Commons:Mobile app

Shortcuts: COM:APP • COM:MOA

Commons mobile app is an app to easily upload pictures from any Android device.

Official website, including user documentation

The Commons app is maintained as open source on GitHub, where we are always looking for developers and testers.

Wikimedia Commons mobile App - Howto

Commons Mobile app

2019 Coolest Tool Award Winner

in the category
Mobile

Results

• Files uploaded via the Commons Android app are in use at more than 140,000 places on Wikipedia (real-time count, most-used pictures)
• 13,560 places missing a picture got one thanks to the app (data).
• Histogram showing the number of uploads per week

Examples of pictures uploaded via the Commons mobile app for Android:

• 
  Protest in Kerala, India
• 
  Explorer Fedor Konukhov
• 
  Civil rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila
• 
  Damage due to Cyclone Aila
• 
  Uganda wins ICC World Cricket
• 
  Malayali film director Anjali Menon
• 
  Protest at oil refinery
• 
  Cyclist Ellen van Dijk
• 
  Daily life in Bangladesh
• 
  Tunisian journalist Fawzia Zouari
• 
  Rapper Boosie Badazz
• 
  Women's March on Portland
• 
  Writer Hasan Azizul Huq
• 
  Traditional Pashtun archery in Pakistan, file used on 32 wikis
• 
  FC Valence team captain Fernando Gómez Colomer
• 
  Hindustani musician Neela Bhagwat
• 
  Basketball player Silvia Domínguez
• 
  Spanish politician Alejandra Soler in 2017
• 
  Swiss band Koenix
• 
  San Francisco pride
• 
  British computer scientist Sue Black
• 
  Korean singer Lee Sungmin
• 
  American rabbi David Ellenson
• 
  Mozzarella picture used in 133 articles

Features

• 
  Nearby articles needing a picture
• 
  Mobile-friendly metadata selection
• 
  File picker showing differently pictures that have been uploaded to Commons already
• 
  Peer review
• 
  Leaderboard

History

This app started as an official Wikimedia app in 2012, before being abandoned in 2014 to focus on the Wikipedia app. Seeing its potential, Nicolas Raoul salvaged the app in 2015 and uploaded it to Google Play, maintaining it with the help of other volunteers.

In May 2016, after following the Developing an official app procedure, Nicolas signed a contract with WMF allowing the app to use the official Wikimedia Commons name and logo.

During the period from September 2016 through August 2022, Josephine Lim was the maintainer of the app. She managed to source funding for the app through IEG grants which helped the app's development.

Since 2023, Kaartic Sivaraam is the maintainer of the app. It is now developed by volunteers.

The app is currently used across the world to upload about 100 new pictures per day (List of pictures uploaded in the last 24 hours). Some of them have been recognized as "Valued Images" and "Quality Images".

iOS

In May 2015, an iOS port called Commons Reloaded was uploaded to GitHub and the App Store. It disappeared from the App Store in early 2016 because the volunteer maintainer Thomas Skowron was not interested in renewing his Apple Developer Program account (which costs 99 USD per year).

We need your help: please monitor uploads

Wikimedia Commons allows only freely licensed content and the files must be in the project scope. Files not meeting those criteria may be nominated for deletion.

Recently uploaded files can be seen:

• As a live RSS feed of pictures
• As a live textual list
• As a gallery updated once per day
• Directly from within the app: Tap "Explore", search for "Uploaded with Mobile/Android", tap "Categories", tap "Uploaded with Mobile/Android"
• As a query for developers

See also:

• Wikidata edits by the app (when uploading from the map of Wikidata items without a picture, the app sets the item's P18 property. For more than 30 days before please use this query. Map)
• All files uploaded from the Android app
• Current deletion requests
• Users whose first upload was via the mobile app (then you can check contributions by entering a username in this tool)
• All files uploaded from the iOS app (iOS app is now discontinued)

If you notice particularly good contributions, use the thank button in file history or give a barnstar (example).

Becoming an official patroller

If you have more than 1000 contributions on Commons (check), please ask for the patroller permission (just follow the simple instructions in the "How to make a request" box). That will allow your patrolling to overlap less with other patrollers, as explained at Commons:Patrol.

This app has never been responsible for any copyvio/selfie-pocalypse

Years ago a selfie-pocalypse was caused by the mobile web interface (now deprecated). The current available mobile app is a native Android app. The two are inherently very different and have different workflows. Mobile websites are just accessed via browser whereas native apps need to be downloaded by the user. Native apps allow development of features that would not be possible with mobile websites.

All pictures uploaded via the app get patrolled by the app's team, all copyright violations and undesirable images get deleted quickly. These are the stats for the current Android app's uploads vs deletes, as you can see about 95% of uploaded files are good.

Issues

Commons App Feedback

Issues may be raised on the app's GitHub repository.

For users who do not have a GitHub account, there is a convenient feedback function. This feedback is stored here on Commons.

Google Summer of Code / Outreachy

Over the years, many students have successfully improved the app as part of either Google Summer of Code or Outreachy:

• 2016: Josephine Lim
• 2018: Ujjwal Agrawal, Tavi Dadu
• 2019: Vanshika Arora
• 2020: Madhur Gupta
• 2021: Aditya Srivastav
• 2022: Ayan Sarkar
• 2023: Ritika Pahwa (Phabricator, blog)

Thanks all for your great contributions!