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Why does the extension needs permissions for all websites?

The goal of the WikiWand extension is to let people who like WikiWand replace their default Wikipedia interface with WikiWand.


One would expect that our extension will simply intercept navigation to Wikipedia and redirect the user to WikiWand.

We are actually doing that, but we found that it creates a very bad user experience:

When you'd click a link to Wikipedia (for example on Google search result page), it would navigate to Wikipedia, send a request to Wikipedia, intercept the response, and then redirect the user to WikiWand.

This has 2 very annoying side effects:

1. It shows a "flash of Wikipedia" for a split second, and then it loads WikiWand. It looks horrible.

2. It takes longer to load each article.


That's why we need to find and replace links to Wikipedia - to provide a great and smooth user experience for users.

This, however, requires our extension to access all websites in order to replace links to Wikipedia.


Be assured that we do not track your browser activity in any way, or manipulate other websites except Wikipedia.

The extension simply replaces links to Wikipedia.

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