Wikipeek

A Home Assistant custom integration (HACS-ready) that puts a Wikipedia article on your dashboard (an image, a title, and a summary) and opens the full article when you tap it. Like a little "peek at Wikipedia" widget for your wall tablet or phone.

You choose what it shows:

Mode	What you get
Today's featured article	Wikipedia's daily hand-picked article. A new one every day.
Random article	A fresh random article on each update; great for discovery.
Specific article	An article you name (e.g. a topic you care about).
On this day	A historical event that happened on today's date.

Pick one, several, or all of these. If you select more than one, the widget rotates through them on your chosen interval (e.g. today's featured article, then a random one next time, then an "on this day" fact, and so on).

All content comes from the Wikipedia REST API: free, public, open, no API key, nothing to pay. Text is available under CC BY-SA.

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Installation (HACS)

1. In Home Assistant go to HACS → ⋮ (top right) → Custom repositories.
2. Add the URL of this repository, category Integration, and click Add.
3. Find Wikipeek in HACS, click Download, and restart Home Assistant.
4. Go to Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration → Wikipeek.

Manual installation

Copy the custom_components/wikipeek folder into your Home Assistant config/custom_components/ directory and restart.

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Setup: choosing what to show

Add it under Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration → Wikipeek. A short form appears:

1. Name: a friendly name; it also becomes the entity id (e.g. sensor.wikipeek).

2. What to show: a checklist. Tick one or more of:

   • Today's featured article: Wikipedia's daily hand-picked article.
   • Random article: a different random article each time it changes.
   • Specific article: an article you name (fill in Article title below).
   • On this day: a historical event from today's date.

   Tick just one to always show that kind. Tick several and the widget rotates through them: each time it updates it advances to the next one you selected (featured now, a random one next time, an "on this day" fact after that, then back around).

3. Article title: only needed if you ticked Specific article. Type the page title as it appears on Wikipedia, e.g. Home Assistant or Mount Everest.

4. Language: which Wikipedia edition to pull from: en, de, fr, es, …

5. How often to change: seconds between updates. With one mode it's simply the refresh rate; with several it's how often it advances to the next item. Default is 3600 (1 hour).

Change any of this later: Settings → Devices & Services → Wikipeek → Configure.

Want several independent tiles?

One Wikipeek instance = one (optionally rotating) widget. To show, say, a featured article tile and a separate random discovery tile on the same dashboard, add the integration twice with different names. You'll get sensor.wikipeek, sensor.wikipeek_2, and so on, then point each card at its own entity (see the examples below).

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Entity

You get one sensor (named after the integration), e.g. sensor.wikipeek:

• State = the article title (or the event, for "On this day").
• entity_picture = the article thumbnail (so standard HA cards show it).

Attributes:

Attribute	Description
summary	The article summary / extract
description	Short one-line description
url	Link to the full article (used for tap-to-open)
image	Thumbnail image URL
mode	The item currently shown (rotates when several are selected)
modes	All enabled items
language	Wikipedia language code
year	The year (only in "On this day" mode)

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The card

Wikipeek ships a card that shows the image, title and summary, and opens the article in a new tab when tapped. It's served automatically at /wikipeek/wikipeek-card.js.

If the card shows "Custom element doesn't exist", add the resource manually: Settings → Dashboards → ⋮ → Resources → Add resource, URL /wikipeek/wikipeek-card.js, type JavaScript Module, then hard-refresh (Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-R).

Using the card

Add it from Edit dashboard → + Add Card → Wikipeek Card. It has a visual editor: pick your Wikipeek sensor from the dropdown and set the options. As YAML:

type: custom:wikipeek-card
entity: sensor.wikipeek

If you only have one Wikipeek instance you can even leave out entity; the card finds it automatically. Point entity at a specific sensor when you run several instances.

The small chip in the card's top-right shows which kind of article is currently displayed (Featured article / Random / On this day / Article), handy when a widget rotates through several.

Card options:

Option	Default	Description
entity	(auto-detect)	The Wikipeek sensor to show. Required if you have more than one instance.
title	Wikipeek	Small header label shown top-left. Set your own, e.g. Today on Wikipedia.
show_image	true	Show the article thumbnail. Set false for a text-only card.
summary_lines	4	How many lines of the summary to show before it's clipped. Set 0 to show the whole summary. Note: Wikipedia's summaries are short (often one or two sentences), so on short articles raising this changes nothing because there is nothing more to show.
open_on_tap	true	Open the full article in a new tab when the card is tapped.

Examples

A card with your own header:

type: custom:wikipeek-card
entity: sensor.wikipeek
title: Today on Wikipedia

Text-only, with a longer summary:

type: custom:wikipeek-card
entity: sensor.wikipeek
show_image: false
summary_lines: 8

Two tiles side by side from two separate instances (a featured one and a random one):

type: horizontal-stack
cards:
  - type: custom:wikipeek-card
    entity: sensor.wikipeek
    title: Featured
  - type: custom:wikipeek-card
    entity: sensor.wikipeek_2
    title: Random pick

Prefer a built-in card?

Because the thumbnail is exposed as entity_picture, a standard Entities or Glance card shows the image and title too, but the custom card gives you the summary and tap-to-open.

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Notes

• Etiquette: please keep the update interval reasonable. Wikipedia's API is free but shared; the default of 1 hour is plenty for featured / on-this-day.
• Attribution: article text is from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. The card links back to the source article.
• Wikipeek is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Credits

• Content from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Licensed under the MIT License.