In places where connectivity is a difficult (at least 30 countries on the sole African continent), the only way to access Wikipedia content is Kiwix Desktop, but it still requires a computer and electricity. It is not limited to mobile phones and tablets, but it also powers TV, appliances, “USB computers” and an increasing range of cheap computers. The market of Android-powered devices is exploding. Kiwix for Android is the latest innovation in this series: This app, available from the Google Play Store or from the Kiwix website, allows users of Android-powered devices to browse offline content from Wikipedia and its sister sites. The Kiwix-plug empowers African students to access full snapshots of Wikipedia and Wikisource right from their campus, on their own laptop or phone.The Wikipedia Zero initiative allows cellphone users in Africa and Asia to access parts of Wikipedia without incurring data charges.The Wikipedia Mobile App allows smartphone users to browse Wikipedia on mobile devices, save articles and much more.Kiwix is a software that allows users to browse full snapshots of Wikipedia (and numerous other resources) from a personal computer that isn’t connected to the internet.This is the reason why, throughout the movement, Wikimedians are working to diversify and facilitate access to Wikipedia and its sister sites: While their regular desktop, online version is enough for most users, it is inadequate for many others. Providing access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites to as many people as possible is one of the Wikimedia movement’s core goals. You can also download smaller (and custom) selections of pages, if you’re short on storage space. Once you install it on your Android device, you can actually use it to download the whole website, and access its millions of articles even when you’re offline (or when you don’t want to use your data plan). Kiwix isn’t just Yet Another Wikipedia app. Kiwix seems to be doing quarterly releases.The Kiwix app empowers Android users to download and view large sets of Wikipedia content on their devices while offline. I think all of these alternatives found it hard to produce regular updates with the most recent Wikipedia content. There’s also Minipedia which does have a nice small subset you can download. I used Wiki Offline for years but the company that produced that seems to have disappeared (again). There are some other offline Wikipedia readers on the Apple app store. I’m hoping that gives a second wind to the editorial project to produce a Wikipedia subset that’s smaller and well selected to be sufficient. A nice cash infusion, but also gives Kiwix some legitimacy. The most interesting thing to me is Kiwix is now partnered with Wikimedia Foundation. (Be careful not to download a Simple English version by accident.) There are various Wikipedia subsets but no “top articles” opton I see. English Wikipedia is an enormous 35Gb, 80Gb if you get images too. Their ZIM format seems well thought out, compressed tight and general purpose enough you can get other document collections like Stack Overflow posts, TED talks, etc. You have to download the data separately. They now have clients for iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Also nice just to have lightning-fast browsing of Wikipedia. It’s incredibly helpful to have on your cell phone when you’re traveling and don’t have a data plan. Just a shout-out to Kiwix, the software plus database for reading Wikipedia offline.
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