Download and format entire Wikis, including Wikipedia for offline viewing.
XOWA is a free and open-source program which downloads the entire Wikipedia database and allows you to view it offline without having an Internet connection.
The application interface of XOWA is pretty detailed and appears very similar to an actual live web site. It includes HTML editing and viewing specifically for the Wikipedia dump that has been downloaded from the web.
With XOWA, you can download entire Wikipedia data dump files including the ability to also fetch images corresponding to the pages found in the wiki. It supports not only Wikipedia, but also other wikis like Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikisource.
Packed with XOWA is also tools for editing Wikipedia files in its database. You can use the search function to find a specific page and then use the edit tab, similar to the live Wikipedia, to make changes to the article.
The only complaint when using XOWA is the time it takes to actually download the Wikipedia data dumps but naturally, there's not much we can do about that because they are huge and thus do take time to fetch from their servers.
Overall, an excellent application which allows you to view and edit Wikipedia offline with a number of very useful tools for managing and searching through that data.
Features of XOWA
- Book Creator: Create and export books from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
- Bookmarks: Create and manage bookmarks for Wikipedia articles and other texts.
- Download Manager: Download entire Wikipedia databases and other Wikimedia projects.
- Image Viewer: View images from the Wikimedia Commons, including SVGs and PDFs.
- Media Player: Play audio and video files from the Wikimedia Commons.
- Offline Wikipedia: Access over 3 million articles from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects without an Internet connection.
- Search: Search Wikipedia articles and other texts with powerful filters.
- Spell Checker: Check spelling of Wikipedia articles and other texts.
- Text Editor: Edit Wikipedia articles and other texts with a powerful text editor.
- Translate: Translate Wikipedia articles and other texts into multiple languages.
- Wikibooks: Access the Wikibooks library with over 1 million books.
- Wikiquote: Access the Wikiquote library with over 1 million quotes.
- Wikisource: Access the Wikisource library with over 1 million texts.
- Wikiversity: Access the Wikiversity library with over 1 million courses.
- Wiktionary: Access the Wiktionary dictionary with over 2 million entries.
Compatibility and License
XOWA is a free application released under the GPLv3 license on Windows from Internet utilities. With software released under the open source GPLv3 license, anybody can download, install, run and distribute the software with little in terms of restrictions. The latest version we have is 4.6.15.2101 and is available to download here.
gnosygnu accepts donations for the continued development of this free software.
What version of Windows can XOWA run on?
XOWA can be used on a computer running Windows 11 or Windows 10. Previous versions of the OS shouldn't be a problem with Windows 8 and Windows 7 having been tested. It comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit downloads.
Filed under:
- XOWA Download
- Free Internet Utilities
- Open source and GPL software
- Wikipedia Viewing Software
