‘V for Wikipedia’ for iOS and Apple Watch

V for Wikipedia recreates the childhood joy of getting lost in my old Encyclopedia set. One subject would inspire me to look up another and I’d end up flipping back and forth between pages and indexes for hours. Now I can use my iPhone and seamlessly jump to the next subject with a quick tap. Honestly, this app is so easy and enjoyable to use.

Claudia Dawson, Recomendo Newsletter

Thanks to Claudia Dawson’s recommendation above, I recently discovered V for Wikipedia, a gorgeous iOS app for discovering and reading Wikipedia articles.

At a basic level, this app takes Wikipedia pages and makes them look awesome, with beautiful typography and smart layouts designed for a native iOS reading experience, plus a ton of other cool features:

  • Nearby Places — Discover interesting Wikipedia articles about the area around your location (or any other spot in the world, if you like).
  • Most-Read Articles — See which articles people around the globe are reading most right now.
  • Rich previews in search results, which themselves are powered by Wikipedia’s full-text and prefix search.
  • Bookmarks & History — Save your favorite articles with a tap, and browse the History tab to view your recent searches and articles.
  • Apple Watch — The watchOS version has its own bevy of features, including Nearby Places, voice search, Handoff (so you can continue reading on an iOS device), bookmarking, and a complication for launching the app from any watchOS face.

There are loads more little touches too, including inline footnote references, a dark reading mode, text search within articles, Wikipedia editing (accessed from the share button), external keyboard shortcuts, code syntax highlighting (where applicable), Split View support on iPad, and more. Really, this app is such a great way to interact with Wikipedia; I highly recommend checking it out.

V for Wikipedia is just $5 on the iOS App Store.