Videos
Links to JDK documentation
| Java SE | Download | Web | Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| 27 (future, due 2026-09) | « not yet available » | Javadoc | Project page |
| 26 (future, due 2026-03) | « not yet available » | Javadoc | Project page |
| 25 (LTS) (2025-09, current) | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 24 | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 23 | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 22 | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 21 (LTS) (2023-09) | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 20 | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 19 | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 18 | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 17 (LTS) (2021-09) | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 16 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 15 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 14 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 13 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 12 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 11 (LTS) (2018-09) | Downloads page | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 10 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 9 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 8 (LTS) | Downloads page | Javadoc | Platform home Doc home |
| 7 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
| 6 | no longer available | Javadoc | Doc home |
Also of interest:
- Release Notes
- History of Java SE versions
- What does Long-Term Support mean? (2021), and related video (2023), by Nicolai Parlog
First, make sure they don't already offer an download in zip form or similar.
Then, make sure you are actually allowed to do this (this may depend on where you live, and on any conditions mentioned on the web site from where you want to pull this).
Then, have a look at the Wget tool. It is part of the GNU system, thus included in many Linux distributions, but also available for Windows and Mac, I suppose.
Something like this works for me:
wget --no-parent --recursive --level inf --page-requisites --wait=1 \
https://epaul.github.io/jsch-documentation/simple.javadoc/
(without the line break; it should be escaped by the \ backslash here).
Look up what each option does in the manual before trying this.
If you want to do this repeatedly, look into the --mirror option.
For downloading other websites, --convert-links might also be useful, but I found that is not needed for Javadocs, which usually have the correct absolute and relative links.
This downloads lots of the same copy of the index.html file with appended ?... names (for the FRAMES links on each page). You can remove these files after downloading by adding the --reject 'index.html\?*' option, but they still will be downloaded first (and checked for recursive links). I did not yet find out how to avoid downloading them at all. (See this related question on Server Fault.)
Maybe adding the right recursion level would help here (I didn't try).
After downloading, you might want to zip the resulting directory to take less disk space. Use the zip tool of your choice for this.
Here's a tutorial.
And indeed, read it only when needed. For the remnant, go through a tutorial. Usually Googling "[keyword] tutorial site:oracle.com" yields enough results.
Update to take the following as an example for which you'd like to find the Javadoc:
someString.split("\\.");
Here someString is an instance of java.lang.String. Assuming that you'd like to start up from the API documentation root (I myself rather prefer to type just "java.lang.string javase api site:oracle.com" in Firefox's address bar to get it straight for me (if you feel lucky and didn't already have it in browser history), or to just check it in my IDE), then scroll in the main frame to the java.lang package and click the link, then in the class summary check the String class and click the link, then in the method summary check the split() method and click the link.
The Javadoc of the Java SE API is concise, but pretty complete and provides links to other javadocs where you expect them to be. For example, at the bottom of the String#split() javadoc you see a "See Also" link to the Pattern class, which in turn explains that regex stuff in the class' introduction.
Read it as needed. As in, in the context of a project. Documentation is largely a need based format, not a concepts teaching format.
Otherwise, if you want to actually read something to learn the SDK for example, read a teaching book.