Does Wonder by Zaweba work on Mac or Linux?
Yes. Wonder by Zaweba has a Mac and Linux version that draws articles natively, alongside the Windows app and the web page at zaweba.com/wonder.
It does. Wonder by Zaweba has a Mac and Linux version, which draws articles natively on those systems, as well as the Windows version. And for a quick taste on any device, the web version at zaweba.com/wonder runs in a browser.
Wonder is a free offline encyclopedia built around wandering rather than searching. You download an edition of Wikipedia, or a smaller one, Wiktionary or Wikivoyage, once from the Kiwix project, then read, search and wander with no internet.
How the versions differ
The main difference is how an article is put on the screen. On Windows, Wonder's reading view uses the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime, which is built into Windows 11. The Mac and Linux version draws articles natively instead, so it doesn't rely on that Windows component.
What stays the same is the idea: an edition of Wikipedia on your own computer, opened without a connection, with ways in that invite you to wander.
Editions travel well
The editions Wonder reads are .zim files in the openZIM format, the same files Kiwix makes. Wonder has its own ZIM reader, written from the openZIM specification, that handles uncompressed, xz and zstd clusters, redirects, and old and new title indexes.
That makes it easy to move between machines. If you already have a .zim file, perhaps on an external drive, you can open it rather than download it again. On Windows that's Ctrl+O. A file that took hours to download can be copied once and used on another computer.
What wandering looks like
The heart of Wonder is the set of ways into the encyclopedia. Surprise me opens a random article weighted towards good ones, skipping redirects, stubs, lists and disambiguation pages. Follow a random link jumps to a random article the current one links to, with a trail bar recording every step. Five a day gives five articles from five subjects, the same for everyone on the same date. On this day lists events, births and deaths from the edition's page for today.
Around them are subject shelves, a journey map of the last seven days, Bookmarks, Read later and History, title suggestions as you type and full-text search through an index Wonder builds itself.
The web version as a bridge
The web page at zaweba.com/wonder works on any system with a browser, including phones. It shows a Surprise me card with a title, picture and first paragraph, and the same Five a day as the desktop app, using Wikipedia's summaries. It is mobile-friendly and works without JavaScript.
It isn't an offline encyclopedia, but it is a pleasant way to try the idea before downloading an edition, or to keep up with the day's five when you're away from your own computer.
Choosing an edition for your machine
Disk space is the main thing to plan for on any system. The full English Wikipedia with pictures reaches 119 GB. Smaller choices include editions without pictures, introductions only, top articles and Simple English, as well as Wiktionary and Wikivoyage. Wonder shows each edition's size, date and article count from the Kiwix catalogue before anything downloads, and downloads can be paused and resumed.
Whichever computer you use, the articles are Wikipedia's own under CC BY-SA 4.0, and every one ends with its attribution. Wonder by Zaweba brings the same curious, offline reading to Mac and Linux as it does to Windows.
