Wikipedia launched its smartphone app back in 2012. Despite millions of downloads, many readers seem to still prefer the web version of Wikipedia. The app is underrated, to say the least, as its features are pretty practical and useful.
The Wikipedia app offers all the necessary functionality and engages you in many ways. Most of its features are similar to those provided in the web version, but the app adapts that functionality adequately to the smartphone environment.
So, let us look at some of the most useful features of the Wikipedia app that might convince you to install it on your smartphone.
Download: Wikipedia for Android | iOS (Free)
1. Customize Your Explore Feed
The app allows you to customize your Explore feed and choose the items you prefer to see in this section. You can customize almost all the things on your feed by visiting the Customize the feed menu.
Featured article will allow you to turn on access to a daily featured article on Wikipedia. Top read, In the news, Picture of the day, and On this day are a few other exciting sections you might like.
By gathering information from the other social media apps you use, this app also suggests the content relevant to what you frequently browse and are interested in reading. Another section in your feed offers you suggestions to add content to Wikipedia articles.
2. Save Articles to Read Offline Later
The Wikipedia app allows its users to bookmark articles and organize them into lists. Users can also share these lists across different devices.
Your lists can be sorted, searched, and reorganized offline. This offline feature lets you download and organize articles for reading later, even if the internet is unavailable.
You can also enable Prefer offline content in the settings. This option helps you save on data usage by loading the already downloaded offline versions of the articles instead of the live ones.
3. Voice Search and Your Search History
Another handy feature in the app is support for searching for articles using voice commands. Voice commands can be helpful when you don’t want to type and feel like doing a quick search, and it's also an important accessibility feature. You can speak in any of the supported languages and search for your desired article on the app.
In addition, Wikipedia provides you with the option to view your previously searched articles in History. This little feature can save you a lot of time in case you forget to bookmark what you were previously reading.
4. Open Multiple Tabs at One Time
The Wikipedia app offers the ability to open multiple tabs simultaneously. As you know, each Wikipedia article contains a bunch of hyperlinks to related information. So, with this feature, all you need to do is tap the hyperlinked word or phrase, and the link will open in a new window without disturbing the current state of the article you are originally reading.
Here, you can select Read Article to load the link immediately or Open in New Tab to load it in the background. By tapping Open in New Tab, you can open multiple tabs on the side without leaving the original article. This feature is pretty standard in web browsers, but the Wikipedia app has positively adapted it to suit its smartphone app users.
5. Search Within an Article
The Find in article function is another valuable feature of the Wikipedia app. This feature allows the readers to locate any desired word or information in the opened article, thus taking you to specific sections without spending much time or effort.
All you need to do is tap on Find in article at the bottom of your screen. Now, a search bar will pop up for you to enter the search term. You will also get to know the number of times the searched word appears in the article.
6. Search in Multiple Languages
The Wikipedia app lets you can choose from the 280+ supported languages. So, you can read its 40 million articles in different languages conveniently. Again, this feature is available on the web version, but the app has effectively streamlined it for the smartphone environment.
When logging in on the Wikipedia app, the first thing that pops up is the option to select languages. You can choose up to three languages as your default and may add or remove any language when needed later during use.
7. Modify the Theme
Most readers love to change the themes of their reading apps, whether for fun or to enhance the ease of readability. The Wikipedia app also gives you the option to modify its look and feel according to your taste.
It’s not just the theme that you can change to light or dark, but you can also change the font size and switch the font style between sans-serif and serif. This little feature may rejuvenate your reading experience significantly.
8. Easy Content View
Sometimes, you don’t feel like reading the whole article but still want to know what it is about. The easy content view feature of the Wikipedia app will help you out with that.
The Contents feature presents the contents of the article and their sequence in the form of a list. This feature will save you a lot of time, as you can directly jump to the section of the article you are interested in reading. In the web version, you have to scroll to the top of the page every time to access the contents.
In the app, the contents are just a tap away.
9. Convenient Editing Section
If you love editing articles, the Wikipedia app will help you do so on the go. Like the website, the app allows its users to edit any portion of the article.
It also gives you various suggestions such as to keep it short and summarize only, among others. So, it facilitates you to edit an article and make it more useful for the readers.
Is the Wikipedia App Worth Trying?
Now that you are aware of almost all the valuable features the Wikipedia app offers, it is safe to say that it carries its own unique value. Undoubtedly, Wikipedia is the most-viewed source for all sorts of information, and the web version has most of the necessary features. But the features offered by the app are more efficient and better suited for smartphone usage.
So, if you are a regular Wikipedia user, its smartphone app is definitely worth trying as it does many things better than the web version. Moreover, it is of course free to use, so you can download and test it freely.
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