Published on : 2026-05-24 15:35
       
       A few days ago I found out about ZIM files. I am surprised I never 
       looked into them earlier. A .zim file is basically a compressed 
       offline version of a website or collection of pages. They're 
       commonly used with Kiwix for things like offline Wikipedia, 
       documentation archives, and other knowledge dumps. The format is 
       designed for fast browsing, indexing, and portability.
       
       What I really liked is that you can create your own offline 
       web archives pretty easily.
       
       The DIY method
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       I found the wget-2-zim project: Wget-2-zim is a simple bash 
       script with some nifty tricks that can be used to archive 
       websites on the internet. It does not require ServiceWorkers and 
       will drop a ZIM file that can be read with any Kiwix reader 
       anywhere. The script does several things that go very much beyond 
       what wget alone would do. For example it deletes large files and 
       it grabs embedded images and media files from external URLs, it 
       injects anti-cookie-banner CSS and all sorts of other useful 
       things.
       
 (HTM) wget-2-zim
       
       The online method: YouZimit
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 (HTM) Zimit clawler
       
       It's a free service ( you can donate if you want ) that crawls 
       websites and emails you a .zim file. The thing is that it's pretty 
       slow and a task cannot last more than 2 hours. So, if you're 
       trying to create an archive for a large site the DIY method with 
       wget-2-zim is better.
       
       There's also official documentation from openZIM:
       
 (HTM) Build your ZIM file (openZIM wiki)
       
       ZIM Readers
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       Linux, Windows, OSX or Android ? There's a client. I installed 
       kiwix-desktop on my Arch Linux laptop and it works great.
       
 (HTM) Reader software for the ZIM file format
       
       Honestly, this feels like one of those internet tools that should 
       be way more widely known. There are some zim servers also. I will 
       look into that and see if I can help out. 
       
       The android version of Kiwix has a server...
       
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