A toggle switch between mobile and desktop view is available at the bottom of every page.
Official applications can be found at:
Official mobile version
Mobile Wikipedia on Firefox for Android
Users of supported mobile devices are automatically rendered to this compact 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 rendered to the compact version).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
↑Video playback is only supported with Javascript decoding, which can be a bit slow. Unfortunately Apple did 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.
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.
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.
↑"Wikistats - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2025-10-24. 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.
