Xowa is a free cross platform offline Wikipedia reader which can be used to browse Wikipedia offline. With Xowa you can easily view or edit Wikipedia pages without needing to have Internet access. You can also install Xowa on your USB flash disk drive so you can access them anytime, anywhere.
Similar software: Wikipedia Apps For iPhone, Wikipedia Apps For Android.
Xowa screenshot above shows us the main user interface of this free offline Wikipedia reader. Because its main use is to view Wikipedia webpages (and also to edit them), Xowa is basically just the preview window, which can be seen above, where the Wikipedia pages are shown. Every feature that Wikipedia has is also embedded into Xowa.
Since this is a browser, in the top left corner you can find the Back and Forward buttons and on the bottom of the user interface we have the standard status bar. Those buttons and information window are somewhat small but noticeable and useful.
Wikipedia articles opened inside Xowa are of very good quality, formatting is preserved completely. So much that when you’re reading you get the feeling as though you are browsing through them in your default web browser. Key features of Xowa – free offline Wikipedia browser are:
- Cross platform – works on Linux, Windows, Mac – Java framework
- View and edit offline copies of Wikipiedia articles and text
- Supports both text and image download – text only mode available
- Search tool – search tool for quickly finding articles you want
- Multi-language Wikipedia support – works with multiple languages
- Can be installed on USB flash drives and used anywhere
How to use and read Wikipedia offline with Xowa
When you open this free offline Wikipedia browser for the first time, you will see Main Page. Here, you will have the basic instructions on how to use the Xowa. In order to view the Wikipedia pages offline, you first need to download them and you can do that by clicking the Set up Simple Wikipedia in the First Time Users section. Track the download progress in the status bar down below.
This will install simple English Wikipedia and if you want, you can install other languages too, but it will take more space and time to complete. There is also an option to make images viewable in the offline mode and you can do that by clicking on the Set up Images in the same section. Make sure to click on the proper operating system. Now you are ready and able to view Wikipedia pages offline. Just like in the online Wikipedia page, you can start your search by clicking on the search bar in the top right corner and typing in the phrase you want to lookup on. Scans are completed and results shown very fast. We noticed that you can’t copy text using mouse, but keyboard shortcut Ctrl + C works just fine. If you need to save text for your paper or something like that.
Conclusion
Xowa free is very good and useful. It’s very easy to use, works very fast, and even though it’s still in alpha, we haven’t noticed any kind of problems. Give it a try and see how it goes. Free download.
