Download all of Wikipedia on your phone

I remember doing this about ten years ago, taking up almost the entirety of my phone’s storage in the process, and feeling unreasonably delighted by it. I’m not sure why, but this idea really appeals to me. It’s all very good having access to information on some server somewhere, but literally having (a very useful amount of) information on almost every topic humans have so far contemplated available <i>literally in your pocket</i> is somehow incredibly thrilling. For the same reason I’m fascinated by the idea of locally-hosted LLMs. It’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s like some sort of digital version of hoarding behaviour.

I sometimes daydream about what would happen if I were suddenly transported back in time -- but with everything on my person intact (iPhone included).<p>Step one in this daydream is always &quot;Crap, no internet for 100 years -- if only I had all of Wikipedia cached&quot;.<p>Check! :)<p>Step 2 of course is figure out how to fashion some sort of charging system so my magical godlike pocket super abacus continues to function after ~days, but I&#x27;m making the bold assumption that somewhere in the annals of Wikipedia I can figure that out.

While not necessarily related to Wikipedia, I focus a lot on the offline usage of my phone: I fly a few times per year and I like to travel. Even in 2023, internet is not always working so great. Two important things for me are:<p>* Offline Map - The times I need a map and I am offline are strongly correlated. * Stardew Valley - Great game, pay only once, play offline, no ads.<p>Wikipedia does sound cool though. Maybe I&#x27;ll trial one of the reduced size versions.

This would be great if it was an optional part of the wipe process. Turn old Android phones into offline encyclopedias.

Hmmm. The full English Wikipedia Zim went from 87GB 1.5 years ago to 103GB now. While 512GB microSD cards are fairly reasonable nowadays, iPhone users will struggle.

Back in the year 2001&#x2F;2002 (I think) I remember doing this with a Wikipedia plugin for Rockbox (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockbox.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockbox.org&#x2F;</a>), which I had running on my Archos FM Recorder. It was truly awesome to have all this knowledge in the palm of your hands without omnipresent Internet.

Makes me curious on how useful a tiny AI model based just on wikipedia would be on mobile phones.<p>Especially if it could also cite sources.

Funny enough, I was doing this just yesterday, on the same app mentioned. I remember seeing offline Wikipedia hardware devices about a decade ago and decided it would be handy to have while on a flight. It was actually quite surprising to see how big Wikipedia has since gotten.<p>The subdivisions the app provides isn&#x27;t enough, or at least I was using it wrong. For example, trying to download the lighter versions of the Geography section only seems to offer combinations that ultimately leave you without much usable information (i.e Paris only providing the introduction text and not the content from the later sections) unless I go for the much larger size.

I like the wikipedia dumps with Aard 2. Excluding images, it&#x27;s only about 21gb which was small enough to use years ago when I had spotty connectivity and small enough to leave lying around today.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aarddict.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aarddict.org&#x2F;</a> (available on F-Driod)

&gt; This app isn&#x27;t available for your device because it was made for an older version of Android.<p>I hope they update it.

This reminds me of Aard2, it does the same job as the one mentioned in the article, but the dumps are really small (for example, the wikipedia english one uses around 20 something GBs) No images on it, but the app loads them from the source when needed

the other cool thing about Kiwix is that you can download other MediaWiki sites for it, there&#x27;s a whole selection: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;library.kiwix.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;library.kiwix.org&#x2F;</a>

Made me think of the old <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WikiReader" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WikiReader</a> from 2009.

This is great, I have difficulty with the navigation though, it seems you can get stuck in some part of the library and there’s no button to go back to the beginning.

I don&#x27;t remember the name of the educational project that made knowledge accessible. It fit on a usb driver.

Keep Wikipedia around on your iPad in case the world comes to an end (and have some solar panels for charging).

Hmm, could you leave out the least visited articles to reduced the size massively?

Can this be done for a Kindle?

Total noob question: Would an LLM approach reduce the total required storage?

Kiwix

Ice hockey articles are ~.5% of wikipedia?