Free offline edition
The whole library, without the internet
Cancer Explained is available as a single offline file — every plain-language article, the report-term explanations, the Kids & Teens pages, and the Spanish guides — readable on a phone, tablet, laptop, or a $40 Raspberry Pi, with no connection required. It uses the same free, open technology (Kiwix) that carries Wikipedia and medical references to clinics, schools, and ships at sea around the world.
Why an offline edition is part of our mission
Our mission is to make cancer understandable for everyone — and “everyone” includes the majority of the world’s patients who face cancer without reliable internet. A plain-language library that only works on fast Wi-Fi quietly excludes the people who may need it most: rural patients, under-resourced clinics, and families rationing a prepaid data plan during the most expensive season of their lives. Packaging the library as a free offline file removes the last dependency between a scared person and a clear explanation. It also honors two of our core principles — privacy (offline reading sends nothing, logs nothing, tracks nothing) and access without barriers (no account, no cost, no connection).
Read more about what drives us on our Mission & Principles page.
Who it’s for
Clinics & patient navigators
Load the library onto waiting-room tablets or a tiny hotspot device. Patients read while they wait — no Wi-Fi password, no data plan, no tracking.
Low-connectivity regions
Most of the world's cancer patients live where internet access is slow, expensive, or unreliable. The offline edition works exactly the same in a rural clinic as in a city hospital.
Schools & libraries
School nurses, health classes, and public libraries can offer the full library — including the Kids & Teens section — on shared computers without any internet dependency.
Hospital dead zones & travel
Chemo infusion wings, basement radiology suites, airplanes, long drives to treatment — the places cancer actually happens are often the places Wi-Fi doesn't.
Privacy-critical readers
Reading offline is the strongest privacy there is. No network requests, no logs, nothing to track. What you read stays on the device, full stop.
Disaster & outage resilience
Health information shouldn't disappear when a storm, outage, or crisis takes the network down. An offline copy keeps working when nothing else does.
What’s inside
The complete reading library: 1,400+ plain-language articles across every category, the report-term explanations, verified news stories, the Kids & Teens section, Spanish-language guides, printables, and full-text search built into the Kiwix reader.
What needs the internet
A few interactive features stay online-only: the Ask tool, email signup, feedback forms, and e-cards. Every educational page — the reason the library exists — works completely offline. We note this honestly because that’s how we do everything.
How to get it
Install the free Kiwix reader on any device — Android, iPhone/iPad, Windows, macOS, Linux, or even a Raspberry Pi. Get it at kiwix.org.
Download the Cancer Explained ZIM file below (roughly the size of a short video — small enough for a basic phone).
Open the file in Kiwix. That's it — the whole library, searchable, with no internet connection at all.
Free, no sign-up. The edition is refreshed quarterly. Trouble downloading, or setting this up for a clinic or organization? Email [email protected] with the subject “Offline edition” and we’ll help — whether you’re one reader or a hospital system.
Help it reach further
Know a clinic, school nurse, patient navigator, or community health worker who serves people without reliable internet? Tell them this exists. And if you’d like to support the work of keeping a free cancer library alive — online and off — you can get involved or donate.