Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser

AutoWikiBrowser 6.5.0.0

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This is the discussion page for the AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) project. It is also the place to discuss using the AWB program (for help, questions, or general inquiries about AWB). Specific guidelines on where to make particular reports or requests are provided in the § Before you post section below. Before asking a question, please refer to the read the § Frequently asked questions below.

Before you post

Do you want to ...	Please use
Report a bug or request a feature in AWB?	Check reported bugs on Phabricator before filing a new bug report. You do not need to create another account there; just log in with your global Wikimedia account. See this MediaWiki wiki page on how to report bugs and request features on Phabricator. Report a bug Try to report bugs in the current version of the software. Update to the most recent version and check to make sure your bug has not already been reported on Phabricator. See How to Report Bugs Effectively for advice on how to write bug reports. Before posting anything related to non-Wikimedia Foundation wikis, verify that the site is running a recent version of MediaWiki with enabled Bot API. Older versions of MediaWiki or without the Bot API are not supported. Be sure to mention the exact URL of your wiki. Request a feature details Please use the feature request button to submit new feature requests. This format helps the developers track and manage requests efficiently. Before submitting, take a moment to search the archives—both on-wiki and on Phabricator—to see if a similar request has already been discussed.​
Report an incorrectly fixed typo?	Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos
Request approval to use AWB?	Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/AutoWikiBrowser
Ask a question about AWB or ask for help?	This page

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions

• When I start it up I get one of the following errors:

  "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application.", or

  "To run this application, you must first install one of the following versions of the .NET Framework..."

  This error means your computer does not have the .NET framework version 2 installed properly. You can choose from various versions for download here, or you can run Windows Update and select version 2 of the .Net framework from the "Optional Updates" section, if you want the choice made for you.

• Does AWB run on Linux or Mac?
  • AWB runs reasonably under Wine. See details here

    AWB might also run under Mono.

  • AWB (Windows) with Unix scripts can be done with Cygwin or Virtualbox
  • On the Mac, AWB is not natively available, but an option is to use virtualisation with Parallels Desktop for Mac (subject to meeting supported operating systems requirements) and then run Microsoft Windows virtually with AWB as the Windows instructions above. Note this option is not free, as a license is required for both Parallels Desktop for Mac and Microsoft Windows. An alternative visualization method is to use the free VirtualBox, see also Comparison of platform virtual machines.
  • You can use the JavaScript Wiki Browser instead.
• Does AWB work on other projects and languages?

  Many Wikimedia projects and languages are supported, see the "User and project preferences" option in the general menu. Other languages will be added on request, though at the moment the interface is always in English. You are also able to use AWB with third-party wikis: Options > Preferences > Site, you can change the wiki there. The wiki must support the Bot API required by AWB. This means that it should have latest HEAD version of MediaWiki or something close to that. The wmf-deployment branch is also recommended, as this is what is currently live on WMF sites.

• Under Windows Vista (and newer), AWB is using wrong font size, which results in clipped text and lost buttons and options, (see example here). How to fix it?
  Tracked in Phabricator
  Task T103506
  
  • Solution #1: Go to "Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display" and switch resizing of the fonts to 100%.
  • Solution #2: Right click on AutoWikiBrowser.exe --> Properties -> Compatibility (tab) --> enable the "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" option or for Windows 10, if available, select System (Enhanced).
• AWB puts stubs after categories, though categories are always rendered the last by MediaWiki?

  According to WP:STUB#Categorizing stubs, by convention they are placed at the end of the article, after the External links section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear last. If your wiki uses another order, please let us know here.

• I don't like or use Internet Explorer; please use Firefox instead.

  AWB does not use Internet Explorer per se. It does, however, use the same web browser control (MSHTML) as Internet Explorer; the equivalent Firefox component does not provide the needed functionality.

• How do I open the page in another browser if I can't use the one in AWB?

  Right click on the edit box in the bottom right side of your screen. Select "Open page in browser".

• How do I edit a page that doesn't exist?

  Uncheck "Ignore non existing pages" in the "Skip articles" box.

• How do I skip certain articles?

  Use the "Skip if contains" and "Skip if doesn't contain" on the "Skip" tab

• Can't you leave up a "stable" version, so I don't have to download new versions?

  It is important to keep people up to date with the latest versions, because their use of the software doesn't just affect them, but the whole of Wikipedia. As any bugs that remain will be trivial, hopefully releases won't be too frequent.

• How can I stop AWB clicking when it changes pages?

  This is a Windows sound theme setting. This page explains how to turn off the clicking sound.

  Alternatively, delete the following key from the Windows registry:

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\Explorer\Navigating\.Current

• AWB randomly crashes upon page load on my system, and I always use a browser other than Internet Explorer when using Wikipedia.

  You may have installed custom scripts incompatible with IE. Wrap the contents of your monobook.js into conditional:

               //Detect IE5.5+
               if (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("MSIE")==-1)
               {
                   // Previous contents go here
                   ....
               }

• I get Just In Time Debugger Messages when loading AWB/loading pages.

  In Internet Explorer, go to Tools → Options → Advanced. Make sure 'Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)' and 'Disable Script Debugging (Other)' Are both checked. Press apply and close.

• Why does AWB run very, very slowly if I try to make changes in the edit window on larger pages, especially pages with long lists or tables?

  If running on Windows, exit the Speech Recognition software that is built into some versions of Windows; don't just turn it 'Off', you must 'Exit' the software if you have started up Speech Recognition.

• When I do a clean install of AutoWikiBrowser the application seems to find old setting data somewhere. I'd like to do a really clean install. Any ideas?

  Clean up your registry and remove the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\AutoWikiBrowser" (Windows XP) or "C:\Users\user name\AppData\Local\AutoWikiBrowser\" (Windows 7). Note that the application data folder may be hidden.

• AWB prompts that there is a newer version but won't update

  Check the version number of your AWBUpdater.exe. The current version is 2.4.0.0. If you have an older version, you have to download the latest AWB version and make a clean install.

• Which .NET Framework version do I have?

  You can find your .NET Framework version in Help → About box.

• Where are the default settings stored?

  • Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\AutoWikiBrowser
  • Windows Vista onwards: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\AutoWikiBrowser\Default.xml

• I cannot copy text from the diff window using the Control+C keyboard shortcut.

  You must have Microsoft.mshtml.dll available for AWB to use for this functionality to work. You can try downloading the file (there are a number of third-party websites offering DLL file downloads) and putting it in the same folder as AutoWikiBrowser.exe. This is reported not to work for all users, presumably due to .NET Framework problems.

• Is there any way to set AWB to not use https? (GFW blocks port 443)

  In preferences, set project to "custom". Set the left box to http. In the webpage box, type en.wikipedia.org/w/ (English Wikipedia) or zh.wikipedia.org/w/ (Chinese Wikipedia). Note that leaving off the /w/ will result in a "root element missing" error.

• How do I login to AWB with accounts enabled with two-factor authentication?

  You should use a bot password. Despite the name, they aren't just for bots. See Wikipedia:Using AWB with 2FA.

• How can I make AWB ignore some syntax that is not incorrect, in the local circumstance?

  Enclose the offending text or syntax in {{Not a typo|correctsyntaxhere}}.

Discussion

Fetching page title in regex

Moved to WP:Request a query § Fetching page title in regex

 – Sdkb ^talk 19:40, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

List default sort

I'm curious, what is the default sorting mechanism AWB uses to generate a list of articles? It seems quite good at putting more important topics higher up. Sdkb ^talk 21:09, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

It may depend on what your Source is. When I use "Category" or "Category (recursive)", the list is sorted in the same order as the articles appear in that category itself. Kiwipete (talk) 21:37, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain it uses the same defaults as Wikipedia, so a Category pull will sort the same as the cat, a Search will go by "most recent edit", and a What Transcludes... search will go by (I think) oldest-to-newest addition of the template/page being transcluded (which is why the "more important" pages tend to be at the top). Primefac (talk) 17:09, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

My AWB queries tend to be insource wiki searches. Sdkb ^talk 17:23, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

If you haven't set any list sorting option in AWB (alphabetical etc.) then the result order is determined by the wikipedia/mediawiki search service, not AWB. Their search results are presumably sorted by relevance/popularity or similar by default. Rjwilmsi 15:48, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Category (recursive) search

When I choose "Category (recursive)" as the Source, and enter a category name in Category, and click "Make list", all the child categories get added to the start of the list. Is this behaviour intentional? Could I ask that child categories not be included? It's not a particulary big deal, because I can simply delete these entries manually, but if there are a large(ish) number of child categories, this would be rather tiresome. Thanks, Kiwipete (talk) 18:43, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

What are you trying to achieve? By definition 'recursive' behavior is exactly as you have described. Neils51 (talk) 01:14, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm trying to process all the articles that are in either the parent category itself or any of its (recursive) child categories. I'm not interested in processing the categories themselves. Kiwipete (talk) 04:11, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

After you get them, just filter and select everything except categories.Naraht (talk) 04:47, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Large list performance

Do we currently have a stable release with updates to improve large list performance? I would like to use that until the next official release is made available. the Stefen 𝕋ower 20:36, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't think there will be an official release for a while. Try https://github.com/DavidWBrooks/UnofficialAWB/releases/latest, which has those fixes (and more). David Brooks (talk) 13:35, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I have also put a snapshot release on sourceforge. Rjwilmsi 15:46, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you both. I immediately noticed that the list's box has a shorter height or it doesn't stretch to the bottom like it used to. Is this intentional? the Stefen 𝕋ower 21:33, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Comparing this build with 6.4.0.0 on my machine I don't see a difference, but it does differ from 6.3.1.1. That's because the latter doesn't display the horizontal scrollbar. Was that it?

Also on some systems I've seen a thicker horizontal scrollbar than on others, but I can't recall what the distinction is associated with. David Brooks (talk) 02:35, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

My comparison is with 6.5.0.0 (64-bit) that I was using, where the list box stretched to the bottom, just above the status bar. With the 6.5.0.1 snapshot, there is like an inch of unused space between the list box and the status bar. the Stefen 𝕋ower 03:05, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Ah, the snapshot included some of my local changes for listbox sizing issues on Wine, I've reuploaded the snapshot without that in, if you'd like to download it again and try again. Rjwilmsi 08:02, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

OK, that fixes it. Thanks! the Stefen 𝕋ower 08:23, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

As I go through a long list combining articles from three WikiProjects, AWB is definitely zipping through it with this release. Big thanks! the Stefen 𝕋ower 23:06, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Please avoid adjusting spacing inside Template:convert

See this edit, which broke {{convert}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:40, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

That might be something that BD2412 did as a custom change, but I'm not 100% sure as I don't usually run genfixes with "add what got changed to the edit summary". Primefac (talk) 18:15, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 and Primefac: Please see the resolution at Template talk:Convert#False positives for punctuation errors. BD2412 T 18:37, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Cool. Primefac (talk) 18:48, 26 July 2026 (UTC)