Kiwix is a free and open-source offline web browser created by Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin in 2007.It was first launched to allow offline access to Wikipedia, but has since expanded to include other projects from the Wikimedia Foundation as well as public domain texts from Project Gutenberg. Available in more than 100 languages, Kiwix has been included in several high-profile projects, from smuggling operations in North Korea and encyclopedic access in Cuba to Google Impact Challenge's recipient Bibliothèques Sans Frontières.

The software is designed as an offline reader for web content. It can be used on computers without an internet connection, computers with a slow or expensive connection, or to avoid censorship. It can also be used while traveling (e.g. on a plane or train).

Users first download Kiwix, then download content for offline viewing with Kiwix. Compression saves disk space and bandwidth. All of English-language Wikipedia, with pictures, fits on a USB stick (54 GB as of May 2016, or 16 GB with no pictures).

All content files are compressed in ZIM format, which makes them smaller, but leaves them easy to index, search, and selectively decompress.

The ZIM files are then opened with Kiwix, which looks and behaves like a web browser. Kiwix offers full text search, tabbed navigation, and the option to export articles to PDF and HTML.

There is an HTTP server version called kiwix-serve; this allows a computer to host Kiwix content, and make it available to other computers on a network.The other computers see an ordinary website. Kiwix-plug is an HTTP server version for plug computers,which is often used to provide a Wi-Fi server.

Kiwix uses the deprecated XULRunner Mozilla application framework localised on Translatewiki.net,but plans to replace it.

Deployments
Kiwix can be installed on a desktop computer as a stand-alone program, installed on a tablet or smartphone, or can create its own WLAN environment from a Raspberry plug.

As a software development project, Kiwix itself is not directly involved in deployment projects. However, third party organisations do use the software as a component of their own projects. Examples include: 

• Universities and libraries that can't afford broadband Internet access.
• The Afripedia Project set up kiwix servers in French-speaking universities, some of them with no Internet access, in 11 African countries.
• Schools in developing countries, where access to the internet is difficult or too expensive.
• Installed on computers used for the One Laptop per Child project.
• Installed on Raspberry Pis for use in schools with no easy access to electricity in Tanzania by the Tanzania Development Trust.
• Installed on tablets in schools in Mali as part of the MALebooks project.
• Used by school teachers and university professors, as well as students, in Senegal.
• Deployed in Benin during teacher training seminars run by Zedaga,a Swiss NGO specialized in education.
• The Fondation Orange has used kiwix-serve in its own French language technological knowledge product they have deployed in Africa.
• A special version for the organisation SOS Children's Villages was developed, initially for developing countries, but it is also used in the developed world.
• At sea and in other remote areas:
• Aboard ships in Antarctic waters.
• By the Senegalese Navy in their patrol ships.
• Included in Navigatrix, a Linux distribution for people on boats.
• On a train or plane.
• In European and US prison education programs.

Package managers and app stores
Kiwix was formerly available in the native package managers of some Linux distributions. However, Kiwix is currently not available in most package databases, due to XULRunner, a program on which Kiwix depends, being deprecated by Mozilla and removed from the package databases.Kiwix is available in the Sugar and ArchLinux Linux distributions. It is also available on Android.

Kiwix is available in the Microsoft Store,on Google Play,and Apple's iOS App Store. Since 2015, a series of "customized apps" have also been released, of which Medical Wikipedia and PhET simulations are the two largest.

Specifications

Industry :

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