Help:Preferences

Clicking on the preferences>Special:preferences|Preferences link in the upper right while logged in allows you to change your preferences. You will be presented with the User profile section, as well as a bar of tabs across the top for changing other types of settings.

Starting in MediaWiki 1.32.0-wmf.23, Special:Preferences's design has been changed. Note: some of the preferences discussed here are added by extensions and are not a part of MediaWiki core.


 *  - Your user name. Only bureaucrats can change your username, and the wiki must also have the  extension installed.
 * - A list of the user groups you are in.
 * - On Wikimedia wikis, this link allows you to manage external applications that are permitted to access your account. See OAuth help for more information.


 *  How many edits you have made. Not all wikis will have this.
 * - The time your account was registered.
 * - see below
 * - see below
 * - Manage two factor authentication.
 * - Manage global preferences.

To change your password, enter your old password in the first box and your new password in the last two. If you want this site to remember your login, check Remember my login on this computer. Note that this function requires you to have cookies enabled in your browser, and if your cookie is cleared or expires you will no longer be remembered.

From your preferences you can select what language you would like the interface to be in. Only the buttons like 'edit' and 'talk', in addition to a few pages in the sidebar, will be affected. The main text of the pages will not be changed by this for the vast majority of pages, although there are a few pages where it will, like some in the Wikimedia Meta Wiki.


 * Languages


 * How do you prefer to be described?


 * More language settings


 * Your existing signature


 * New signature


 * Treat as wikitext

If you have supplied an email address, you will need to click the verify address button in order to use these functions. You will receive an email; simply open it and follow the link to enable the following functions.


 * Email confirmation
 *  - This allows other registered users to send you an email using "Email this user" link on the sidebar of your user page. Emails are sent using a web interface, and your email address is not revealed to a sender until you reply by email.
 *  - This allows users without the autoconfirmed permissions to send you emails.
 *  - This option allows you to specify which users will not be able to send you direct emails. They will not see the "Email this user" link on the sidebar of your user page.
 *  - This option allows you to specify which users will not be able to send you direct emails. They will not see the "Email this user" link on the sidebar of your user page.

Here you can choose the skin you want to use. You can preview the available skins before choosing them, by clicking on the "" link next to each skin. Please refer to  for more details.

Date format and time offset
The following is normally rendered depending on preferences: 2001-01-05 (or 2001-01-05) (with leading zeros) 2001 January 5 (2001 January 05) January 5, 2001 (January 05, 2001) 5 January 2001 (05 January 2001) January 5 (January 05) 5 January (05 January)

Here you can determine how images will be displayed. Images displayed by direct pasting of a URL (if the wiki has it enabled) will not be affected by this setting.


 *  - This setting lets you choose how big image previews will be on the Image: pages. If you know what your current screen resolution is you may like to set this to one or two sizes smaller than your own screen. If you have a slow connection (such as dial-up) you may want to limit them to 320×240.
 *  - Define how big you want thumbnails to appear. This setting will not affect thumbnails with dimensions determined by an editor, nor can it increase images beyond their original dimensions.


 * Use Media Viewer: On Wikimedia wikis, this setting (on by default) determines whether the Media Viewer should be used to provide a smoother image viewing experience.

Here you can control how mathematical equations described using the   tag will be displayed. Mathematical formulae uploaded as images or written outside the math tag will not be affected by this setting. Note the math preferences will only be visible if  is installed.

These are the settings to control editing pages, including whether to automatically watch pages that you have edited or created.


 *  - Here you can specify how far back the tracking>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Tracking changes|recent changes pages will go. Note that the list will stop prematurely if the number of edits is exceeded (see below).
 *  - Here you can specify how many edits should be displayed.


 *  - This enables you to hide edits marked as minor (see ). Since some users will rapidly make a lot of tiny tweaks to update templates or fix spelling errors you may find enabling this to be useful. You can also turn this on temporarily from the recent changes page (see <tvar|tracking></>).
 *  - Enhanced recent changes condenses edits into a per-page list. As indicated, this requires JavaScript to be enabled. See <tvar|tracking></> for more information on this feature.


 * Show Wikidata edits in recent changes: On selected Wikimedia projects where data from Wikidata is available, this option allows you to see changes to the Wikidata items connected to pages on your wiki, as well as changes to the wiki pages themselves. This can help catch vandalism on Wikidata that could be seen on your wiki.

These are the settings to control the behavior of the watchlist (See <tvar|watchlist></>). Most of these options are also available on the watchlist display itself, but by setting them in your preferences, you control the default behavior of the watchlist i.e., it will perform the same actions every time you visit the page.

This can help catch vandalism on Wikidata that could be seen on your wiki.
 * Show Wikidata edits in your watchlist: On selected Wikimedia projects where data from Wikidata is available, this option allows you to see changes to the Wikidata items connected to pages on your wiki, as well as changes to the wiki pages themselves.


 * Watchlist token: This token is used to generate a RSS feed from your watchlist. Anyone who knows this token can use it to access your watchlist. If the token is discovered by someone else, you can use the "Click here if you need to reset it" link to create a new token. Once you have done this, you will need to edit the URL of your feed subscription in your feed reader to account for the new token.

Default settings for searches including how many results to display and how much context to show for each result. Check the boxes next to the namespaces which you want to show up, the first time that you search for something. You can override this when doing an actual search, by checking or unchecking the boxes at the bottom of the search results screen.

On Wikimedia wikis, the Beta features tab allows you to enable experimental features before they are made available to everyone.

If you choose to turn on any of these features, you should be prepared to encounter bugs and problems, and you may see sudden changes in the way the feature looks or works as development continues.

Each feature has a "discussion" link next to it, so you can offer your suggestions or report any problems.

See 1>Special:MyLanguage/Beta Features/About</>|About Beta Features for more information.


 * Automatically enable all new beta features: If you turn on this option, new beta features will become active for you as soon as they are added to the Beta Features system.