Manual:Mobiles, tablets and responsive design

Without any additional skins or extensions, Mediawiki will work on many mobile devices (ie. smartphones and tablets), but it is not optimised for mobile devices. This means that some skins are difficult to view, with menus, layouts and media, not appearing in the best place.

None of the skins bundled with Mediawiki, including the latest default skin, Vector, are optimised for use with mobiles. This page provides advice for using using Wikipedia on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Extensions

 * Extension:MobileApp (MW 1.22+) Serves styles and scripts for use in the Wikimedia Mobile Applications
 * Extension:MobileFrontend (requires: Extension:Mantle) (1.23+) Provides a mobile-friendly view.

Skins
Skins for use with with mobiles comes in two forms:
 * 1) Those designed specifically for use with a mobile, and may not view well on non-mobile devices. Mediawiki detects the kind of device on which it is running, and then switches to the appropriate skin.
 * 2) Responsive skins, which are designed to respond automatically to the size of the screen, regardless of whether it is a desktop PC, tablet or smartphone.


 * Skin:BootStrapSkin (MW 1.23+): three variations, and numerous colour templates
 * Skin:Chameleon (MW 1.22+): customisable with five different layouts
 * Skin:Refreshed (MW 1.19+): uses responsive CSS to adapt to mobile devices