

Image courtesy of Google Play.

Have you downloaded the Wikipedia Android app yet? You should. Google has just called it a “Best App of 2015,” featuring the app in the Google Play Stores of Russia, India, Mexico, Japan, and Indonesia.

A screenshot of the Wikipedia Android app, showing the capabilities of the Wikimedia Maps service. Screenshot by Dmitry Brant, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The entire Android team at the Wikimedia Foundation is thrilled about this recognition. We hope it helps people around the world engage more with free knowledge. And like everything we do, it’s free to download and use.

We work hard to build an app that is easy and fun to use, while bringing the knowledge of Wikipedia to your fingertips. Looking back at 2015, there’s no shortage of new features in the app:

Previews of linked Wikipedia articles so you can explore a topic without leaving the original page.

Share-a-fact cards that allow you to easily and quickly create image cards with facts from Wikipedia and share via social media, email, or text message.

More image-centric design, improved search functionality, and suggestions for further reading.

We’d also like to introduce another new feature that we released in our latest version of the app: using the Nearby tab, you can access a full, interactive map (based on the new Wikimedia Maps service), with little pins for Wikipedia articles about nearby points of interest. This interactive feature lets you drag and zoom the map to any other part of the world, and see Wikipedia articles for those locations.

Tapping on any of the little pins will show you the familiar link preview that you see when tapping on regular links in articles. We designed it for anyone curious about what’s around them, from travelers abroad to people learning more about their hometowns.

We have much more planned in 2016—get the app from the Google Play Store, and stay tuned for more great features in the new year!

Dmitry Brant, Software Engineer, Product Owner

Wikimedia Foundation