How to Download a Wikipedia Article for Offline Use

To download a Wikipedia article, paste its link into the Wikipedia article extractor. Click "Fetch article", choose a format, and click Download. You get a clean file with only the article text. The edit links, footnote numbers, and navigation menus are left out.

Copying the page by hand does not work well. You get the text, but also the info box table, every "[edit]" link, and a footnote number after each sentence. Cleaning this up takes longer than reading the article.

How to download the article

1. Paste the article link, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog.
2. Click "Fetch article".
3. Choose a format under Output format.
4. Click Download, or copy the text from the viewer.

The language comes from the link. A link from de.wikipedia.org or ja.wikipedia.org gives you that language edition. You do not need to change any setting.

Which format to choose

• For reading offline: PDF. It keeps the headings and looks like a printed article.
• For notes or a Markdown editor: Markdown. Headings, lists, and links stay as they are.
• For a script or a search index: plain text, or AST (JSON) if you need the structure of the article.
• For the exact source: raw wikitext. This is the text that Wikipedia editors see.

What to include

The content options decide what goes into the file. By default the file keeps headings, lists, tables, and links. It leaves out references, images, templates, and categories. This gives the cleanest copy for reading. Turn References on if you need the sources.

These options work for plain text, Markdown, HTML, and PDF. Raw wikitext and AST always contain the full article. A character and word count shows you the size of the result before you download it.

The extractor only reads the public article text, and nothing is changed on Wikipedia. Save a few articles before your trip, and you have something to read without an internet connection.