Kiwix : offline Wikipedia viewer
Official site : https://www.kiwix.org/
If your Internet access is expensive/rare/slow/unreliable/watched/censored, you still can browse amazing amounts of knowledge and culture.
The content is packages in file archives called ZIM files. Once you have downloaded material from the Kiwix website, you will be able to read material from Wikipedia and many other sources. You can search among the article titles, and read any of these articles offline, without needing Internet access.
All the content of Wikipedia is inside your device (including the images). It might also work with any content in the OpenZIM format, but has been only tested extensively on the Wikipedia ones.
Usage
Step 1 : download some content
Go to https://download.kiwix.org/zim/, with a regular computer.
Currently only Mediawiki-based contents (ZIM files in wiki* subdirectories, for instance https://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikipedia/) and StackExchange (https://download.kiwix.org/zim/stack_exchange/) have been thoroughly tested. Dynamic content (e.g. PhET) is only supported in Service Worker mode (see Configuration: Expert Settings).
For a quick test, you can start with the "Ray Charles" ZIM file : it contains some wikipedia articles about Ray Charles.
After that, you can download materials in your language. Check the size before you download files as many of the files are large (several Gigabytes). If the file is larger than 2 GB, it might not be supported by your device if your storage is formatted using a FAT filesystem. If so, it's possible to split the material into several 2GB files : see the Kiwix FAQ
Step 2 : copy the content onto your device
If you have enough space, you can put several archives.
Step 3 : drag and drop the archive file into the open the app
Or go to the "Configure" menu and select your ZIM file.
Step 4 : enjoy Wikipedia offline!
Privacy policy
Short answer:
Kiwix JS works offline, and does not collect or record any of your personal data. It only remembers your browsing history for the duration of a session (for the purpose of returning to previously viewed pages). This history is lost on exiting the app and is not recorded in any way.
Longer answer:
This application only reads the archive files that you explicitly select on your device together with files in its own package. Some ZIM archives contain active content (scripts) which may, in rare circumstances, attempt to contact external servers for incidental files such as fonts. These scripts will only run if you enable Service Worker mode in Configuration. Nevertheless, if you believe your Internet access is insecure, or is being observed or censored, we recommend that you completely shut down your Internet (Data or WiFi) access before using the application.
Additionally, if you obtained this app from a vendor Store (including extensions), then the Store operator may track your usage of the app (e.g. download, install, uninstall, date and number of sessions) for the purpose of providing anonymous, aggregate usage statistics to developers. If this concerns you, you should check the relevant Store Privacy Policy for further information.
Feedback / helping / contributing
This application is still work in progress. There may be bugs and issues, and new features are planned. Suggestions and patches/pull requests are welcome : the source code is on github. The bugtracker is on github too. We use it as our roadmap.Alternatively, you can send your feedback by email.
In all cases, please give as much detail as you can : which device you are using, which version of Kiwix, which archive, which articles etc.
If you like the Kiwix project and use it, please consider giving donations :
- to the Wikimedia foundation, to help maintaining their servers and article contents. See the donation page
- to Kiwix, to help maintaining the ZIM files and applications. There is a donation button in the home page of kiwix.org
- Adding articles or improving the existing ones, by editing online wikipedia articles
- Participating in the Kiwix project
Credits
We have to distribute some thanks to :- Kelson and all the Kiwix community for welcoming us in this project
- Wikipedia teams and contributors to help spreading knowledge to everybody
- All the developers of libraries and tools I used for releasing them as Free software (see License paragraph)
Licence information
Copyright 2013-2018 Mossroy, Peter-x, Jaifroid, sharun-s and other contributorsThis application is licensed under the GPL v3 Licence:
Kiwix is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the Licence, or
(at your option) any later version.
Kiwix is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public Licence for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public Licence
along with Kiwix (file LICENSE-GPLv3.txt). If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/
Main libraries and ressources used :
- jQuery 3, released under the MIT Licence
- Bootstrap 4, released under an MIT Licence
- Fontawesome Free, icons licensed under CC BY 4.0 Licence, code licensed under a MIT Licence
- RequireJS 2, released under the MIT Licence or new BSD Licence
- QUnit 2, released under the MIT Licence
- Kiwix logo from kiwix.org, released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike Licence
- OpenZIM specifications from www.openzim.org, released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike Licence
- Emscripten to generate a XZ decompressor in javascript : https://github.com/kripken/emscripten, released under the MIT Licence
- XZ Embedded (the XZ library converted to Javascript with Emscripten), in public domain
- The Zstandard library, released under a BSD Licence and a GPLv2 Copying Licence
Other platforms/versions
Other Kiwix clients exist on various platforms. See the official site : https://www.kiwix.org/Configuration
This application needs a ZIM archive to work. For download instructions, please see the About section
Drag and drop a new ZIM file, or display file selectors
Please select or drag and drop the .zim file (or all the .zimaa, .zimab etc in case of a split ZIM file)
Only Mediawiki-based (wiki*.zim* files, like wikipedia), StackExchange and some video-based ZIMs (e.g. TEDx) have been tested. Dynamic content is not currently supported in jQuery mode.
Scanning for archives... Please wait

Please select the archive you want to use :
Rescans your SD Cards and internal memory
Display settings
* Implements workarounds specific to Wikimedia ZIMs. Try generic option if there are display errors with recent ZIMs.
[ Show article with applied theme ]Performance settings
Kiwix JS can speed up the display of articles by caching assets:
Cache status:
Cache used:
Assets:
Select max number of search results:
Expert settings
It will suggest articles starting with the letters you type.
Content may be available by searching above (type a space or a letter of the alphabet), or else switch to Service Worker mode if your platform supports it. [Permanently hide]