 | This help page is ahow-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels ofconsensus. |
| Readers' FAQ |
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It is possible to access and editWikipedia on multiple types of devices, such asdesktop computers,tablets andsmartphones, through several different methods, includingoptions for older devices,modern apps for various platforms andoptions to view content while offline. This is intended for those who want to read andedit on the go. As of September 2025, 63% of page views on English Wikipedia are from mobile devices.[1]
A toggle switch between mobile and desktop view is available at the bottom of every page.
Official applications can be found at:
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The mobile version of Wikipedia is located athttps://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 are served aslightly 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 isactively 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 yourwatchlist 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 isJava ME-capable, you might consider installingOpera 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.
TheAndroid app allows editing articles directly from the app. It has limited capability to show categories and talk pages. It is also available onF-Droid.
AnAndroid app forWikimedia Commons is alsocommunity maintained onGitHub. There is anAndroid app forWiktionary, although it is no longer supported and has not been updated since August 2013.
TheiOS app also provides a read and write version of Wikipedia, similar to themobile web version. It allows users to share an article via Facebook and other social websites. It also allows users to findgeotagged articles near their current location. It does not allow users to see categories, nor to see the normal desktop version.
The officialWikipedia 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.
ManyiOS 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 | Open source | 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 theApple Watch |
| Name | Open source | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| WikiReader | Yes | |
| EveryWiki for Android | Seems unavailable | |
| Kiwix Offline viewer | Yes | See details in offline section |
The Wikimedia software addstags 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):
The desktop version of English Wikipedia is located aten
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 andpreferences 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 inWindows RT is incapable of showingmoving pictures.
Media can be controlled with the keyboard.F toggles fullscreen,m toggles mute and bothk andSpace toggle between playing and pausing the media.
The following mobile browsers can play video and audio files on Wikipedia (browsers not listed here are not supported at all):[2][3][4][5]
| Browser | Audio | Video / WebM |
|---|---|---|
 Safari 6.1-11 | Yes | No |
| Safari 12-17.3 | Yes | Partial[media-notes 1] |
| Safari 17.4+ | Yes | Yes |
 IE 9-11 (Windows 7/8/8.1/10) | Yes | Installable |
| IE 10/11 (Windows RT) | Yes | No |
.svg){kind=logo} 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 commonMP3 players,PDAs, and with every phone via voice call. Pediaphon can be used as alocation-based service.
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.
TheWiki-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.
Kiwix (official website) uses theopenZIM format to view Wikipedia offline. Apps are available onGoogle Play,Apple's iOS App Store, and many others. As well as the complete English Wikipedia, it is possible to download other content such asMedical Wikipedia andPhET simulations.
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.
The Wikipedia database can be downloadedhere, but you will need to set up aweb server,PHP,MySQL and our wiki software,MediaWiki, to make use of it. English Wikipedia dumps in SQL and XML:dumps
The mobile version is based on theMobileFrontend extension of the MediaWiki software, and maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation'sReading Web team.
Learn more about:
Support:
Wikimedia page views for en.wikipedia.org in September 2025 where type is user (exclude bots/spiders): desktop 2.3 million, mobile web: 4.4 million, mobile app: 0.2 million.
