Help:Preferences: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:56, 27 January 2023

Latest revision as of 18:39, 30 July 2025

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{{shortShort description|Wikipedia help page for user preferences}}

{{pp-semi-indef}}

{{hatnote|This page is '''a selective overview''' of user preferences. For full details see '''[[Metamw:Help:Preferences]]'''.}}

{{Wikipedia how-to|H:P|WP:PREF}}

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== User profile ==

:{{myprefs|User profile|Details|[[metamw:Help:Preferences#User profile]]}}

=== Basic information ===

* Lists your account details and the number of edits you have made.

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=== 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.<ref>[[Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 184#Discourage en-xx UI variants]]</ref> 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 thetemplate {{tl|they template}}, and [[Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups|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).

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== Appearance ==

:{{myprefs|Appearance|Details|[[metamw:Help:Preferences#Appearance]]}}

Change the web browser experience.

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=== Reading Preferences ===

{{expand section|reason=This lists what they are, but details are needed, and perhaps images, too.|date=July 2025}}

* Enable page previews (get quick previews of a topic while reading a page)

* Enable reference previews (get quick previews of a reference while reading a page)

=== Date format ===

{{See|metamw: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: {{CURRENTTIME}}, {{CURRENTDAY}}&nbsp;{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}} (UTC).

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=== Languages ===

* Choose to display a more compacted language list.

== Editing ==

:{{myprefs|Editing|Details|[[metamw:Help:Preferences#Editing]]}}

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

* "{{int:tog-forceeditsummary}}" into the database. (Habit-forming. Note: this prompt does not appear when you edit your own User or User talk page.)

* "Enable VisualEditor". Get a [[word processor]] interface. No markup language at all.

* "{{int:tog-uselivepreview}}". 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.<ref>If you disable JavaScript ''for any page on [[MW:main|MediaWiki.org]] or Wikipedia.org'', you will lose all unsaved edits in all tabs; yet disabling JavaScript is a common troubleshooting technique when diagnosing some preference-related browser behaviors.</ref> (First-time users should perform a simple compatibility test.<ref>The danger in using Live preview is on first use with an incompatible browser. Try a simple test: make a change to the edit box, then reload the page.</ref>)

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 <kbd>{{Nowrap|Options → Content → "Default font"}}</kbd> {{Button|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]]:

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== Recent changes ==

:{{myprefs|Recent changes|Display options & Advanced options|[[metamw: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 ===

:{{myprefs|Recent changes|Pending changes|[[metamw:Help:Preferences#Pending changes/Edit review]]}}

{{for|an explanation of what ''pending changes'' are|Wikipedia:Pending changes}}

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

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== Watchlist ==

:{{myprefs|Watchlist|Details|[[metamw:Help:Preferences#Watchlist]]}}

The watchlist options include which pages, and what "recent" means to you. If your {{myprefs}} 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.
<section begin="email" /> 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 {{myprefs|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.<section end="email" />

== Notifications ==

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== See also ==

* [[:metamw:Help:Preferences]]

* [[Wikipedia:Skin]]

* [[Wikipedia:Customisation]]