Founder Emmanuel Engelhart sees Wikipedia as a common good, saying "The contents of Wikipedia should be available for everyone! Even without Internet access. This is why I have launched the Kiwix project."[9]
After becoming a Wikipedia editor in 2004, Engelhart became interested in developing offline versions of Wikipedia. A project to make a Wikipedia CD, initiated in 2003, was a trigger for the project.[9]
The software is designed as an offline reader for a web content. It can be used on computers without an internet connection, computers with a slow or expensive connection, or to avoid censorship. It can also be used while travelling (e.g. on a plane or train). It also exists as browser extensions (see below). Of course, the content being archived offline means it is no longer editable, if it was previously.
Users first download Kiwix (or a browser extension), then download content for offline viewing with Kiwix. Compression saves disk space and bandwidth. All of English-language Wikipedia, with pictures, fits on a large USB stick or external media.[a][14][16]
All content files are indexed and compressed in ZIM format, which makes them smaller, but leaves them easy to search and selectively decompress.
The ZIM files are then opened with Kiwix, which looks and behaves like a web browser, or with a suitably enabled conventional browser. Kiwix offers full text search, tabbed navigation, and the option to export articles to PDF and HTML.[8]
There is an HTTP server version called kiwix-serve; this allows a computer to host Kiwix content, and make it available to other computers on a network.[17] The other computers see an ordinary website.
Kiwix-hotspot is an HTTP server version for plug computers,[14] which is often used to provide a Wi-Fi server.[18] This is suitable for use cases where no technical skill is available; it is a "plug-and-play" solution.
A list of content available on Kiwix is available for download, including language-specific sublists.[20] Content can be loaded through Kiwix itself.
Since 2014, most Wikipedia versions are available for download in various different languages.[16] The project was unable to produce up-to-date complete versions of English Wikipedia after October 2018 but started making releases again in July 2020.[21]
Besides public domain content, works licensed under a Creative Commonslicense are available for download as well. For example, offline versions of the Ubuntuwiki containing user documentation for the Ubuntu operating system,[25] ZIM editions of TED conference talks[26] and videos from Crash Course are available in the Kiwix archive as ZIM file formats.[27]
Historic Wikipedia articles selection releases
Between 2007 and 2011, three CD/DVD versions containing a selection of articles from the English Wikipedia were released.[28] They are now available as Kiwix ZIM files:[29]
As a software development project, Kiwix itself is not directly involved in deployment projects. However, third party organizations do use the software as a component of their own projects. Examples include:
Locations of 13 universities in 11 countries where Kiwix was deployed as part of the Afripedia Project
A special version for the organization SOS Children's Villages was developed, initially for developing countries, but it is also used in the developed world.
