Kiwix’s Windows and Linux app for browsing Wikipedia offline just got a big update
Kiwix, the desktop app for browsing offline archives of Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and other resources, just received an update on desktop platforms. It now features more keyboard shortcuts, menu fixes, better file management, and more.
If you’re not familiar with it, Kiwix is a cross-platform application that allows you to read books from Wikipedia, ArchWiki, Project Gutenberg, Stack Overflow and other archives without an Internet connection by downloading them in advance. It’s a great way to have an offline archive of important information and resources, especially on a laptop, phone, or other battery-powered device that can withstand power outages. I saved Wikipedia and Wiktionary to my laptop, since I don’t do much else with all that internal SSD storage at the moment.
Kiwix Desktop, the version for Windows and Linux devices, has now been updated to version 2.5.0. It’s not a groundbreaking overhaul, but plenty of minor changes add up to a great update. There is now a “Copy Link” option when opening the context menu/right-click on an external link, as well as the Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown keyboard shortcuts for navigating tabs, like in most web browsers. You can also now change the speed of the text-to-speech feature, ranging from 0.25x to 2x.
How to Download and Browse Entire Websites Offline with ZIM Files
Imagine downloading the entire Wikipedia and browsing it offline, just like the standard version.
This update also contains important bug fixes. The Linux Flatpak version can now open ZIM files directly, Wayland users on Linux will no longer see an incorrect application icon, and some typos in error messages have been fixed. Opening the Windows application from a shared folder in a Parallels virtual machine has also been fixed, along with other scenarios causing complete application crashes.
There is also a small change in the Kiwix distribution: the official package repository for Ubuntu Linux 20.04 is no longer updated, because Ubuntu 20.04 is no longer supported. If you’re still using this version for some reason, or if you’re using a Linux distribution based on it, try installing Flatpak or AppImage instead.
You can download Kiwix from the official website, but the new version is still rolling out. At the time of writing, the Windows Download, Microsoft Store page, and Flathub page are still on version 2.4.1. However, the Flatpak and AppImage files for Linux are already updated and more downloads are expected to be updated in the coming days.
Source: Kiwix on GitHub
