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Help:Mobile access

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For a list of bugs with the mobile applications, see Wikipedia:Mobile communication bugs.
Readers' FAQ
alt=A link to a friendly place where you can ask questions to get help with using Wikipedia

It is possible to access and edit Wikipedia on multiple types of device, such as desktop computers, tablets and smartphones, through several different methods, including options for older devices, modern apps for various platforms and options to view content while offline. This is intended for those who want to read and edit on the go. Approximately 65% of access to English Wikipedia is by mobile devices.

The official mobile version of English Wikipedia is located at en.m.wikipedia.org, with the official desktop version of English Wikipedia located at en.wikipedia.org. A toggle switch between mobile and desktop view is available at the bottom of every page.


Official applications can be found at: Download Wikipedia on the App Store (iOS) Get Wikipedia on Google Play (Android) Get Wikipedia on F-Droid (Android)

Official mobile version

Mobile Wikipedia on Firefox for Android

The mobile version of Wikipedia is located at https://en.m.wikipedia.org.

Users of supported mobile devices are automatically redirected to the official mobile version of Wikipedia (this can be overridden by clicking the desktop-view button at the bottom of the page, after which the device will no longer be automatically redirected to the mobile site).

Tablets

Tablets are served a slightly modified version of the mobile site, which makes use of the larger screen size to, e.g., show a table of contents and display all article sections open by default.

Interface options

Further information: Wikipedia:Editing on mobile devices and mw:Reading/Web/Advanced mobile contributions

This mobile version is available for all languages of Wikipedia. It is actively developed, supported and translated. It supports editing; visit any article and you'll see a pencil icon on every section. Anyone, including those who are not logged in, can use the mobile editor. You can also check your watchlist on mobile, add/remove articles from it, and more. If you don't want to use the mobile version, you can find options at the bottom of every page to switch to the desktop version.

Older phones

Legacy browsers

Legacy mobile browsers that were fairly advanced during their time, such as NetFront (2.3), should be able to browse the Wikipedia Mobile version without too much effort. Depending on a phone's capabilities, it may be advisable to turn images and JavaScript off.

Opera Mini

Wikipedia mobile on Opera Mini 5

Older featurephones' native browsers commonly have limited functionality and are outdated. If your phone is Java ME-capable, you might consider installing Opera Mini, a Java ME-based Internet browser for mobile phones. Some phones have Opera Mini built-in, and may only require setting the browser up for use. Opera Mini works by sending a request to Opera's servers, which return a compressed and stripped-down page to the phone. Depending on version, Opera Mini is often more functional and up-to-date than the native browser supplied with the phone. Opera Mini has a built-in Wikipedia search facility.

  • Opera Mini website — Various versions are on offer to match the capabilities of a particular phone.

Official mobile apps

Shortcut
Main article: mw:Wikimedia Apps
Further information: List of Wikipedia mobile applications § Wikimedia Foundation

Android

Shortcut
Main article: Wikimedia:Android Wikipedia app FAQ
"WP:ANDROID" redirects here. For the Android WikiProject, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Android.

The Android app allows editing articles directly from the app. It has limited capability to show categories and talk pages. It is also available on F-Droid.

  • Get Wikipedia on Google Play (Android)
  • Get Wikipedia on F-Droid (Android)

An Android app for Wikimedia Commons is also community maintained on GitHub. There is an Android app for Wiktionary, although it is no longer supported and has not been updated since August 2013.

iOS

Shortcut
Main article: Wikimedia:iOS Wikipedia app FAQ

The iOS app also provides a read and write version of Wikipedia, similar to the mobile web version. It allows users to share an article via Facebook and other social websites. It also allows users to find geotagged articles near their current location. It does not allow users to see categories, nor to see the normal desktop version.

  • Download on the App Store (iOS)

KaiOS

The official Wikipedia for KaiOS app provides a read-only version of Wikipedia. KaiOS is a web-based mobile operating system for modern smart feature phones. It is a successor of the discontinued Firefox OS and popular in many regions.

Third-party applications

Further information: List of Wikipedia mobile applications

iOS apps

Many iOS apps exist for browsing Wikipedia. Besides the mobile version of the site, the only app capable of editing Wikipedia is the official one.

Name Price Can edit? Notes
Wikipanion Free No
Wikipanion Plus $4.99 No
Minipedia – Offline Wiki Free No Contains the 100,000 most read articles; multilanguage support: English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish
MiniWiki Free No Allows browsing Wikipedia on the Apple Watch

Android apps

Tags

Shortcuts
Further information: Special:Tags
See also: Wikipedia:Mobile communication bugs

The Wikimedia software adds tags to certain edits in the history, when the edit is performed on a mobile device or using one of the mobile apps. Here are some of them (tags aimed at Talk page edits not included):

  • advanced mobile edit – edit made by user with advanced mode
  • android app edit – edits made from mobile app for android
  • app-ai-assist – edits from the mobile apps that were machine assisted
  • app-description-add – short descriptions added from the mobile apps
  • app-description-change – short descriptions modified from the mobile apps
  • app-full-source – edit made from article full source editor in the mobile apps
  • app-image-add-infobox – image added to the infobox from the mobile apps
  • app-image-add-top – image added to the top of the article from the mobile apps
  • app-image-caption-add – image captions added from the mobile apps
  • app-image-tag-add – image tags added from the mobile apps
  • app-rollback – rollback actions made from the mobile apps
  • app-section-source – edit made from article section source editor in the mobile apps
  • app-select-source – edit made from selecting an article word in the mobile apps
  • app-suggestededit – edits made with the suggested edits feature in the mobile apps
  • app-undo – undo actions made from the mobile apps
  • ios app edit - edits made from mobile app for ios
  • mobile app edit – edits made from mobile apps
  • mobile edit – for edits made from a mobile device
  • mobile web edit – edit made from mobile website

Desktop access

The desktop version of English Wikipedia is located at en.wikipedia.org

If a browser is installed for general use, it can be used to access the general Wikipedia site, also for editing, depending on limitations of the browser. A toggle switch between mobile and desktop view is available at the bottom of every page. User styles and preferences can be adapted to customize and optimize user interfaces for mobile devices. For example, navigation popups may or may not be convenient on mobile devices.

Metro-style

See also: List of Wikipedia mobile applications

Metro-style apps provides a read-only version of Wikipedia, similar to the mobile web version. The app when used in Windows RT is incapable of showing moving pictures.

Media

Media can be controlled with the keyboard. F toggles fullscreen, m toggles mute and both k and space toggle between playing and pausing the media.

The following mobile browsers can play video and audio files on Wikipedia:[1][2][3][4] Browsers not listed here are not supported at all.

Browser Audio Video / WebM
Safari 6.1-11 Yes No
Safari 12+ Yes Partial[media-notes 1]
IE 9-11 (Windows 7/8/8.1/10) Yes installable
IE 10/11 (Windows RT) Yes No
Edge (Windows 10 PC/Tablet) Yes Yes
Edge (Windows 10 Mobile) Yes Yes
Opera mini (all versions) Yes No
Android browser 4.4 Yes No
Android browser 5.6+ Yes Yes
Opera mobile 15 Yes No
Opera mobile 62 Yes Partial
Chrome for Android 89+ Yes Yes
Firefox for Android 86+ Yes Yes
UC Browser for Android 12+ Yes Yes
Samsung Internet 5+ Yes Yes
  1. ^ Video playback is only supported with Javascript decoding, which can be a bit slow. Unfortunately Apple does not support native hardware based decoding of VP8 and/or VP9, the video codecs which MediaWiki software uses and supports.

Audio

A computer-generated audio (speech synthesis) version of all Wikipedia articles is provided by the Pediaphon service. It is usable on- and off-line with common MP3 players, PDAs, and with every phone via voice call. Pediaphon can be used as a location-based service.

E-readers

Amazon Kindles have access to Wikipedia content via the Kindle software's built-in web browser. All content is shown in black-and-white (all colored images and graphs are converted); this is a limitation of the Kindle's display hardware. Animation support is also poor, and some rendering bugs exist, such as a tendency for random portions of reference lists to become invisible.

The Wiki-as-Ebook project provides massive encyclopaedias for E-Book-readers created from a large set of Wikipedia articles (commercial; 2013). Colored images are converted to grayscale.

Offline access

See also: meta:Offline Projects and Wikipedia:Database download
Kiwix on an Android-powered tablet

Offline access to English Wikipedia can be done in many ways.

The OpenZIM format uses the free Kiwix software available in the Microsoft Store, on Google Play and Apple's iOS App Store to view Wikipedia offline. A series of "customized apps" have also been released, of which Medical Wikipedia and PhET simulations are the two largest.

Or

The Version 1.0 Editorial Team works on publishing sets of Wikipedia articles in print, CD, DVD, or some combination thereof. In 2008, SOS Children published a Wikipedia CD Selection for schools, which may be viewed at schools-wikipedia.org, and is available for free download via the charity's website.

Or

Try one of the other external applications listed below which allow you to download a copy of Wikipedia's database and then view, search, and browse it offline.

Raw data dump

English Wikipedia dumps in SQL and XML: dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/ and the Internet Archive. The database can be downloaded here, but you will need to set up a web server, PHP, MySQL and our wiki software, MediaWiki, to make use of it.

Or

Download here the data dump using a BitTorrent client.

Engineering and support

The mobile version is based on the MobileFrontend extension of the MediaWiki software, and maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Reading Web team.

Learn more about:

Support:

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wikipedia on PDAs and mobile phones.
MediaWiki has documentation related to: Extension:MobileApp

References

  1. ^ mw:Extension:TimedMediaHandler/ogv.js
  2. ^ ""webm" | Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc". caniuse.com.
  3. ^ ""ogg" | Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc". caniuse.com.
  4. ^ "Kaltura Player Supported Browsers / Devices | Kaltura Knowledge Center". knowledge.kaltura.com.
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