Some people wish to not see some images. ("This isn't work safe! - My child might see this! - My country's laws forbid that! - My religion forbids that!")
This page assumes that (a) you still want to visit Wikipedia (rather than creating a fork or simply staying away) and (b) you do not wish to enter discussions within Wikipedia policy to have the image changed, removed or deleted by building consensus.
Wikipedia readers have two possibilities to influence the way Wikipedia content is displayed on their screens:
- by creating an account and reading Wikipedia while logged in. User accounts offer a number of preference settings, including the selective display of images.
- by filtering content locally, either by setting up a proxy (such as Privoxy), or by configuring their web browser (including the possibility to display no images at all).
Configure Wikipedia
How to set up your Wikipedia account to not see images on a specific article
To disable the display of images for a specific article only, you must have an account. If you do not have an account, visit Special:Userlogin to create one. Once you have an account, you can disable the images on a specific page by changing your personal settings at your CSS page. This allows you to avoid images that offend you without affecting other users. To do this, create a page at Special:Mypage/monobook.css and add the following line:
body.page-(page name) img {display: none;}
e.g.
body.page-Muhammad img {display: none;}
Submit code change for Mediawiki
If you are unhappy with the configuration possibilities available at present, you may consider submitting a code change for the copy left Mediawiki (which displays the Wikipedia content). The Wikimedia Foundation, that provides the hosting and bandwidth for Wikipedia, lacks funds to implement many good and useful modifications to the software that displays the Wikipedia content. Such modifications can be created and submitted to the Foundation for addition to Mediawiki.
An example of what could be created is a user option to not display images that are in certain categories.
Configure your browser
How to block images site-wide (all Wikimedia projects)
Firefox 2.0
- either: right-click the example image to the right and select "Block Images from upload.wikimedia.org"
- or: select Edit/Preferences and in the Content tab click on "Exceptions" next to "Load images automatically". In the popup window, type "wikimedia.org" and click "Block".
How to set up your browser to not see images at all
Firefox 2.0
Without add-on
- On Windows, select the Tools menu. On Mac OSX, select the Firefox menu.
- Select "Options" on Windows, or Preferences on Mac OSX
- Click the "Content" tab.
- Uncheck the checkbox "Load images automatically."
With add-on
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/232 allows you to add a button to the Firefox tool bar that toggles images on and off.[1]
Other Mozilla-based browsers
The Firefox 2.0 instructions may not work on all browsers in the Mozilla family (such as the GNOME web browser Epiphany). In that case, enter about:config in the ___location box, and change permissions.default.image to 2 to disable image downloads. To restore the default behavior, change it back to 1.
View->Images->No Images
- Click the "Tools" button.
- Select "Internet Options".
- Click the "Advanced" tab.
- Scroll down to "Multimedia" and uncheck "Show pictures".
Safari 3
- On Mac OSX, select the "Safari" menu.
- Click "Preferences".
- Click on the "Appearance" button.
- Uncheck "Display images when the page opens."