The Wikimedia App team has just added the first native “Nearby” functionality to the new Android and iOS Wikipedia apps. Using this feature, you’ll be able to retrieve a list of Wikipedia articles near your current location and see their relative distance to you. You’ll even notice a handy compass arrow that points to the direction for each location and updates as you move.
Simply single tap an entry to read the article, or long-press an entry to open in map view.
With this feature, we’re bringing Wikipedia into the world around you and enabling you to explore and learn more about your surroundings. Perhaps you’ve always wondered about that monument that you pass during your commute home, been curious about an architecturally interesting building, or simply wanted a to-do list while traveling. Now, the new Wikipedia app can surface those for you, and maybe it’ll even inspire you to add your own.
Possible things to come
We have some exciting and ambitious ideas of where we could go next:
- Filtering nearby items by category, so that you could read more about specific things you’re interested in near you, such as museums or historic buildings.
- Searching for other articles that are near the article you’re currently reading.
- Letting you drop a pin on a map so you can see articles tagged near that location.
What do you think?
Don’t hesitate to send us feedback about this and make sure to download our latest Android or iOS beta. We want to know what you’d like to see in future updates, and to hear your ideas for making the apps even more awesome!
And if you love to code, do take a pass on our GeoData API and show us what you’ve built.
Dmitry Brant, Software Engineer,
Monte Hurd, Software Engineer
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