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TrickyBird

Reference site

Unblock Wikibooks and get to the chapter you need

The textbook is free, and the network still will not let it through. TrickyBird opens Wikibooks from the browser tab in front of you: paste the address of the book, press Launch, and the page loads where you already are, with nothing to install and no account at either end.

That last part is what decides it on a device you did not set up. A VPN wants an installer, the installer wants a permission the device withholds, and a shared computer withholds it on purpose. TrickyBird is a web page, so it opens the way any other page opens.

Wikibooks uses the same wiki software as Wikipedia and behaves the same way through the proxy. A book page comes back finished, with its table of contents and the links down into the chapters, and the name of Wikibooks appears neither in the URL bar nor anywhere on the page.

Wikibooks in our own tests

A book page arrives with its table of contents, its text, and its images, and the search inside Wikibooks leads to the same books. Editing a book needs a Wikimedia sign-in, and this page does not reach that far.

Last checked 2026-08-01

The address here is TrickyBird’s own, never the address of the site you opened

The site loads in the tab, but its address stays out of your URL bar and off the page you see.

What you get when you open a book

A book on Wikibooks is not one long page. It has a title page with a table of contents, and behind every chapter in that list is a separate page (which is the only way a textbook anyone can edit stays editable). Open the title page and you get the contents, the introduction, and the links down into the chapters, in the order the authors chose. Python Programming is a good first try: it is one of the oldest Wikibooks titles still maintained, and its chapters are all in place. Nothing on that page is waiting for a script to fill it in.

Those links keep working. The script TrickyBird leaves in the tab sends each one back through the proxy, so the move from the contents into a chapter, and from that chapter to the next, stays on the same address. Images inside a chapter come through as well, and that is what decides whether a mathematics or chemistry book is any use through a proxy, since the diagram beside a paragraph often carries more of the explanation than the paragraph does.

Finding a book when you do not have its address

Wikibooks has its own search, it runs through the proxy, and the result list opens the book you pick. Type in the subject you are studying and the book is one click away.

Why a filter takes out a textbook site

Not because of the textbooks. A filter sorts the web into categories, and Wikibooks sits with the wikis and the reader-edited reference works, along with everything of that shape, so a network that switches the category off loses the books as a side effect of a rule that was never about them.

Mainland China works differently. GreatFire, which tests sites from inside the country, has recorded interference with en.wikibooks.org since 8 May 2012 and reports the site as blocked. Either way what TrickyBird does here is narrow: it reaches a public site your network blocks, and it is not a way past a paywall, an account wall, or a regional restriction.

Questions

Does a whole chapter load, or only its start?

The whole chapter. Wikibooks sends the page finished rather than filling it in afterwards, so the text, the tables, and the images arrive together, in the form the authors gave the book. If you want a source text rather than a course, Wikisource is Wikimedia’s library and has its own page here.

Will this work on a computer where I am not allowed to install anything?

Yes, and that is the case it is built for. TrickyBird is a web proxy, not an app: it runs in the browser that is already there, so there is no installer to run and no administrator password to type. Paste the address of the book, press Launch, and it opens in an ordinary tab.

Does TrickyBird keep a record of which books I read?

There is no TrickyBird account, so nothing attaches to a person. To run the service and stop abuse, the edge holds a shortened form of your IP address, the destination hostname, and basic response details, for at most 48 hours. Which book or which chapter you opened is not part of that.

Is Wikibooks blocked in mainland China?

GreatFire has recorded interference with en.wikibooks.org from inside mainland China since 8 May 2012 and reports the site as blocked. Its tests cover the country as a whole, so another connection there gives no different answer. Anywhere else, a Wikibooks block almost always comes down to a category rule on the network you happen to be on.

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Open Wikibooks now

Paste the link or press the button. The site opens in this tab, no download and no account.