Kiwix JS Browser Extension

Kiwix is an offline reader for content from Wikipedia, TED Talks, Stackexchange, and many other sources.

[To use this app you MUST download, for free, an archive with your chosen content, see below.] Kiwix is an offline reader for content from Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, TED Talks, Wikivoyage, Stackexchange, etc. It makes knowledge available to people with limited or no Internet access, or to anyone who wants to have easy offline access to a vast repository of information. The software as well as the content is free for anyone to use. You can get the whole of Wikipedia, and hundreds of other resources, on your device to use completely offline in your own language. You can have amazing reference tools at your fingertips wherever you are. Just download your chosen archive and store it on your device (see instructions from About page of app). Great for travelling, or any place where access to the Internet is difficult or expensive! Kiwix is often faster than Wikipedia for quick consultation. This app reads a larger offline file that you can download to your device. You must download the archive separately (see About tab in the app for instructions). Offline archives are available for most Wikimedia sites, such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikivoyage, including subsets of Wikimedia (projects) such as Medicine, Chemistry, Geography, Astronomy, History, etc. There are hundreds of other resources available as well, including collections of TED Talks, Project Gutenberg (archives of books). These are all available in many different languages. This extension is very handy, always a click away in your browser. If you would like a packaged version of Kiwix JS, we make a separate Electron app for Linux and Windows based on this codebase with some additional features. It runs independently of the browser - get more info at https://kiwix.github.io/kiwix-js-pwa/app. There are also packaged versions which include the latest WikiMed (Medical Wikipedia), and Wikivoyage. If you are interested in the full range of Kiwix apps, including for iOS and Android, please visit https://www.kiwix.org. ## Release Kiwix JS v4.4.0 Released on 2026-08-22 Headline changes since v4.3.0: jQuery and Bootstrap's JavaScript bundle have been removed entirely (saving some 150KB of minified JavaScript) and accessibility support added throughout; several security hardenings around the settings that may be supplied in the app's URL and around archive source verification; fixes to the Library fallback for older browsers and to clearing the app cache on reset; and the "Bypass AppCache" option is now called "Developer Mode". Detail is given per interim update below — those updates were pushed only to the browser-extension PWA. * FIX: Tooltips in French no longer show a literal " " before a colon * FIX: Follow HTML redirects in Restricted mode * DEV: Renamed the "Bypass AppCache" option to "Developer Mode" in the UI and info * DEV: Removed three dead translation keys * DEV: Fixed flaky Gutenberg author search tests * DEV: Pinned every GitHub workflow action to an immutable ref, so that our workflows no longer track moving branches * DEV: Added a Dependabot configuration for the GitHub Actions ecosystem ### Interim update Kiwix JS v4.3.4 * SECURITY: The security prompt regarding the source of an archive now appears consistently in ServiceWorkerLocal mode * FIX: The content injection mode is now validated against the modes the app actually supports * FIX: Users who had already chosen ServiceWorkerLocal mode are no longer shown the mode-change alert they had answered before * FIX: In browsers without the ServiceWorker API (e.g. IE11), the "ServiceWorker API not available" dialogue no longer reappears indefinitely when the app is forced into ServiceWorker mode * FIX: The "Developer Mode" setting no longer blocks a switch to Restricted mode, and can now be turned off from Restricted mode * FIX: The "Developer Mode" setting is now shown in every mode in which it is effective, and is hidden only in browsers with no ServiceWorker API * DEV: Added unit tests covering the trust setting and validation across the content injection modes * DEV: Added e2e tests, run in IE Mode, covering the app's recovery from ServiceWorker mode in a browser that cannot support it ### Interim update Kiwix JS v4.3.3 * SECURITY: Settings supplied in the app's URL are no longer saved permanently, apart from the few the app passes between its own windows * SECURITY: `noPrompts`, which suppresses dialogues for the automated test suite, now opens an unverified archive in Restricted mode rather than in ServiceWorker mode * FIX: The Library no longer reports "All library servers are currently unreachable" in browsers that cannot run the modern library (e.g. IE11) * FIX: Refreshed the emergency list of download mirrors, removing dead and redirecting entries and adding those currently advertised by the Kiwix catalogue * FIX: Corrected obsolete download.kiwix.org links in the About section * DEV: Library server checks now time out instead of leaving the user watching the loading animation indefinitely * UPDATE: Removed the jQuery dependency entirely, together with Bootstrap's JavaScript bundle * ENHANCEMENT: The navbar toggle button now has a translatable name, so screen readers no longer announce it as an unlabelled button * FIX: The Table of Contents button no longer reports itself as expanded while its menu is closed * DEV: Replaced Bootstrap's collapse and dropdown plugins with native equivalents that keep ARIA state and keyboard navigation in sync * DEV: Added an automated accessibility check (`npm run test-e2e-a11y`) and included it in the Windows CI job * DEV: Added unit tests for the Firefox OS DeviceStorage archive scan, a path not reachable by the e2e suite * DEV: Added unit tests covering which settings may be supplied in the app's URL * DEV: E2E tests no longer rely on `noPrompts` to get past source verification, and two ineffective `await`s on checkbox state are fixed * DEV: Updated CONTRIBUTING for the AI era * DEV: Multiple security updates to dependencies ### Interim update Kiwix JS v4.3.2 * CRITICAL UPDATE: Fix failure of Service Worker to discover remote PWA in Chromium extensions * ENHACEMENT: Prevent glaring white flash on startup by pre-applying dark theme * UPDATE: Update javascript-libzim binaries to v0.95 * UPDATE: Update main library URL so CORS is detected * FIX: Typo in URI parameter in settingsStore which prevented state passing between local extension and PWA * FIX: Properly clear App Cache and IndexedDB on app reset * FIX: Allow more permissive CSP to frame kiwix.org sites in library iframe * DEV: Rename SSH key secret, and adapt to new destinations for releases and nightly packages * DEV: Fix breaking IE11 test * DEV: Fix Windows CI by installing IEDriver explicitly and disabling Selenium Manager * DEV: Update CodeQL actions to v4 * DEV: Add Docker Compose configuration and documentation * DEV: Multiple security updates to dependencies