Unofficial archive. This is a read-only, community-run archive of the Apple Support Community. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc.
ruth gabrieli
User level: Level 1 (40 points)

MacBook Air M3 Dictionary Lost Wikipedia

Hi,

I am working on MacBook Air M3, Sonoma 14.5, and my dictionary, Version 2.3.0 (294) lost contact with wikipedia:


Wikipedia is selected in the settings -- as are the dictionary & thesaurus, which continue to work. The loss was gradual: At the start it said This Page cannot be displayed in this application, every once in a while. now it says 'no entries found' all the time. In the last couple of weeks dictionary also crashed a couple of times, which it never did before.


I tried un-selecting all in settings and reselecting, it did not work.


I tried deleting the dictionary.plist file in Caches > com.apple.DictionaryServices, which worked on other applications in the past -- it didn't, AND restarting the application did not produce a new .plist file, as it did with other applications in the past.


I searched previous queries, but nothing proved relevant.


I would be grateful for any advice.

Posted on Sep 25, 2026 3:47 AM

2 replies

PreCognition
User level: Level 6 (12,236 points)

Sep 26, 2026 5:31 PM in response to ruth gabrieli

Apple still documents Wikipedia as a supported source in Dictionary, so it hasn’t simply been removed from macOS.


Before deleting anything else, I’d check whether wikipedia.org opens normally in Safari. If it does, the problem is probably with Dictionary rather than your connection.


Also, Sonoma 14.5 is quite old now. Apple has released several later Sonoma updates, so I’d install the latest Sonoma update offered in System Settings > General > Software Update, then test Dictionary again.


Since Dictionary has also started crashing, I’d try those two things before removing any more preference or cache files.

ruth gabrieli Author
User level: Level 1 (40 points)

Sep 28, 2026 6:32 AM in response to PreCognition

Thank you, but I did not make myself clear: I had no doubt that the problem was with the dictionary, not with wikipedia or macOS, but rather that the dictionary developed a bug and no longer managed to access Wikipedia for some reason. I have been using wikipedia through safari since the dictionary could not access it any more, with no problem.


Anyway, I have now upgraded to the latest Sonoma as you suggested, but it does not help.


thank you again for your input

Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256364684