This App Lets You Browse Wikipedia From Your Mac’s Menu Bar

The smoothest way to go down Wikipedia's rabbit hole.

There's more to your Mac than the apps and utilities that come pre-installed. With just a little digging, you'll find that the Mac has several incredibly useful menu bar apps made by talented indie developers. One of my favorites is called Menupedia, which puts Wikipedia in your Mac's menu bar. This makes it the fastest way to launch and use Wikipedia on an Apple device.

How to use Wikipedia from the menu bar

Once you've installed Menupedia, you'll see a small W icon in your Mac's menu bar. Just click that icon to instantly access everything Wikipedia has to offer. You'll get access to the whole Wikipedia website, all contained in a handy popover window.

While the default options should be good enough for most, there are a few tweaks you can make to make it even more useful. Open Menupedia and hit the gear icon to open its settings. 

I recommend the following changes:

• Disable Window always on top

• Enable Start at Login

• Enable Larger Menu Bar Icon

The default settings keep Menupedia open until you click its menu bar icon to close the popover window. If you disable Window always on top, you'll be able to click anywhere outside the app's window to hide it. The other two tweaks launch Menupedia when you turn on your Mac and enlarge its menu bar icon, making it easier to spot.

You can also make a couple small tweaks to Wikipedia itself. Open Menupedia, click the three-lines icon in the top-left corner, and click Settings. On this page, I changed text size to Medium, page color to Dark, and enabled Expand all sections. These are my preferred Wikipedia readability settings, although yours may differ.

Menupedia has a few other useful features. The bottom bar allows you to change Wikipedia's language. The app supports English, French, German, and Spanish. There's also a dice icon, which opens a random article. You can read a few articles this way, then hide Menupedia. When you relaunch it, the app will restore the last article you read.