WIK

January 21, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

WIK is a command-line tool to view Wikipedia pages from your terminal. It also lets you search Wikipedia articles with a single query.

[Installation] [Options] [Examples] [Contribution]

Requirements

  • Python3
  • beautifulsoup4

Installation

Linux/macOS

From source

python3 -m pip install beautifulsoup4 flit_core
git clone https://github.com/yashsinghcodes/wik.git
cd wik
python3 -m pip install .

PyPI

python3 -m pip install wik

Windows

From source

python -m pip install beautifulsoup4 flit_core
git clone https://github.com/yashsinghcodes/wik.git
cd wik
python -m pip install .

Note: Windows users should add Python to their environment variables.

PyPI

python -m pip install wik

or

pip install wik

Options

Using WIK is simple.

usage: wik [-h] [-s SEARCH] [-i INFO] [-q QUICK] [-l LANG] [-x] [--no-cache]
           [--clear-cache]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -s SEARCH, --search SEARCH
                        Search any topic
  -i INFO, --info INFO  Get info on any topic
  -q QUICK, --quick QUICK
                        Get the summary on any topic
  -l LANG, --lang LANG  Get info in your native language (default english)
  -x, --rand            Get random Wikipedia article
  --no-cache            Disable on-disk cache for this run
  --clear-cache         Clear cached pages and exit

Example

$ wik -i Linux

example output

Cache

WIK stores pages on disk so repeated queries are instant and can work offline. You can disable caching per run or clear the cache:

wik --no-cache -i Linux
wik --clear-cache

Contribution

You can contribute by opening an issue or making a pull request. If you have ideas or feedback, you can contact me.