This post is part of a periodic series about The Tools I Use.

If you’ve ever done any development when you don’t have an Internet connection, then you’ve probably missed having access to some necessary API documentation.

Enter Dash, a documentation browser and code snippet manager.

Dash is an OS/X-only application that allows you to download and search more than 130 sets of API documentation covering a wide range of languages, tools, and frameworks.

It integrates with application launchers, editors, IDEs, and other applications for easy access to documentation from almost anywhere.

It allows you to create bookmarks and open multiple tabs. It will even search Google and StackOverflow if an Internet connection is available.

There is a freely-downloadable trial version. As I recall, it imposes a delay before beginning to search for the relevant documentation. The full version costs $19.99 and is well worth it.

For Windows and Linux users, there’s an open-source alternative called Zeal. I haven’t tried it, but my understanding is that the author of Dash is collaborating with the author of Zeal, and they can share each other’s documentation sets.