Wikipedia is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date encyclopedias ever made. It's too completely gratis and entirely community-created. Information technology'due south honestly one of the nigh inspirational projects in history, only yous need to be online to use it.

While information technology may sound a petty crazy, you lot can really download ALL of Wikipedia for offline use and nosotros're going to show you how it'south done.

Why Would You Download Wikipedia?

Why would anyone want to download Wikipedia? Afterward all, the site is only a few clicks abroad and one of the all-time things about Wikipedia is that it's updated quickly. An offline copy would go out of date pretty quickly.

It's non every bit light-headed as it sounds. Fifty-fifty the best internet connections are not 100% reliable. There are also enough of people who live in parts of the world without internet access or who can't afford it.

So, for example, a instructor at a schoolhouse may desire to download Wikipedia and distribute it to their students. You may likewise desire to download Wikipedia periodically for archival purposes or to browse when in airplane mode or on trips away from mobile cyberspace.

There are various ways to really liberate Wikipedia from its servers and nosotros'll go over them one by ane.

How To Download Wikipedia To Your Computer

This is the most straightforward way to get an offline copy of Wikipedia. Wikipedia itself maintains compressed dumps of its unabridged database on a monthly basis. At the time of writing the download is about 16GB in its compressed format. Uncompressed it'due south closer to 60GB. That's notwithstanding very minor compared to a decent flash bulldoze or the average computer hard bulldoze.

At that place are 2 parts to using the standard Wikipedia dump files in social club to take your ain copy at hand. First, you demand a piece of software to read the special format in which a Wiki is stored. Two of the all-time examples are XOWA and WikiTaxi.

Xowa is probably the almost popular option and it's pretty easy to apply likewise. Just download and run the program. Then utilise the menu option to import the Wiki you desire, which includes English Wikipedia. Xowa also offers an Android app which is even easier to use.

WikiTaxi is as well a adept choice, but y'all need to download the XML file from the Wikipedia dump site. It'south likewise of import to notation that WikiTaxi doesn't back up images.

In one case you have the reader, you need to uncompress the Wikipedia dump file, except in the instance of Xowa, which can read the compressed dump files straight. This is a adept advantage when infinite is express!

Utilise Kiwix

Like Xowa or WikiTaxi, Kiwix is an application that offers a mode to read those Wikipedia downloads and render them the way a web browser would. The large difference is that Kiwix has done quite a bit of the work for you already.

Kiwix has converted the offline files into their ain special format and kept them updated. Y'all tin can download these files manually from the site or use the various apps to download them directly. There is a desktop app version of Kiwix, merely information technology's still very much a beta awarding.

Luckily the tablet and smartphone apps work pretty well. There'southward likewise the browser extensions. Y'all might desire to consider putting the content files on an SD card if your phone or tablet has limited internal storage.

The full-fat Wikipedia download ZIM file on Kiwix'southward site weighs in at a hefty 78GB, simply there is a version that removes all the pictures, reducing the 5 million+ articles to "but" 36GB in size.

Kiwix isn't limited to Wikipedia either. You can download offline versions of various dissimilar Wikimedia projects. Here's a quick overview of how to use Kiwix in Google Chrome:

  • Install the Kiwix Chrome Extension.
  • Read this explanation of what the Zim file names mean.
  • Download the Wikipedia Zim file archive yous want.
  • Open the Kiwix extension and go to the configure tab.
  • Point information technology at the file you've downloaded.
  • Read Wikipedia offline.

This is the simplest way to become an offline copy of Wikipedia, although fifty-fifty if you give someone the Zim file on portable media, they'll still demand an internet connexion to install the browser extension. For truly portable and offline situations Xowa is still the best option.

Use The Wikipedia App

The Wikipedia app has a congenital-in characteristic that allows you to save and sync articles that you are interested in. This isn't the same equally downloading a complete backup of course, but information technology'southward yet pretty useful.

While you have an cyberspace connection, all you have to practise is bookmark the articles you're interested in. They will be saved to local storage and you can read them at your convenience. So, for example, you tin can bookmark all the articles you need while using schoolhouse WiFi and then save on mobile data when browsing them once more later.

Wikipedia On Disc

Wikipedia is far likewise big to fit on a DVD, just there are versions of Wikipedia out in that location specifically designed to fit onto a set up of discs.

For example, Wikipedia 0.5 offers a subset of selected Wikipedia manufactures from the English language version of the site, so that the most popular and important articles are available offline. That'southward nonetheless a pretty powerful resource to gift to students and others who need offline admission to data.

Offline Admission Nevertheless Matters

Wikipedia is an important project and this writer donates to information technology often. Nevertheless, all the goodwill and work that has gone into the creation of perchance humanity's most altruistic project means nothing when you don't have an cyberspace connexion to access information technology.

In fact, most half of the world still lacks internet access right at present, which means it's still very of import to make resources available that don't need an internet connection. Amongst those, Wikipedia must surely rank equally ane of the almost important.