About Zeal
Zeal is an offline documentation browser. It gives you a local library of programming references that you can search quickly, without opening a web browser.
What it does
Zeal downloads documentation sets and keeps them on your computer. Search covers the whole library, so you can look up a function, a keyword or a cheat sheet in a moment. Many of the sets are contributed by users, and the project is open source and maintained on GitHub. The tool is aimed at developers who want a free reference library on their own machine.
Key features
- Offline search across many documentation sets
- Quick lookup from the keyboard
- Access to cheat sheets and reference sets
- Docsets for many languages and frameworks
- Free and open source under GPL-3.0
Who it's for
Developers who want a free reference tool on Windows or Linux. It is also useful for people who work with limited or unreliable internet access, because the references are stored locally.
Pricing and good to know
Zeal is free to download and use. The site lists downloads for Windows and Linux. For macOS, the site points to Dash instead. Many docsets are user contributed, so quality and coverage can vary from one set to another, and you may want to compare a set with the official documentation.
Highlights
- Search many documentation sets offline
- Look up references from the keyboard
- Browse cheat sheets alongside API docs
- Add and manage docsets
- Free and open source
