This app combines Wikipedia and TikTok to fight doomscrolling

“Insane project idea: all of wikipedia on a single, scrollable page,” Patina Systems founder Tyler Angert posted on X earlier this month. “Even better, an infinitely scrolling Wikipedia page based on whatever you are interested in next?” replied Bloomberg Beta VC James Cham. “WikiTok,” added Angert.

New York-based app developer Isaac Gemal stumbled across the discussion the following evening. Within two hours, WikiTok was live.

If you’re the type to instinctively pull up Wikipedia to fact-check anything and everything, this app is made for you. WikiTok users can swipe through an endless stream of Wikipedia article stubs, discovering random facts and interesting information along the way.

“Damn this is really cool, much better for the brain,” one X user posted. “The rabbit hole we didn’t know we needed. knowledge discovery powered by attention span instead of search terms. finally, a productive way to waste time,” another added.

Free from invasive tracking and endless notifications, this app offers the closest thing to guilt-free scrolling. Instead of feeding you content based on an algorithm, it delivers a truly random selection of Wikipedia articles, pulled straight from the Wikipedia API and displayed in a TikTok-style interface. Each entry appears with an image from the corresponding article, and if something catches your interest, a simple tap on “Read More” opens the full Wikipedia page in your browser.

Gemal made the code for WikiTok available on GitHub, allowing anyone to modify or contribute to the project. Currently, the web app supports 14 languages, article previews, and sharing capabilities across both desktop and mobile browsers. As the community grows, new features are expected to roll in as contributors get involved.

The app is currently algorithm-free and Gemal plans to keep it that way. “I have had plenty of people message me and even make issues on my GitHub asking for some insane crazy WikiTok algorithm,” Gemal told Ars Technica. “And I had to put my foot down and say something along the lines that we’re already ruled by ruthless, opaque algorithms in our everyday life; why can’t we just have one little corner in the world without them?”

One little corner, in other words, without doomscrolling.