Wikipedia iOS app gets update with 3D Touch, personalisation

Old players like Wikipedia are learning new tricks. Wikipedia today updated its Wikipedia iOS app and the 15-year-old fact-checking company is adding some nifty features. The two notable additions are the inclusion of 3D Touch features and the app’s improved personalisation capabilities.

The 3D Touch feature was introduced in 2015 with Apple’s iPhone 6s and 6s smartphones. From now on, Wikipedia app users on these devices will be able to utilise the peek and pop functionality of 3D Touch. They can also utilise multi-touch gestures like swipe and tap to navigate within the app. Another uniquely iOS feature included in the update is Handoff support.

Spotlight and emoji search have been introduced as well.

In addition to being optimised for uniquely iPhone features, the app’s update makes a serious push for better personalisation for its users. The app will not just search for information but will be served information and articles based on their behaviour of the app. In the new Explore Feed, users will see the top read articles, picture of the day, random articles, nearby articles and recommended articles based on what a user searched for on the app.

In the improved search, users can also find articles in their own languages. The multiple language searches, according to Wikipedia, supports 36 million articles in nearly 300 languages. The images have also been vastly improved, now offering high-resolution image galleries when users search for content.

Users can also save the articles to read later, offline.

These features show that Wikipedia hopes to make its app used for more than only fact-checking purposes.