Help:Preferences
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Clicking on the 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.
Note that some of the preferences discussed here are added by extensions and are not a part of MediaWiki core.
User profile
Basic information
| Username: | Your user name. Only trusted users can change your username. |
| Member of groups: | A list of the user groups you are in. |
| Connected apps: | On Wikimedia wikis, this link allows you to manage external applications that are permitted to access your account. See Help:OAuth for more information. |
| Number of edits: | How many edits you have made. Not all wikis will have this. See Help:User contributions#Number of edits |
| Registration time: | The time your account was registered. |
| Change password | see below |
| Global account: | see below |
| Global account: | Provides a link to Special:CentralAuth, displaying statistics about your user account across all Wikimedia wikis. |
| Two-factor authentication: | Manage two factor authentication. |
| Global preferences: | Manage global preferences. |
Change password
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.
Global account
Internationalisation
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?
- Specifies the grammatical gender that the interface should use to refer to you. Also controls the output of the GENDER parser function, and hence any templates that support it. This setting is public.
- More language settings
- Opens up the Universal Language Selector pop-up.
Signature
Registered users can customize their signature (the part between the two hyphens and the timestamp, that is, the text displayed on the link pointing to your username) by changing the field "New signature:" in their preferences.
By default, anything you enter there will be wrapped with [[ ]].
To use a special linking (without this automatic link), you have to enable “Treat as wikitext”. Then you can add Wiki markup and also HTML (as far as allowed on the wiki) as you like, but the maximum length is 255 characters.
Please note that striking signatures are often disliked by other users.
Note that if you customize your signature, you should avoid displaying the identity of another unrelated user account, unless you also own this account or are explicitly authorized by this user: the link should unambiguously point to your effective user page or talk page on the local wiki. However, changing your signature will not override the username that is recorded in page histories. Some wikis may also have defined a restricting policy about the usage of external links or images in signatures. Look at the policies documented and on enforced your local wiki about user accounts and identities.
If you enable Treat as wikitext but don't add any customized signature string, you'll sign with your unlinked username.
The most common Treat as wikitext customizations are the following:
| Purpose | Wikitext signature | Resulting signature display (generated by four tildes) |
|---|---|---|
| Embedding the dashes in the signature |
|
-- Username 18:53, 11 November 2024 (UTC) |
| Adapting the displayed username to your convenience |
|
Preferred User Name 18:53, 11 November 2024 (UTC) |
| Adding a talk page link |
|
Username (talk) 18:53, 11 November 2024 (UTC) |
Email options
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 shows the date and time your email address was confirmed. |
| Allow other users to email me | 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. |
| Allow emails from brand-new users | This allows users without the autoconfirmed permissions to send you emails. |
| Send me copies of emails I send to other users | This option will have all of your emails you send to others be copied into your inbox. |
| Prohibit these users from emailing me: | 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. |
| Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed | Causes you to be automatically sent an email when a pages on your watchlist is edited. May not be available on some large wikis. |
| Email me also for minor edits of pages and files | Same thing except for minor edits. May not be available on some large wikis. |
| Email me on replies to a thread I am watching | Same thing except for Liquid Threads discussions, Only available if that extension is installed. |
Appearance
Skin
Here you can choose the skin you want to use. You can preview the available skins before choosing them, by clicking on the "Preview" link next to each skin. Please refer to Help:Skins for more details. Also includes a link to your skin-specific CSS and JavaScript for that skin.
Date format and time offset
Determines the date format and timezone that the interface of pages such as recent changes or your watchlist display. Any dates that appear in Wikitext will not be automatically reformatted. In particular, this includes signatures, so if you set a timezone other than the wiki default times shown in the interface won't match those in signatures.
Files
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.
- Image size limit on file description pages: - 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.
- Thumbnail size: - 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.
Diffs
- Don't show page content below diffs
- Toggle the display of the page text below the diff. This text is the later of the two revisions of the page.
- Don't show diff after performing a rollback
- Whether to show the diff of the rolled back revision after a rollback.
Some extensions also add their own preferences related to diffs. One such extension is Extension:RevisionSlider, which can be disabled in preferences using the "Don't show the revision slider" preference in that section.
Advanced options
- Link underlining:
- Determines whether links are underlined automatically. This may make it easier to distinguish links from other content, but may also cause confusion if a link includes an underscore.
- Show hidden categories
- Determines whether hidden categories are displayed at the bottom of the page.
- Show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link
Math
Here you can control how mathematical equations described using the <math> 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 Extension:Math is installed.
Editing
These are the settings to control editing pages, including whether to automatically watch pages that you have edited or created.
General options
- Enable section editing by right clicking on section titles
- Assuming your browser supports it, causes right-clicking on a section heading to open up the editor for that section (this is the same functionality as the [edit] link).
- Edit pages on double click
- Assuming your browser supports it, causes double-clicking (anywhere on the page, except for when clicking on a link) to open up the editor for that page, in the same way as clicking on the edit tab at the top.
Some extensions, such as WikiLove, TwoColConflict, FlaggedRevs, and ProofreadPage also add their own preferences to this section.
Editor
- Edit area font style:
- Determines the font that text in the edit window (and in diffs) displays in. Options are Monospaced font, Sans-serif font, and Serif font.
- Mark all edits minor by default
- Causes all edits to be marked as minor, unless the checkbox is explicitly deselected with each edit. Some wikis, such as the English Wikipedia, have disabled this preference (because it makes it too easy to accidentally mark a non-minor edit minor).
- Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary)
- Will display a warning message (<strong>Reminder:</strong> You have not provided an edit summary. If you click "$1" again, your edit will be published without one.) when you try to save an edit without providing an edit summary. Can be useful since edit summaries make an edit easier for others to understand. This does not apply to your own user or usertalk page.T372643
- Warn me when I leave an edit page with unsaved changes
- Displays a browser-specific alert popup if you try to close an edit page without publishing your in-progress edit, preventing the edit from being lost.
- Enable the editing toolbar
- Enables the 2010 wikitext editor's editing toolbar.
- ⧼visualeditor-preference-betatempdisable⧽
- Editing mode:
- Enable the visual editor and the new wikitext mode in Structured Discussions
- Various settings that control whether, and under what circumstances, the Visual Editor is provided used when you edit a page. Options are to use only the Visual Editor (for namespaces that support it), use only the source editor, remember which editor was used for the previous edit, or show edit tabs for both. Only shown if Extension:VisualEditor is installed.
Preview
- Show preview when starting to edit
- Results in a preview window (of the page before your edit) appearing alongside the edit box when you edit a page, as if you had pressed "Show preview" and made no changes.
- Show preview before edit box
- Determines whether to display the preview window above or below the edit textbox. Below is the default position.
Translation options
- Assistant languages:
- Determines which languages are shown in the translation interface. See Help:Extension:Translate/Translation example#Translation editor for more details.
Preview
- Show preview when starting to edit
- Show preview before edit box
- Show preview without reloading the page
Recent changes
Some of these preferences impact Special:RelatedChanges and Special:RecentChangesLinked as well as Special:RecentChanges. See Help:Tracking changes for more information.
Display options
- Days to show in recent changes: - Here you can specify how far back the recent changes pages will go. Note that the list will stop prematurely if the number of edits is exceeded (see below).
- Number of edits to show in recent changes, page histories, and in logs, by default: - Here you can specify how many edits should be displayed.
Advanced options
- Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist - Enhanced recent changes condenses edits into a per-page list. This requires JavaScript to be enabled..
- Use non-JavaScript interface - Enables or disables new filters for edit review, a more complicated UI for displaying and filtering changes developed in 2017. This requires JavaScript be enabled.
- 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.
Changes shown
- Hide minor edits from recent changes - This enables you to hide edits marked as minor (see Help:Editing pages). 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.
- Hide patrolled edits from recent changes - This enables you to hide edits marked as patrolled (see Help:Patrolled edits). You can also turn this on temporarily from the recent changes page. May not appear if you don't have sufficient permissions to see patrolled edits.
- Hide categorization of pages - This enables you to hide changes to categories (see Help:Categorization). Note that this only affects changes to pages within the category when watching the category; if you are watching the page, or the category is edited directly, any edits will still be shown. You can also turn this on temporarily from the recent changes page.
- Hide patrolled pages from new page list - Same as "Hide patrolled edits from recent changes", but for Special:NewPages (some wikis only use patrolling for new page creation, and not edits to existing pages). You can also turn this on temporarily from the new pages list itself.
Watchlist
These are the settings to control the behavior of the watchlist (See Help: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.
Edit watchlist
Provides a set of links to view and edit the pages on your watchlist, either as a formatted list of links with checkboxes to remove them (View and remove titles on your watchlist), a raw list of page titles in a text box (Edit raw watchlist). The final option is to clear your watchlist entirely (Clear your watchlist).
Display options
- Days to show in watchlist: - Here you can specify how far back the watchlist will go. Note that the list will stop prematurely if the number of edits is exceeded (see below).
- Maximum number of changes to show in watchlist: - Here you can specify how many edits should be displayed.
Advanced options
- Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent - Expands the watchlist to display all relevant changes to pages (limited by the time and number settings above), rather than merely the most recent edit to page.
- Reload the watchlist automatically whenever a filter is changed (JavaScript required) - When you change one of the filter settings (on the watchlist itself, not in your preferences), causes the page to be automatically reloaded. If this is not set, then the changes to the filters will not take affect until you click on the "show" button to refresh the list.
- Add direct unwatch/watch markers (×/+) to watched pages with changes (JavaScript required for toggle functionality) - Adds a button on the watchlist itself to remove pages. If JavaScript is enabled, then the button crosses out the entry and allows you to add it back if the clicked on it accidentally. If JavaScript is disabled, then it goes to a separate page load to confirm the request, and there's no UI to add the entry back.
- Use non-JavaScript interface - Enables or disables new filters for edit review, a more complicated UI for displaying and filtering changes developed in 2017. This requires JavaScript be enabled
- 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. This can help catch vandalism on Wikidata that could be seen on your wiki.
Changes shown
- Hide minor edits from the watchlist
- Hide bot edits from the watchlist
- Hide my edits from the watchlist
- Hide edits by anonymous users from the watchlist
- Hide edits by logged in users from the watchlist
- Hide categorization of pages
- Hide patrolled edits from the watchlist
- Use these options to filter out changes you are not interested in from the watchlist. Note that the categorization option only affects changes shown when watching the category, not changes shown when watching the page being added or removed from the category.
Watched pages
- Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist
- Add pages and files I move to my watchlist
- Add pages and files I delete to my watchlist
- Add pages where I have performed a rollback to my watchlist
- Add new files I upload to my watchlist
- Selects the "watch this page" checkbox by default when performing each of the specified actions. It can still be unselected manually. Some options may not appear if you don't have sufficient permissions to perform the action in question.
Token
- 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.
Search
General
- Number of search results to show on each page: - How many results to display on each page of a search. Defaults to 20, maximum is 500.
Completion suggester
These preferences control the Completion Suggester used to provide suggestions of article titles when you type a search query, including possibly correcting any typos.
- Default (recommended)
- Corrects up to two typos. Removes redirects that are very similar to the main title.
- Subphrase matching (recommended for longer page titles)
- Corrects up to two typos. Resolves close redirects. Matches subphrase in titles.
- Strict mode (advanced)
- No typo correction. No accent folding. Strict matching.
- Redirect mode (advanced)
- No typo correction. Resolves close redirects.
- Redirect mode with subphrase matching (advanced)
- No typo correction. Resolves close redirects. Matches subphrase in titles.
- Classic prefix search
- No typo correction. Matches the beginning of titles.
Advanced Search
- Don’t show the Advanced Search interface when using Special:Search - Disables Advanced Search. Advanced Search adds a form to the Special:Search page. This allows you to perform specialized searches, even if you don't know any search syntax. It also changes the way namespaces can be selected..
Gadgets
This section of your preferences allows you to enable or disable any gadgets that have been set up by your wiki's interface administrators to improve browsing experience.
Beta features
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.
The following Beta Features are available:
- ⧼visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽ (lead: James Forrester) – ⧼visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-description⧽
These features are only available on some wikis:
- ⧼popups-refpreview-beta-feature-message⧽ (lead: Lena Meintrup) – Show a preview of a reference by hovering over its footnote marker.
- Content translation (lead: Amir Aharoni) – A tool to quickly translate pages into your language with side-by-side editor.
- Flow on user talk (lead: Roan Kattouw) – Enables a new structured discussion system on your user talk page.
These features are beta features on some wikis while enabled for everyone on all others:
- Discussion tools (lead: Ed Sanders) – Enable certain features of the DiscussionTools extensions that are not yet enabled for everyone (the list varies by wiki).
- Paragraph-based edit conflict (lead: Lea Voget) – Show the edit conflict view using a more advanced paragraph-based view.
- ⧼visualeditor-preference-core-label⧽ (lead: Roan Kattouw) – ⧼visualeditor-preference-core-description⧽
- ⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-label⧽ (lead: Ed Sanders) – ⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-description⧽
- 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.
Notifications
This section of your preferences allows you to control what notifications you receive and how you receive them.
Opt-in and opt-out
If you opt-out of any type of notifications, then these notifications generated while you were opted-out are not generated for you and not stored in databases. Opt-in will not display them afterwards. The only notifications that may be displayed are the one that existed before the opt-out.
Notifications by email or on wiki
To turn notifications on or off for any category, simply check (or uncheck) the box next to it. You can enable (or disable) notifications on the web or by email for most categories. (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.) You can also control how often to receive email notifications, from single emails for each event to daily or weekly digests. When you're done, be sure to click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page to update your preferences.
Muting users
You can mute on-site notifications from individual users, by typing their username into the box at the bottom of the notifications preferences. When you start typing the usernames will autocomplete. Users without JavaScript should type one username per line, without any wikitext or prefix.
You will still receive notifications if a muted user writes or participates on your user talk page (no matter if the page uses Flow or unstructured wikitext), or reviews a page you have created. Watchlist behavior and emails are not affected by the mute list.
The muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference. A user's mute list is private from all other users on the wiki, including administrators or any other functionary.
Muting pages
Muting pages is possible for "page linked" notifications.
You can mute "page linked" notifications for a page by typing the page name into the box at the bottom of the notifications preferences.
When you start typing the page titles will autocomplete.
Users without JavaScript should type one page title per line, without any wikitext or prefix.