A number of organizations within the

Wikimedia movement According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects. This community directly builds and administers the projects. It is committed to using open standards and software. ...

including the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

publish official

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

s for

mobile access Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

to Wikipedia. All are available via the appropriate

app store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

(e.g.

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating sy ...

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

Microsoft Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...

F-droid F-Droid is an app store and software repository for Android, serving a similar function to the Google Play store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free and open source apps. Applications can be browsed, downloaded and ...

). They can also be downloaded independently of any third-party store, from the Wikimedia Foundation's releases website, which also keeps old and beta versions. Independent developers have also released many unofficial apps for reading Wikipedia articles. Some apps load content from the Wikipedia site and process it; other apps use the

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWi ...

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

. Some only display Wikipedia content, usually omitting some features such as categories and talk pages. Some allow editing.

Official apps

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikipedia apps from the Wikimedia Foundation are called "Wikipedia".

Android

The Android app allows editing articles directly from the app. It is also available on

Aptoide Aptoide is an online marketplace for mobile applications which runs on the Android operating system. In Aptoide, unlike the Android-default Play Store, there is not a unique and centralized store; instead, each user manages their own store. The s ...

, Cafe Bazaar,

F-Droid F-Droid is an app store and software repository for Android, serving a similar function to the Google Play store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free and open source apps. Applications can be browsed, downloaded and ...

, and

GetJar GetJar is an independent mobile phone app store founded in Lithuania in 2004, with offices in Vilnius, Lithuania and San Mateo, California . History The company was founded by Ilja Laurs in 2004, who is currently its Executive Chairman and Ch ...

iOS

The

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

app also provides a read and write version of Wikipedia, similar to the . It allows users to share an article via Facebook and other social websites. It also allows users to find

geotagged Geotagging, or GeoTagging, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data ...

articles near their current location. It does not allow users to see categories or see the normal desktop version.

Windows

The

Metro-style app Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps (formerly Windows Store apps and Metro-style apps) are Application software, applications that can be used across all compatible Microsoft Windows devices, including personal computers (PCs), tablets, smar ...

provides a read-only version of Wikipedia, similar to the mobile web version. The app when used in

Windows RT Windows RT is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. It is a version of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 built for the 32-bit ARM architecture (ARMv7). First unveiled in January 2011 at Consumer Electronics Show, the Windows RT 8 operat ...

is incapable of showing moving pictures.

Kiwix

Kiwix has developed a number of offline apps based on Wikipedia content.

Unassociated apps

These apps were mainly developed to display articles and are often used on platforms for which an official Wikipedia app was not formerly available, such as

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...

. Typical features include searching for articles, bookmarks, sharing, or enlarging images.

Related apps

A number of apps for Wikipedia's sister projects exist. These include the Wiki Loves Monuments app, written for a 2012 photo contest, as an aid for Wikiphotographers. It shows a map of nearby national

heritage register This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...

items, indicating whether Wikipedia had a photo for the site, and enabling quick and easy photo uploads for camera phones. It is not integrated with the official article display app. A

Wikivoyage Wikivoyage is a free web-based travel guide for travel destinations and travel topics written by volunteer authors. It is a sister project of Wikipedia and supported and hosted by the same non-profit Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Wikivoyage has ...

app serves as a pocket travel guide. There is an Android app for

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons (or simply Commons) is a media repository of free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used across all of the Wikimedia projects in ...

which i
community maintained
and described on the Commons

page. There is also an Android app for

Wiktionary Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a numbe ...

, although it is no longer supported and has not been updated since August 2013.

References

External links

* Wikimedia Apps - Project page for the official Wikipedia mobile apps on the

development website * Wikimedia mobile web team works on the mobile web experience, different from the mobile apps
Unsupported official builds of Wikimedia apps
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wikipedia mobile applications Free and open-source Android software IOS software

mobile applications A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on des ...

Mobile software distribution platforms Universal Windows Platform apps Windows Phone Lists of mobile apps