Play Sudoku Offline: Free, No Ads, No Sign-Up

A long flight, a train through the hills, a weekend somewhere with one bar of signal. These are perfect moments for a Sudoku, and they are exactly when most puzzle apps let you down: they want a connection for adverts, a log-in or a fresh puzzle from a server. This guide shows you how to play Sudoku offline on Sudoku.my, for free, with no adverts and no account, on Android, iPhone, iPad or a computer. It also tells you honestly what works without the internet and what doesn’t.

The short answer

Sudoku.my is a progressive web app (PWA): a website that can be installed like an app and keep working without a connection. There’s nothing to download from an app store. Your browser saves the game the first time you visit, and from then on it opens from your home screen, dock or taskbar like any other app.

What works offline (and what doesn’t)

We’d rather be precise than promise “everything works offline”. Here is what happens behind the scenes when your connection drops.

New puzzles are made on your device

When you’re online, a new game takes a puzzle from our server’s puzzle bank. When you’re offline, the game simply makes a fresh puzzle on your phone or computer instead, using the same generator. It follows the same rules: every puzzle has exactly one solution and can be solved by logic alone, without guessing. Expert puzzles take the most work to generate, so on an older phone you might wait a moment before the board appears.

The daily challenge is the same puzzle, even offline

Each daily puzzle is generated from its date, so your device can rebuild the very same grid that everyone else gets that day, with no connection. You can open today’s puzzle or any earlier one from the calendar. Future days stay locked until their date arrives, online or not.

Which pages are saved for offline use

When the app is first saved, your browser keeps the home page, the level picker, the game screen, the calendar, the stats page, the settings and the how-to-play page. Blog articles aren’t saved in advance. One you’ve already read may still open offline, but don’t count on it for your holiday reading.

Install on Android (Chrome)

You don’t strictly have to install the app. Offline play also works in a normal browser tab once the site has been saved. But an icon on your home screen is much easier to find when you have no signal, and the game opens full screen without the address bar. These steps follow Google’s Chrome help page for web apps.

1. Open Chrome on your phone or tablet.
2. Go to sudoku.my.
3. Tap the three-dot menu at the top right.
4. Choose the install option (it may say Install app or Add to Home screen), then tap Install.
5. Follow the prompts. The Sudoku.my icon appears on your home screen.

Menu names change a little between Chrome versions and phone makers, so look for the word “install” rather than an exact label. Other Android browsers often have a similar option in their menu.

Install on iPhone and iPad (Safari)

On iPhone and iPad, installing is called Add to Home Screen. Apple’s iPhone User Guide describes these steps:

1. Open Safari and go to sudoku.my.
2. Tap the Share button. Depending on your Tabs layout, you may first need to tap the ⋯ button.
3. Scroll down the list and tap Add to Home Screen. If it isn’t there, scroll to the bottom, tap Edit Actions and add it.
4. Make sure Open as Web App is switched on, if your iOS version shows that option.
5. Tap Add.

An icon appears on your Home Screen, and the game opens in its own window, just like an app. On iPad the steps are much the same: the Share button sits at the top of the Safari window.

Install on a computer (Chrome or Edge)

Sudoku.my works on laptops and desktops too, with a bigger board and the controls beside it on wide screens. Installing it gives you a window of its own and a shortcut in your Start menu, dock or app launcher.

Google Chrome (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS)

1. Open Chrome and go to sudoku.my.
2. Click the install icon at the right-hand end of the address bar, if you see one.
3. Or open the three-dot menu, then Cast, save, and share, then Install page as app…
4. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Microsoft Edge (Windows, Mac)

1. Open Edge and go to sudoku.my.
2. Click the App available icon in the address bar, then Install.
3. If you don’t see the icon, open the Settings and more menu (⋯), then More tools, Apps, and Install this site as an app.

On Windows, an installed web app shows up in the Start menu and the taskbar, and you can remove it later like any other app. In Edge, your installed apps are listed at edge://apps.

No ads, no sign-up: what that means

Plenty of “free” Sudoku apps pay their way with adverts between puzzles, videos you must watch for a hint, or a subscription that unlocks the harder levels. Sudoku.my does none of that.

• No adverts. There are no advert networks, pop-ups or “watch a video for a hint” prompts. The site doesn’t load scripts from other companies at all; even the fonts are stored with the app, which is also why it looks the same offline.
• No account. There’s no sign-up, no email address and no password. You open the site and play.
• Nothing locked. All four levels, the daily challenge, notes, undo and hints are free for everyone. Each puzzle gives you three hints, and each one explains the move rather than just filling in a number.
• Quiet by default. Sound effects are off until you switch them on in settings, so you can play on a train without anyone noticing.

When you’re online, the game sends a few anonymous details about each game to our server: the level, how long it took, and how many mistakes and hints you used. It’s linked to a random ID in a cookie, not to your name or email, and it helps us see which levels people enjoy. When you’re offline, that simply doesn’t happen, and the game doesn’t mind.

Where your progress is saved

Everything personal stays on your device, in your browser’s local storage. That includes:

• the game you’re in the middle of, one per level plus each daily puzzle you’ve started;
• your solved daily challenges, personal best times, averages and streaks;
• your badges;
• your settings: theme (Auto, Afternoon or Dusk), sound, vibration, timer, highlighting and auto-removing notes.

Because there is no account, there is also no cloud copy. That has two consequences worth knowing:

• Your stats don’t move between devices. Your phone and your laptop each keep their own history.
• Clearing your browser data clears your stats. If you delete site data for Sudoku.my, or uninstall the app in a way that removes its data, your streaks and best times go with it.

Browsers can also tidy up storage for sites you haven’t used in a long time. Apple’s WebKit team has explained that Safari may delete a website’s stored data after seven days of Safari use without visiting that site, and that web apps added to the Home Screen keep their own count of days, based on how often you use them. In practice, playing regularly from the installed icon is the best way to keep your history safe on an iPhone or iPad.

Tips for playing in flight mode

• Set it up at home. Install the app and open each screen you want once (a game, the calendar, your stats) while you’re still on Wi-Fi.
• Update before you leave. If we’ve released a new version, it downloads the next time you’re online. Opening the app on Wi-Fi the day before a trip makes sure you have the latest one.
• Catch up on daily puzzles. Missed a few days? Past daily challenges all work offline, so a flight is a good time to fill in your calendar. Catching up on old days won’t extend your streak, though: only today’s puzzle does.
• Pick a level that suits the trip. Easy and Medium puzzles are great for short hops; save an Expert puzzle for a long-haul flight. Our guide to Sudoku difficulty levels explains what each level asks of you.
• Use notes. Pencil marks work exactly the same offline, and turning on “Auto-remove notes” in settings keeps them tidy as you place numbers.
• Save battery. The Dusk theme is easier on the eyes in a dark cabin, and with sound off and the phone in flight mode, a puzzle uses very little power.

Prefer paper?

Sometimes the best offline Sudoku has no battery at all. Sudoku.my doesn’t offer printable puzzles at the moment, so if you want paper, a puzzle book or the puzzle page of a newspaper is the easiest option. Everything you learn here carries over: the rules are the same, and so are the techniques.

If you’re new to the game, our beginner’s guide to how to play Sudoku walks through the rules and your first moves. On paper, write small candidate numbers in the corners of a cell, just as you would with notes in the app, and use a pencil with an eraser rather than a pen.

If offline play doesn’t work

Most problems come down to one of these:

Private or incognito windows usually throw away their storage when you close them, so they aren’t a good place to build a streak or to rely on offline play.

#Offline Sudoku#Install the app#No ads