No Mac? Take the library anyway.

ovsync is a small command-line tool, open source like the app. Give it your key and it downloads the same checked library into a folder Kiwix can serve. Without a key it downloads the free shelf.

pipx install "git+https://github.com/nc/offlinevault.git#subdirectory=ovsync"
ovsync activate OV-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX
ovsync sync ~/offlinevault
kiwix-serve --port 8080 --library ~/offlinevault/library.xml

It checks every file after download, resumes an interrupted download, and writes a library.xml for kiwix-serve, kiwix-desktop or a phone pointed at a shared drive. The code is on GitHub, with the source page.

What people ask before they buy.

Can't I just use Kiwix?

Yes, and most of the shelf is Kiwix content. The app is free and open for exactly that. What you pay for is a shelf someone else gathers, checks and refreshes every month, plus the Field Guide, the maps, the videos and a search that quotes the page.

What if it's wrong?

It can be. So we test it on emergency questions through the real app, score the answers with a fixed rule, and publish every wrong one. Today that is 4 of 150 wrong and 0 harmful with the default model. The page it quotes is always one click away. See the results.

What if I stop paying?

Nothing you downloaded is taken away. The books, the maps and the assistant keep working from your drive with no time limit, and you can export all of it. You only stop getting new editions.

Why a Mac app?

The assistant runs on the Mac's own chip, so an answer needs no server and no internet. One app holds the books, the maps, the videos and the search. No Mac? ovsync puts the same library on Linux or Windows for Kiwix.

Is my data private?

Nothing you read, ask or search leaves your Mac. There is no telemetry, and the free tier needs no account. The app talks to our servers only to download content, check for an update and confirm a licence key. The whole policy.

How big is it?

The free shelf is about 8 GB. Core adds about 19 GB and fits on the Mac's own drive. The complete library is about 476 GB and wants an external SSD. You pick what to download.

Pricing

Buy it once. Keep it forever.

Free is a real option. Core is the one most households need. Either way, everything you download stays on your drive and keeps working, plan or no plan.

Free$0

The app, the Field Guide, CDC and FEMA preparedness, the US government manuals, MedlinePlus, the iFixit manuals and the world map. No account, no key.

Download for Mac

Core

$149 once

a year of new editions included, then $39 a year only if you want them

  • Everything in Free
  • WikiMed, WikEM, MDWiki
  • Military medicine, NHS Medicines A to Z
  • Wikipedia's top 50,000 articles
  • Appropedia and three Stack Exchanges
  • The assistant, 4B model
  • New editions every month
  • 2 Macs, email support
Buy Core

Household

$249 once

a year of new editions included, then $59 a year. Everything in Core, plus

  • All of Wikipedia with pictures
  • The whole world at street level
  • Bigger assistant models
  • Wi-Fi sharing for the household
  • Up to 6 Macs
Buy Household

Founder, $299 once, at launch only. Three years of Household, Core for life, your name in the credits. Join as a founder. Already have a key? Refresh it for another year.

If you stop paying

New editions stop. That is all. The books, the manuals, the maps and the assistant keep working from your drive, you can export every file, and the free shelf still updates. Want new editions again? Refresh the same key for a year, whenever you like.

Refreshes lapsed. Editions paused. Everything keeps working.Reference booksworkingDocumentsworkingMapsworkingAssistantworkingExport the whole library

Download

Put it on your Mac today.

The app is free. Install it, run the drill with Wi-Fi off, and decide about a plan after.

Download for Mac
  • macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon
  • Notarized by Apple
  • Free tier, no account

Not ready yet?

Leave your email and the plan you are weighing. One message when there is real news, nothing else.

Questions

The practical ones.

Does it really work with no internet?

Yes. After the first download every part runs on your Mac. The Readiness drill is there so you can prove it yourself with Wi-Fi off, before the day you need it.

What is a refresh?

A new edition of each book, pack and map as its source changes, published monthly. Core and Household include a year of them. After that, $39 a year for Core or $59 for Household keeps them coming, billed yearly on the same key until you cancel. Nothing you downloaded depends on it.

What happens if I let the refreshes lapse?

New editions stop. Everything you downloaded keeps working, with no time limit, you can export all of it, and the free shelf still updates. Refresh the same key whenever you want new editions again.

Can I trust it with medical questions?

Treat it as a librarian, not a doctor. It answers only from books you can open, shows the page, flags medical topics, and refuses where a guess could hurt someone. Then read the page.

Why does it sometimes answer only with the Field Guide?

Because for some questions a quote is safer than a summary. When a question is about bleeding, burns, poisoning, a chemical release or a dose, and a Field Guide article matches it well, the app shows that article word for word and never asks the assistant. A person wrote the article and it names its manual. When no article matches, the app says so and points you to the packaging, a pharmacist or the manual instead of guessing.

Where does the content come from?

Public sources under their own licences. Wikipedia and its medical wikis, government manuals in the public domain, the NHS, Stack Exchange. Most of the books are built by Kiwix. iFixit and MedlinePlus cannot be redistributed, so the app fetches them from Kiwix's own servers and marks them From Kiwix. The Sources page lists every title with its licence, size and edition.

Can I read the code?

Yes. The app, its engine and ovsync are GPL-3.0 at github.com/nc/offlinevault, with the accuracy test and the Field Guide articles. The source page says what is where.

How do I activate?

Pay with the button on a plan. The page after payment shows your licence key and an Open in OfflineVault button. Click it, or paste the key into Settings, Licence, Activate on each Mac. Core covers 2 Macs, Household and Founder 6.

I lost my key

Enter the email you paid with at /recover. If that fails, reply to your Stripe receipt and we will send it again.

What Mac do I need?

Apple Silicon, macOS 14 or later. 8 GB of memory runs the 4B model, 16 GB the 8B, 32 GB the 30B. The complete library wants an external SSD. Unplug the drive and the app waits for it. No Mac at all? ovsync downloads the same library for Kiwix on Linux or Windows.