Tɛmplet:Ref/doc

This documentation is for the {{ref}}, {{note}}, {{ref label}} and {{note label}} templates. The note templates place notes into an article, and the ref templates place labeled references to the notes, with the labels normally hyperlinks for navigating from a ref to a corresponding note and back from the note to the ref. The label pair of templates are similar to the pair without the label name, but with more features.

The links and backlinks are identified internally by combining the specified parameters. The templates accepts a number of unnamed parameters identified by their position. It also accepts a named parameter (named noid) which is deprecated since its introduction.

The first parameter of {{ref}} is a label that has to be used for the parameter of the corresponding {{note}}. The label is used to form the fragment identifier for the footnote link and back link. The second parameter of {{ref}} is the footnote reference marker, shown as a superscript. The easiest choice is to make these two the same, but this is not a requirement. If the second parameter is not supplied, the marker is a superscripted external link of the form [n].

Syntax

The following illustrates the general syntax of each template:

• {{ref|id|label|noid=noid}}
• {{note|id|label|text}}
• {{ref label|id|label|backlink|noid=noid}}
• {{note label|id|label|backlink|text}}

Description of each parameter is as follows:

id

Identifier for a note and its back link (mandatory). This is the only mandatory parameter for a {{ref}} and {{note}} couple, which can be used to add simple footnotes.

Important note: Every pair of {{ref}} and {{note}}, as well as every pair of {{ref label}} and {{note label}}, should have unique identifiers. This applies even if multiple references pointing to the same footnote are desired. (Correct method of implementing this feature – using the label parameter – is illustrated further below.) Duplicate identifiers generate invalid code, to which web browsers react differently. Some browsers report errors, while others may randomly keep one id and discard others silently. In all cases, however, navigation between some footnote marks and their body texts does not work as desired. See Help:Markup validation.

Example of id

Code	Result
Text that requires a footnote.{{ref|a}} ==Notes== :1.{{note|a}}Body of the footnote.	Text that requires a footnote. Notes 1.^ Body of the footnote.

label

Label text displayed where these templates are inserted (mandatory for {{ref label}} and {{note label}}). The following explains template specific behavior:

• In {{ref}}, {{ref label}} and {{note label}}, the label appears in superscript; in {{note}}, the label appears as standard-sized baseline bold text.
• In {{ref}}, {{ref label}} and {{note}}, the label is also hyperlinked and helps navigating back and forth between the inline footnote marker (in the prose) and its body text. {{note label}}, however, does not attach a hyperlink to the label but disregards this parameter when the backlink parameter (explained later) is present.
• In {{ref label}}, the label is always enclosed in brackets.

Example of label

Code	Result
Text alpha.{{ref|Alpha|α}} Text beta.{{ref label|Beta|β}} ==Notes== :{{note|Alpha|α}} Information on alpha :{{note label|Beta|β}} Information on beta	Text alpha. Text beta. Notes ^α Information on alpha This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Information on beta

This parameter is optional in {{ref}} and {{note}}, therefore:

• {{ref}} displays a unique number in square brackets if this parameter is omitted. (See example above.)
• {{note}} appends this label to a back linked caret (^), so if omitted, only a caret is displayed. (See example above.)

There is no mandate to include this parameter in both ref and note portion at the same time. In fact, there may be the need to do the opposite. This example shows how to use {{ref}} and {{note}} to link multiple footnote markers of the same appearance to the same footnote.

Example of label: Many to one connection

Code	Result
... The reunification project started in 1959 and concluded in 1961. The outcome of the project was instrumental in the company's success.{{ref|Lewinsky1|A}} ... ... The consolidation efforts in 1992 had a huge impact on the company's success.{{ref|Lewinsky2|A}} ... ... The final development stage set the cornerstone for company's future activities.{{ref|LewinskyFinal|A}}... ==Notes== :A.{{note|Lewinsky1}}{{note|Lewinsky2}}{{note|LewinskyFinal}}See Brown, Lewinsky and Hart, 2009.	... The reunification project started in 1959 and concluded in 1961. The outcome of the project was instrumental in the company's success. ... ... The consolidation efforts in 1992 had a huge impact on the company's success. ... ... The final development stage set the cornerstone for company's future activities.... Notes A.^ ^ ^ See Brown, Lewinsky and Hart, 2009.
... The reunification project started in 1959 and concluded in 1961. The outcome of the project was instrumental in the company's success.{{ref label|Brown1|B}} ... ... The consolidation efforts in 1992 had a huge impact on the company's success.{{ref label|Brown2|B}} ... ... The final development stage set the cornerstone for company's future activities.{{ref label|BrownLast|B}}... ==Notes== :B.{{note label|Brown1|^}}{{note label|Brown2|^}}{{note label|BrownLast|^}}See Brown, Lewinsky and Hart, 2009.	... The reunification project started in 1959 and concluded in 1961. The outcome of the project was instrumental in the company's success. ... ... The consolidation efforts in 1992 had a huge impact on the company's success. ... ... The final development stage set the cornerstone for company's future activities... Notes B. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	See Brown, Lewinsky and Hart, 2009.

backlink

As explained above, {{note label}} does not generate a back link from label parameter. A unique parameter of {{ref label}} – {{note label}}, backlink is a complementary parameter that is part id and part label:

• "Complementary parameter" means a {{ref label}} – {{note label}} pair may either forgo this parameter or must both have it.
• "Part id" means in a {{ref label}} – {{note label}} pair, both ends must have the same backlink value. In addition, in any {{ref label}} – {{note label}} pair, the combination of id and backlink must be unique.
• "Part label" means in {{note label}}, this parameter completely overrides label parameter.

A {{ref label}} with a backlink cannot connect to a {{note}}. Likewise, a {{note label}} with a backlink cannot connect to a {{ref}}.

Example:

Example of backlink

Code	Result
Some text.{{ref label|id5|5|1}} Some other text.{{ref label|id5|5|2}} ----- ... :5.{{note label|id5||1}}{{note label|id5||2}} Some important comment!	Some text. Some other text. ... 5. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Some important comment!

This parameter (backlink) also accepts the special value "none" (without quotation marks), which causes a caret to appear where {{note label}} is placed.

Example of backlink set to "none"

Code	Result
Body text.{{ref label|id4|Label 4|none}} :{{note label|id4||none}}Footnote text	Body text. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Footnote text

text

In all previous examples, the body text of a piece of footnote was inserted outside {{note}} or {{note label}} template. However, it is possible to insert the body text inside the template, in place of text parameter. Everything put inside text parameter glows when the user clicks on the footnote mark. In the example below, try clicking on ^S and ^T and see the difference.

Example of text

Code	Result
Some text.{{ref|noteS|S}} Some other text.{{ref|noteT|T}} ==Notes== :S.{{note|noteS}}Some footnote text :T.{{note|noteT||Some other footnote text}}	Some text. Some other text. notes S.^ Some footnote text T.^ Some other footnote text

Since the footnote body text starts without a delimiter after this string, there is a caveat: If the footnote body text starts with a lowercase letter, the first word may be attached to the back link. (For more info, see Help:Wikilinks.)

Example of backlink bug

Code	Result
:{{ref label|id ref2a|Label 2a|Back}} :{{ref label|id ref2b|Label 2b|Back}} :{{note label|id ref2a|Label 2a|Back|Capitalized footnote}} :{{note label|id ref2b|Label 2b|Back|lower case footnote}}	This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!

noid=noid

Deprecated parameter – Suppresses back linking from note component to ref. In case of {{note}}, an active hyperlink still appears, although it is broken.

This parameter was originally meant to alleviate the problem of connecting many ref tags with the same ID to one note tag with that ID. However, it only replaces one form of broken code with another. Consider using {{note label}} instead, which does not generate any back link unless configured to do so. There must always be one and only one note template for every ref template with the same id.

Additional examples

Additional examples

Code	Result
Article text{{ref label|reference_name_A|a|1}} more text{{ref label|reference_name_G|g|}} more text{{ref label|reference_name_B|b|2}} more text{{ref label|reference_name_C|c|3}} more text{{ref label|reference name_D|d|4}} more text{{ref label|reference name_E|e|none}} more text{{ref label|reference name_F|f|}} more text.{{ref label|reference_name_H|h|8}} * * intervening text * * {{note label|reference_name_A|a|1}}Text of note for ref a. * {{note label|reference_name_B|b|2}}Text of note for ref b. * {{note label|reference_name_C|c|3|ABCDE}}Text of note for ref c. * {{note label|reference_name_D|d|4|FGHIJ}}Text of note for ref d. * {{note label|reference_name_E|e|none}}Text of note for ref e. * {{note label|reference_name_F|f}}Text of note for ref f. * {{note label|reference_name_G|g||{{note label|reference_name_H|h|8|Text of note for refs g and h (with extended highlighting).}}}}	Article text more text more text more text more text more text more text more text. intervening text This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Text of note for ref a. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Text of note for ref b. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Text of note for ref c. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Text of note for ref d. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Text of note for ref e. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!	Text of note for ref f. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences. Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page. Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details. Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them. At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off. Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues. Preferences page The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application. You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually. Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences. The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks. You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings". User profile Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile Basic information Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made. Allows you to view/manage your global account info. Provides a link to change your password. Internationalisation Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities. Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups. More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled). Signature Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages. Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text. Email options Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file. Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed. Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification Newcomer homepage See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage Appearance Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance Change the web browser experience. Skin Skin Preferences Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed. Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links. Reading Preferences Date format Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC). Time offset Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location. This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Files The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability. While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail. You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here. Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image. Diffs Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing. Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback Advanced options Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default. Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix. Show hidden categories. Math Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas. Languages Editing Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are: "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.) "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all. "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.) The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page. The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css: #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;} where 25em is an example (and typical), height. Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.) "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.) "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off. is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols) To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab. Recent changes Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: Length of the list Time window of the list Grouping methods of the list The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors. More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log. Pending changes Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes. These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page. For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges. Watchlist Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you. In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags. Notifications Preferences → Notifications Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview. For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings. Email options Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email. Notify me about these events You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed). Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured. Muted users You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. Muting pages You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box. Gadgets Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows. Browsing Language translating Media files, search results, and diffs Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor Teahouse for the new editor question Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it Editing Citation modifying/expediting/proving Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff Appearance Editing the introductory section. Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc. Justifying paragraphs Compatibility Font and JavaScript support Advanced Regular expression tools Tracking software bugs Patrolling recent changes See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions. Beta features Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Other tools The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing. Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with. See also meta:Help:Preferences Wikipedia:Skin Wikipedia:Customisation Wikipedia:Scripts Wikipedia:Tools Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Notes Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!

Unique ID issue

As explained earlier, the id parameter for every {{ref}} – {{note}} pair should be unique. The following example shows what happens when two refs use the same id. Try navigating from bulleted text to footnotes and back.

Code	Result
Article text{{ref|reference_name_A|a}} more text{{ref|reference_name_B|b}} more text{{ref|reference_name_C|c}}. * Bulleted text{{ref|reference_name_B|b}} * Bulleted text{{ref|reference_name_C|c}}. * * intervening text * * {{note|reference_name_A|a}}Text for note a. * {{note|reference_name_B|b}}Text for note b. * {{note|reference_name_C|c|Text for note c (with extended highlighting).}}	Article text more text more text. Bulleted text Bulleted text. intervening text ^a Text for note a. ^b Text for note b. ^c Text for note c (with extended highlighting).

Table footnotes

One common application for ref and note templates is in placing footnotes below tables, as in the following example taken from the Kent#Economy article [section]:

Year	Regional GVA	Agriculture		Industry		Services
County of Kent (excluding Medway)
1995	12,369	379	3.1%	3,886	31.4%	8,104	65.5%
2000	15,259	259	1.7%	4,601	30.2%	10,399	68.1%
2003	18,126	287	1.6%	5,057	27.9%	12,783	70.5%
Medway
1995	1,823	21	3.1%	560	31.4%	1,243	68.2%
2000	2,348	8	1.7%	745	30.2%	1,595	67.9%
2003	2,671	10	1.6%	802	27.9%	1,859	69.6%

1. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences.

   Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page.

   Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details.

   Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them.

   At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off.

   Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues.

   Preferences page

   The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application.

   You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually.

   Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences.

   The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks.

   You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings".

   User profile

   Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile

   Basic information

   • Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made.
   • Allows you to view/manage your global account info.
   • Provides a link to change your password.

   Internationalisation

   • Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities.
   • Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups.
   • More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled).

   Signature

   • Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages.
   • Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text.

   Email options

   Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users
   • An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file.
   • Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed.
   • Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation
   • "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification

   Newcomer homepage

   See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage

   Appearance

   Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance

   Change the web browser experience.

   Skin

   Skin Preferences

   • Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed.
   • Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links.

   Reading Preferences

   Date format

   Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset
   • Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC).

   Time offset

   • Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location.
   • This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time.

   Files

   • The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability.
   • While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail.
   • You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here.
   • Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image.

   Diffs

   • Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing.
   • Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback

   Advanced options

   • Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default.
   • Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix.
   • Show hidden categories.

   Math

   • Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas.

   Languages

   Editing

   Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing

   Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are:

   • "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.)
   • "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all.
   • "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.)

   The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page.

   The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css:

   #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;}
   

   where 25em is an example (and typical), height.

   Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.)

   • "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.)
   • "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off.
     • is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols)

   To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab.

   Recent changes

   Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes

   Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear:

   • Length of the list
   • Time window of the list
   • Grouping methods of the list

   The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors.

   More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log.

   Pending changes

   Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review

   For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes.

   These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of

   • new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and
   • how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page.

   For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges.

   Watchlist

   Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist

   The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you.

   In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags.

   Notifications

   Preferences → Notifications

   Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ

   These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview.

   For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings.

   Email options

   • Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests.
   • Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email.

   Notify me about these events

   You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed).

   Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured.

   Muted users

   You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference.

   Muting pages

   You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box.

   Gadgets

   Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets

   Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows.

   Browsing

   • Language translating
   • Media files, search results, and diffs
   • Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor
   • Teahouse for the new editor question
   • Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it

   Editing

   • Citation modifying/expediting/proving
   • Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets
   • Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes
   • The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff

   Appearance

   • Editing the introductory section.
   • Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls
   • Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps
   • Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia
   • Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc.
   • Justifying paragraphs

   Compatibility

   • Font and JavaScript support

   Advanced

   • Regular expression tools
   • Tracking software bugs
   • Patrolling recent changes

   See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions.

   Beta features

   Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features

   Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone.

   Other tools

   The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing.

   Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with.

   See also

   • meta:Help:Preferences
   • Wikipedia:Skin
   • Wikipedia:Customisation
   • Wikipedia:Scripts
   • Wikipedia:Tools
   • Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences

   Notes

   ---

   Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!
   !
2. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences.

   Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page.

   Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details.

   Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them.

   At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off.

   Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues.

   Preferences page

   The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application.

   You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually.

   Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences.

   The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks.

   You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings".

   User profile

   Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile

   Basic information

   • Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made.
   • Allows you to view/manage your global account info.
   • Provides a link to change your password.

   Internationalisation

   • Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities.
   • Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups.
   • More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled).

   Signature

   • Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages.
   • Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text.

   Email options

   Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users
   • An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file.
   • Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed.
   • Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation
   • "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification

   Newcomer homepage

   See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage

   Appearance

   Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance

   Change the web browser experience.

   Skin

   Skin Preferences

   • Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed.
   • Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links.

   Reading Preferences

   Date format

   Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset
   • Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC).

   Time offset

   • Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location.
   • This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time.

   Files

   • The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability.
   • While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail.
   • You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here.
   • Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image.

   Diffs

   • Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing.
   • Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback

   Advanced options

   • Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default.
   • Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix.
   • Show hidden categories.

   Math

   • Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas.

   Languages

   Editing

   Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing

   Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are:

   • "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.)
   • "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all.
   • "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.)

   The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page.

   The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css:

   #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;}
   

   where 25em is an example (and typical), height.

   Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.)

   • "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.)
   • "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off.
     • is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols)

   To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab.

   Recent changes

   Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes

   Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear:

   • Length of the list
   • Time window of the list
   • Grouping methods of the list

   The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors.

   More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log.

   Pending changes

   Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review

   For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes.

   These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of

   • new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and
   • how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page.

   For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges.

   Watchlist

   Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist

   The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you.

   In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags.

   Notifications

   Preferences → Notifications

   Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ

   These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview.

   For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings.

   Email options

   • Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests.
   • Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email.

   Notify me about these events

   You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed).

   Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured.

   Muted users

   You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference.

   Muting pages

   You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box.

   Gadgets

   Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets

   Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows.

   Browsing

   • Language translating
   • Media files, search results, and diffs
   • Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor
   • Teahouse for the new editor question
   • Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it

   Editing

   • Citation modifying/expediting/proving
   • Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets
   • Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes
   • The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff

   Appearance

   • Editing the introductory section.
   • Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls
   • Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps
   • Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia
   • Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc.
   • Justifying paragraphs

   Compatibility

   • Font and JavaScript support

   Advanced

   • Regular expression tools
   • Tracking software bugs
   • Patrolling recent changes

   See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions.

   Beta features

   Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features

   Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone.

   Other tools

   The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing.

   Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with.

   See also

   • meta:Help:Preferences
   • Wikipedia:Skin
   • Wikipedia:Customisation
   • Wikipedia:Scripts
   • Wikipedia:Tools
   • Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences

   Notes

   ---

   Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!
   !
3. This page is a selective overview of user preferences. For full details see mw:Help:Preferences.

   Preferences are the seventy or so user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. A link to your Preferences page is available at the top of every Wikipedia page when you have an account, alongside links to your other account services such as your Contributions. Another way to get there is by navigating to the Special:Preferences page.

   Once at your Preferences page, you can control much of the Wikipedia user interface through the many feature settings provided by MediaWiki (the software of Wikipedia): skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more. For example, you can select to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. The Preferences page also presents a link to customize your CSS to adjust your page style details.

   Plus, there are hundreds of user tools to explore, many listed at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, that can override or tweak preferences provided by MediaWiki. Each account has its own Custom JavaScript page where the tools install themselves, and where you can help develop them.

   At their site, MediaWiki maintains a browser compatibility matrix. The time you spend in getting an account, setting your preferences, finding tools and testing your browser (before you ever lose an edit) will pay off.

   Feature requests can be made, and bugs reported, as described at Wikipedia:Phabricator. The current set of preferences are largely the result of issues raised by newcomers at places such as the Village pump, and driven by regulars who hold long discussions and collectively drive issues.

   Preferences page

   The Preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in, but you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser, since the page and all its tabs are an extensive JavaScript application.

   You do not need to click Save on every tab on the Preferences page, as the Save button affects all changes on all Preferences tabs. You can go from tab to tab setting all your preferences before saving, because Save remembers your changes on the other tabs. To forget unsaved changes, simply leave the page without saving. If you wish to undo your saved changes, you will need to reset them manually.

   Clicking Restore all default settings will harmlessly load another page, which will then offer the button to reset all preferences in every tab to their default values. This includes a few items that are stored as a preference, but that aren't directly editable in Special:Preferences. If you do reset your preferences, you can restore your custom signature from the wikitext of a history page, update your custom CSS or JavaScript from Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing, and then re-select and save your preferences.

   The default settings are aimed at newcomers editing articles. Intermediate editors tend to activate more features, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special settings, gadgets, and editors for their tasks.

   You have the same username and password on sister projects such as Wiktionary, at MediaWiki.org itself, and on the Wikipedia of other languages. Each of your account's preferences are independent because each wiki is a website, with their own administration (namespaces, settings, accounts, etc.). Even the word "Preferences" on the top may be set differently! On the Simple English Wikipedia, it says "My settings".

   User profile

   Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile

   Basic information

   • Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made.
   • Allows you to view/manage your global account info.
   • Provides a link to change your password.

   Internationalisation

   • Change the language of user-interface messages. It does not affect articles and other pages made by editors. Note that many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but usually only for the default "en - English" which may for example add links to relevant help pages, processes and policies. Editors are discouraged from selecting "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English", which make a few spelling changes but omit many useful customizations. Foreign languages also omit customizations but may be preferred by users with poor English abilities.
   • Specify your preferred pronoun in order for the software to grammatically refer to you correctly. This is also visible to other users via certain tools, such as the they template and Navigation popups.
   • More language settings: allows you to set the language in which Wikipedia menus and fonts are displayed; additionally, an option to set the language you edit in (input tools must be enabled).

   Signature

   • Displays the signature that will appear when you sign talk pages.
   • Allows you to edit the signature, either using wiki markup (the option must be checked), or just plain text.

   Email options

   Further information: Wikipedia:Emailing users
   • An option to provide an email address. Although this is optional, please read the warning about losing your password and not having an email address on file.
   • Options about use of your email address: enabling email from other users, sending copies of emails you send to other users, and receiving email when a page or file on your watchlist is changed.
   • Before using email you must confirm your email address. See Help:Email confirmation
   • "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", see Help:Email notification

   Newcomer homepage

   See Wikipedia:Growth Team features § Newcomer homepage

   Appearance

   Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance

   Change the web browser experience.

   Skin

   Skin Preferences

   • Choose the "skin", or "theme" of how Wikipedia is displayed.
   • Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript for individual skins and for global settings that apply to all skins. If the links are blue, you have created these special pages and this is a quick way to access and edit them. If the links are red, clicking the link will create the special page. You can also access your cross-wiki CSS and JavaScript pages from this section, but the color of the links will always be that of external links.

   Reading Preferences

   Date format

   Further information: meta:Help:Preferences § Date format/Time offset
   • Option to set your date and time preferences; this is how dates will appear in article History pages, logs, etc. If set to "No preference", the format is HH:MM, DD MMMM YYYY (UTC), for example: 16:18, 27 Silimin gɔli April 2024 (UTC).

   Time offset

   • Shows the server time (UTC) and the local time based on the optional Time zone setting. You may opt to use the server time (UTC), have the offset calculated by the clock in your computer, or specify an offset from UTC in hours or by location.
   • This does not affect times saved in editable pages, such as timestamps in signatures. For that, see Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time.

   Files

   • The images in an article are just a thumbnail (a preview). These will always be one of eight possible Thumbnail sizes. For the larger screen sizes choose the maximum, and for the smaller screen sizes choose the minimum thumbnail size. The default 220px is a midrange thumbnail-size. Have you changed your font size? Then you should match that font size to your chosen thumbnail size to increase caption readability.
   • While viewing an article, if you click a thumbnail you will activate Media Viewer. Media Viewer is JavaScript, and it uses processing resources. It loads all the images in the article at high resolution, and this uses networking resources. This is the default. You can turn off Media Viewer to save resources: 1) to control all image sizing, 2) to navigate directly to a file page (instead) when you click on a thumbnail.
   • You can target the Image size limit of the file page main image, (displayed in the front matter). On a faster network choose a larger size, and on a slower network choose a smaller Image size limit. The default 800×600px is a midrange Image size limit. File pages are on Commons wiki, and if logged in there, going there overrides your settings here.
   • Note that you can both turn off Media Viewer and set a small Image size limit, and yet you will not limit your ability to avail yourself of any high resolution images listed at the bottom of that file page, when wanted. Doing so you can get full manual control of any unwanted, automatic bogging-down of your surfing speed caused by automated choices concerning File namespace interactions initiated by clicking on an image.

   Diffs

   • Option to not show page content below the diffs; checking this will suppress the page preview of the difference you're viewing.
   • Option to omit a diff after performing a rollback

   Advanced options

   • Choose to display hyperlinks with underlines in your browser window always, never, or by browser or Wikipedia-skin default.
   • Format links as stub links when the article they link to is smaller than the threshold you set on file size. Stub link formatting changes the link color to the dark brown displayed in this option's text. This option can help you see links to small articles (more likely to be stubs) so that you might expand them. It is also useful for spotting links to disambiguation pages, which are also relatively small. They are usually linked to in error, but often contain on their list a link to the correct article, making this error easy to fix.
   • Show hidden categories.

   Math

   • Choose TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas.

   Languages

   Editing

   Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing

   Concerning the edit page, its initiation, and look and feel, Wikipedia offers a high number of options. Some of them are:

   • "Teemi ma n yi ti bi sabi lahabali jia (bee din pun ku bɛni ka labisim lahabali ji' maa)" into the database. (Habit-forming.)
   • "Enable VisualEditor". Get a word processor interface. No markup language at all.
   • "Wuhimi johi lihi amaa ka di pa a lan yɛn labimi yooi". Get a dynamic web page. Browser reloading now gives a glimpse at the live original without having to leave the edit page. And there is no longer any need to create an entirely new page for each preview requested; live preview just reloads parts of its page, and so it offers no browser history backwards, but disturbs no history forward either. Saves some network bandwidth and lots of browser cache. Just save your edits before disabling JavaScript. (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.)

   The font size for the edit box can be set in Wikipedia editing preferences or in the browser. In Firefox, there are two font-size settings at Options → Content → "Default font" Advanced…, one for the edit box, and one for the rest of the page. If you just want uniformity, check to see if it allows Wikipedia to choose its own font; then you set Wikipedia's "Edit Area Font Style" to "Serif" or "Sans Serif", and the font size in the edit box will match the rest of the page.

   The number of rows in the edit box is no longer set in preferences. For a temporary change, when the edit box is displayed, drag up or down the small square in the bottom right corner of the edit box. Alternatively, make the change stick by adding this line to your CSS file (in Preferences, Appearance), usually Special:MyPage/common.css:

   #wpTextbox1 {height: 25em;}
   

   where 25em is an example (and typical), height.

   Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.)

   • "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.)
   • "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off.
     • is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See a list of regular expression symbols)

   To use more of your favorite text editor instead of just the edit box and toolbars, see Wikipedia:Text editor support. Also see the Gadgets tab.

   Recent changes

   Preferences → Recent changes → Display options & Advanced options = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes

   Recent changes refer to changes of pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear:

   • Length of the list
   • Time window of the list
   • Grouping methods of the list

   The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors.

   More information about these various histories can be found at the following places. For global changes to Wikipedia pages, see Help:Recent changes. For user contributions, see Help:User contributions. For page histories, see Help:Page history. For other types of logs see Help:Log.

   Pending changes

   Preferences → Recent changes → Pending changes = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review

   For an explanation of what pending changes are, see Wikipedia:Pending changes.

   These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of

   • new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and
   • how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page.

   For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges.

   Watchlist

   Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist

   The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your Preferences has "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" set (at the bottom of the "User profile" tab), then only by visiting a page will you actually set its email notification flag. Once you miss the email for a particular page change or don't visit the page (or ignore the email), you will not receive any more emails for that page. You can still dutifully monitor that page by its watchlist edit-summaries, but its particular email notification flag will remain unset until you visit it. This facilitates monitoring a large watchlist while preventing potentially useless emails to you.

   In case you want to set all email notifications anyway, you can at any time mark all pages "visited". If your Preferences → Gadgets has "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold", then your watchlist will have a button labeled "Mark all pages visited". That button will effectively set all of your email notification flags.

   Notifications

   Preferences → Notifications

   Main pages: Wikipedia:Notifications and Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ

   These settings alter the Special:Notifications tool. The options for Notifications were first added in May 2013. See Wikipedia Signpost topic "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment" for a brief overview.

   For a full explanation of the specific preferences, see Wikipedia:Notifications § Preferences and settings.

   Email options

   • Choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of email notifications (you must confirm your email address on your Preferences → User profile → Email options). You can also choose how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests.
   • Choose whether to receive plain text or HTML email.

   Notify me about these events

   You can enable (or disable) individual types of notifications by checking (or unchecking) the boxes next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most notification types (note that some notifications cannot be disabled, such as changes to your user rights or new talk page messages: these notifications are too important to be dismissed).

   Wikipedia:Notifications § Types of notifications has a general list of the types of notifications. Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration lists all notification types available and how they are configured.

   Muted users

   You can mute on-site notifications from individual users by enter their username into the box. You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes on your user talk page or reviews a page you have created. The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference.

   Muting pages

   You can mute "page linked" notifications for specific pages by typing each page's name into the box.

   Gadgets

   Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently installed gadgets

   Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. A general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows.

   Browsing

   • Language translating
   • Media files, search results, and diffs
   • Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor
   • Teahouse for the new editor question
   • Mousing over or hovering over an inline citation to read it

   Editing

   • Citation modifying/expediting/proving
   • Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets
   • Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes
   • The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff

   Appearance

   • Editing the introductory section.
   • Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls
   • Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps
   • Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia
   • Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc.
   • Justifying paragraphs

   Compatibility

   • Font and JavaScript support

   Advanced

   • Regular expression tools
   • Tracking software bugs
   • Patrolling recent changes

   See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions.

   Beta features

   Preferences → Beta features → Details = mw:Beta Features

   Beta Features is a way for users to test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone.

   Other tools

   The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you discover a special role on Wikipedia, there is probably a powerful tool for it at Wikipedia:Tools § Browsing and editing.

   Operating an account with a tool may carry side effects, such as popups, toolbars and frame objects on your browsing or editing page space that are sometimes burdensome, yet sometimes powerfully necessary. Rather than uninstalling, it is possible to just switch skins, because there are four skins, each with a pair of customizations. 1) Custom JavaScript has the tools. 2) Custom CSS can carry over your preferred fonts, colors, and frame borders to each skin, no matter what tools that skin may also be loaded with.

   See also

   • meta:Help:Preferences
   • Wikipedia:Skin
   • Wikipedia:Customisation
   • Wikipedia:Scripts
   • Wikipedia:Tools
   • Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences

   Notes

   ---

   Find this page confusing? ; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!
   !

Alternative referencing style

The Reference Tooltips gadget does not work with these templates. Using ref/note tags is not the only way to create footnotes. Cite.php (with which Reference Tooltips does work) is currently the preferred method of creating footnotes, especially when the number of footnotes increases and the size of the article (or the area in which footnotes are used) grows. Ref converter can convert ref/note tags to the newer Cite.php style.

The following examples compares two method and also shows how they can be combined:

Additional examples

Code	Result
Yammer yammer yammer.<ref name=smith2000>Smith wrote the definitive book on yammering.{{ref|Smith2000|Smith 2000}}</ref> Yammer yammer yammer.<ref name=smith2000/> ... ==References== {{reflist}} ... ==Bibliography== *{{note|Smith2000}} Smith (2000). "A book about yammering".	Yammer yammer yammer. Yammer yammer yammer. ... References ... Bibliography ^ Smith (2000). "A book about yammering".

Also see examples and explanation in Wikipedia:Footnote3.

See also

• Wikipedia:Footnote3, an essay on this method of creating footnotes
• Help:Footnotes
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles
• Category:Citation templates, including those not part of the ref–note label system
• {{Rp}}
• Template:Ref/examples