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It is possible to access and edit Wikipedia on multiple types of devices, 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org. With the official desktop version of English Wikipedia located at https://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
Official mobile version
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.
- 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 content and display all article sections open by default
Interface options
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
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
Android
- Main article: Wikimedia:Android Wikipedia app FAQ
- 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. There is also an Android app for Wikimedia Commons which is community maintained. There is an Android app for Wiktionary, although it is no longer supported and has not been updated since August 2013.
iOS
- 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 or talk pages, nor to see the normal desktop version.
Third party 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
Desktop version access
The desktop version of English Wikipedia is located at https://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. One may want to adapt the user style and preferences to optimize them for the mobile device. For example, navigation popups may or may not be convenient on the mobile device.
Metro-style
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.
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, cell phones (WAP) 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 on the "experimental browser" included in Kindle software. All content is shown in black-and-white (all colored images and graphs are converted).
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
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
You can create a Wikipedia book of selected articles using the book creator and upload it to an external rendering service such as MediaWiki2LaTeX that provides a PDF copy for download. (Be aware the computational resources of the server are limited.)
- Or
Try one of the other external applications listed below like WikiTaxi for Windows (instructions) "that lets you download Wikipedia’s database to your computer which you can view, search, and browse offline."
- XOWA: (instructions)
- aarddict: (instructions)
- BzReader (for Windows): (instructions)
- Raw data dump
English Wikipedia dumps in SQL and XML: dumps
- 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:
- The projects we are currently working on
- Our software component responsibilities
- The mobile web interface
Support:
- Email, Twitter, Mobile-l mailing list, IRC: #wikimedia-mobile connect
- Report a new bug or view the list of known bugs
See also
- 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