Free Wikipedia App For Windows 8: Wikipedia 8

Wikipedia 8 is a free app for Windows 8 and 8.1 which allows you to access the Wikipedia website on your device. When you open up the app, you will be presented with an interface presenting you with all the options allowing you to completely browse and navigate through Wikipedia as you would on the standard web version, only this time, the app presents you the content in a way that it’s completely optimized for the Windows 8 ecosystem and looks and feels extremely and incredibly at home. The app supports snapped view which allows for smooth multitasking, and overall, the app in itself makes for a great companion on your device if all you want to do is access Wikipedia without having to open up a browser window to accomplish the same.

Wikipedia 8 is available for free from the Windows App Store.

Main features of Wikipedia 8 for Windows 8 and 8.1:

When you open up the Wikipedia 8 app on your system post its installation, you will be presented with an interface which resembles the below screenshot.

Wikipedia 8 Main screen

In the above screen, you will be presented with the featured article of the day. You can choose to either read through the featured article, or you can search for an article that you wish to read by searching for it in the search box. Once you search for topics, you will be instantly and immediately presented with the search results, much like Google’s instant search. You can see these search results below.

Wikipedia 8 Search Results

You can click on any of these results to read the article associated with the same topic. Once you do that, you will be presented with the article reader interface in a full screen viewer interface. You can see so in the below screenshot.

Wikipedia 8 Article View

The app fully supports snapped view, and the article looks as good as it looks in the full screen view in the snapped view as well. This can be seen easily in the screenshot displayed below.

Wikipedia 8 Snapped

The app also has control bar at the bottom which can be brought up by right clicking on the screen. Via this control bar, you can choose to change the language settings, etc. Wikipedia 8 Control Bar

You can see the control bar in the screenshot above. Besides the control bar, the app also has a certain toggle bar which can be accessed by clicking on the triple lined button at the top left of the screen.

Wikipedia 8 Toggle Bar

You can access some frequently visited pages via this toggle bar like the home page of Wikipedia, etc. This wraps up the main features of the Wikipedia 8 app for Windows 8 and 8.1 devices. You can also feel free to check out the Bing Wikipedia Browser and Search On Wiki Wikipedia apps for Windows 8 and 8.1.

The verdict:

Wikipedia 8 is a well designed Wikipedia app for Windows 8 and 8.1 devices which allows you to easily access Wikipedia in a Metro environment. The app is lightweight, smooth, supports snapped mode, and basically there is nothing else from the app that I would personally have wanted. The app pretty much nails it all, and hence is truly worthy of a 5 on 5 rating!

Get Wikipedia 8.