Help:Mobile access

This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcut WP:MOBILE

Readers' FAQ
About Wikipedia Administration FAQs Assessing article quality Authority control Books Categories Censorship Copyright Disambiguation Images and multimedia ISBN Microformats Mobile access Offline access Navigation Other languages Page names Portals Searching Student help
Researching with Wikipedia Citing Wikipedia
Readers' glossary Readers' index Reader's guide to Wikipedia
v t e

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.

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:

• Mobile version of Help:Mobile access
• Desktop version of Help:Mobile access

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).

• Supported: iOS, Android, Opera Mini.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Get it on KaiStore

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.

• See all "Wikipedia" apps in the Google Play Store
  • EveryWiki for Android
  • Kiwix Offline viewer

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

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 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.

• Index of Windows 10 apps

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

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.

• Pediaphon

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 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.

• XOWA: (instructions)
• aarddict: (instructions)
• BzReader (for Windows): (instructions)
• WikiTaxi (for Windows): (instructions)

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.

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:

• The projects we are currently working on
  • Advanced mobile contributions
• Our software component responsibilities
• The mobile web interface

Support:

• Email, X (formerly Twitter), Mobile-l mailing list, IRC: #wikimedia-mobile ^connect
• Report a new bug or view the list of known bugs

Help desk

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wikipedia on PDAs and mobile phones.

MediaWiki has documentation related to: Extension:MobileApp

• Wikipedia:Editing on mobile devices (essay)
• User:Cullen328/Smartphone editing (User essay)
• Wikipedia:Spoken articles
• Help:Printing
• Help:Import
• Help:Downloading pages
• Help:Cascading Style Sheets
• Wikipedia:Open proxies
• Wikipedia:Dyslexic readers
• Help:Multilingual support for Android
• Help:Options to hide an image
• Template:If mobile – template that differentiates content based on whether the viewer is using a mobile device