Help/Library
Library
A concise help for Kiwix Library section and how to load/remove/add a ZIM file ...
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Kiwix is able to read .ZIM file format which would be the content package of a specific language of Wikipedia or any other online contents. By this way, you will be able to read these online content in offline mode. Kiwix has a section named "Library" where you can organize your ZIM files. There are many ZIM files available to use including over 80 languages of Wikipedia and some other projects like Wiktionary, Wikisource, Ubuntu documentation, etc. There are two ways for downloading a ZIM file and using that:
- Choose your desired .ZIM file from the list of Wikipedia ZIM files, and then download and install that (see User guide if you had any problems installing the ZIM file)
- Choose your desired .ZIM file from the Library, and then download and install that.
The second method is easier and also there is a complete list of .ZIM files in the Library section which includes some ZIM files (like ICD-10 or Ubuntu Documentation, etc) which are not available in the list of Wikipedia ZIM files.
In order to enter the Library section, click on Browse Library icon in the Kiwix toolbar and you can return to your previous page by re-clicking on the same Library icon. You will see a page with a menu in its left side then which contains two options (My library and Get new files) and also a search box.
By clicking on My library you will see a list of your installed ZIM files in the right side of the page. Each of the ZIM files in that list has two buttons, Remove which removes the ZIM file from your Kiwix Library and Load which launches the ZIM file content. You can also see the ZIM file details like the size, number of articles and media files, language and the date which would be helpful if you are going to update a ZIM file. Note that by removing a ZIM file, you won't be able to use the ZIM file content again and you should open install and index that in order to re-use it.
By clicking on Remove, you will be asked for confirmation to delete the ZIM content from your Library list. Mark the Do not delete content (ZIM) file if you want to keep the original .ZIM file in your memory/hard disk. Note that you can not run more than one content package simultaneously, for instance, if you are using the English Wikipedia ZIM content and want to read an article of French Wikipedia, you should load the French Wikipedia ZIM file from your Library. So you have to load the ZIM file you want to use from the Library list and you will be navigated to the homepage of the same ZIM file then. You can load another ZIM file by going back to Library section and load it.
By clicking on Get new files you will see a list of available ZIM files to download with the ZIM file details. You can click on Download button if you want to download the ZIM file directly from the Kiwix and without using any web-browsers and download manager softwares. There is a box in the left side of the Library section which is useful when you want to search a specific ZIM file or filter your ZIM files list by a specific size or language, etc. The search box works with both of installed ZIM files (which are in "My library" section) and online ZIM files (which are in "Get new files" section) In order to search a specific ZIM file, just type its name in the "Search ZIM files" text field and to sort the list by title, size ot date, use the "Sort by" list and to filter the list by a language or filter the files bigger than a specific size, use the options of "Filter by" section.