Browsing Wikipedia on Your Desktop with Wike
7 May, 2024
You can’t deny that Wikipedia has become one of the main go-to places online for information about … well, just about everything. I’m sure that you use it at least once a week and, chances are, that when you drop by Wikipedia, you do so either using a web browser or an app on your mobile device.
On the Linux desktop, you can cut out the web browser and use Wike instead. What’s Wike? It’s billed as a Wikipedia reader for the GNOME desktop. It does one thing, and does that one thing quite well.
Let’s take a look at it.
Getting Wike
As with many pieces of software, Wike might be available from your Linux distribution’s software centre. That’s especially true if you’re running a distribution that uses GNOME or a variant of it as its desktop.
You can also install Wike as a Flatpak or as a snap.
Regardless, it’s easy to get Wike on your computer. But what matters is what you do with Wike once you install it.
Using Wike
Wike looks like this when you start it up:
Kind of familiar, isn’t it? It’s just like visiting the Wikipedia website in your favourite web browser.
As you would in a web browser or the Wikipedia mobile app, you can follow any of the links on the front page. Or, you can click the magnifying glass icon in the sidebar on the left to search for an article. Here’s an example:
Click one of the results to open its entry. Here’s an entry from a different search than the one pictured above:
As in your browser, you can follow a link in an article. Right click on the link open it in a new tab in Wike or to open it in your default web browser. You can also add the link to your bookmarks in Wike (more about this in a moment) or copy the link to paste elsewhere.
Wike’s Sidebar
The sidebar on the left of Wike’s window contains several useful functions. Here’s a close up of it:
Let’s look at the sidebar, starting from the top.
The first of those functions, Search, we’ve already encountered.
Next is Contents, which is a table of contents that lets you jump to sections in an article. Here’s what one looks like:
Below that is Languages, which displays links to the article you’re browsing in other languages, as shown here:
If, like me, you’re more of a poly-not than a polyglot, you can ignore Languages without missing anything.
After that is Bookmarks, which are links to Wikipedia articles you’ve saved for later reading (I mentioned this a few paragraphs ago). Here’s an example of a list of bookmarks:
Finally, there’s History, which is a list of all the articles that you’ve browsed. Like this:
Using the dropdown menu at the top of the screen, you can display your browsing history for today, the last 7 or 30 days, or your entire history.
Making Wike Your Own
Well, kind of … Wike has a small number of customization options. The first of which you access by clicking the stacker menu in the top-left of the window and then selecting Preferences. When you do that, this screen displays:
You can:
- Set the page that displays when you start Wike. Out of the box, that’s the main page of Wikipedia. You can change that to be a random article or the last article that you viewed.
- Show or hide tabs at the top of the screen.
- Decide whether or not to keep a list of the articles that you’ve read in the History tab on the sidebar.
- Clear any data and cookies when you close the application.
There are a few other customizations that you can make. Click the View icon in the top-right of Wike’s window to:
- Enable dark or sepia mode (light mode is enabled out of the box).
- Change the font.
- Enable link previews, which pop up a small card displaying the lead image and the first paragraph of the article at the other end of the link.
Final Thoughts
I know that there are probably more than a few people who question the need for a dedicated Wikipedia browser. It’s not my thing, but I’m not one to say how anyone should use their devices or how they should access their information.
In my time testing it, I found Wike to be a quick, smooth, and easy way to check information on Wikipedia. It’s basic, but it does the job. And it does that job very well.