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This page is used for technical questions relating to the tools, gadgets, or other technical issues about Commons; it is distinguished from the main Village pump, which handles community-wide discussion of all kinds. The page may also be used to advertise significant discussions taking place elsewhere, such as on the talk page of a Commons policy. Recent sections with no replies for 30 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; recent archives: /Archive/2026/03 /Archive/2026/04.

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Thumbnails not generating for external wikis

In the past several days, thumbnails are not being properly generated acrsso multiple wiki farms that use the wikimedia commons. Clicking through on the thumbnail returns a " Error Use thumbnail steps listed on https://w.wiki/GHai. Please contact noc@wikimedia.org for further information (a765913)"

Has something changed which has broken the standard functionality used by literally thousands of mediawiki wikis that rely on the wikimedia commons shard libraries? - 17:08, 7 March 2026 (UTC) Lestatdelc (talk) 17:08, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

@Lestatdelc, as stated in mw:Common thumbnail sizes#FAQ, the error is probably due to the wikis not using one of the "standard" thumbnail sizes. Previously, the thumbnail will generate for any specified size via URL, but now MediaWiki requires one of the "standard" size to be specified when requesting via URL.
However, this change was made in January 2026, so the problem might be something else if it only occurred in the past several days. Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 19:40, 7 March 2026 (UTC)
If you are using mw:Extension:QuickInstantCommons, please update to the latest version. I just recently (like last week) fixed a bug in it to make it compatible with these changes. Bawolff (talk) 10:19, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
And what if I don't want to use a "standard" thumbnail sizes? Then what? You used to be able to change the size of an SVG converted to PNG in the URL. Now you can't
Can't you stop fucking up the site holy shit??!!! First you ban 90% of the users from editing images and now this, what are you going to break next? Yilku1 (talk) 19:49, 14 March 2026 (UTC)
Please be civil and remember to be respectful to others. The change was implemented by MediaWiki and not by users here in Commons, but I certainly believe the change was made to improve the site rather than worsening it. Regarding your second point, I have no idea what you are referring to as I'm pretty sure "90% of the users" are not "banned from editing images". Thanks. Tvpuppy (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2026 (UTC)
I'm fucking tired of EVERYTHING enshittifing, and now it's happening to wikipedia. Who asked for this?
90% of the users can't edit images. You have to ask like a pleb to the admins so you can edit, but only one for the image you asked. Another stupid change nobody asked. Yilku1 (talk) 20:15, 14 March 2026 (UTC)
Explain me how breaking most thumbnails is improving the site? Yilku1 (talk) 03:08, 15 March 2026 (UTC)
If you are using instant commons (not quickinstantcommons) there is a setting you can set where it downloads the original and then resizes locally (to any size you want). Bawolff (talk) 20:40, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-12

MediaWiki message delivery 19:33, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Opera browser data saver mode

this probably niche problem happened to me today. writing here in case anyone might have it too.

i couldnt edit using opera browser on my android phone. after some testing i realised that my ip is different (according to whatismyipaddress.com) when i use chrome and opera. turning off data saver finally makes ip the same and lets me be no longer affected by ip blocks. RoyZuo (talk) 20:22, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

simpleSVGcheck.js is defect

The script User talk:Chealer/simpleSVGcheck.js doesn't work anymore. @Flexagoon wrote:

The script no longer works for me, because requests to the validator API are blocked by Content-Security-Policy

— in: User_talk:Chealer/simpleSVGcheck.js#Blocked_by_CSP

What can we do to fix this? Kind regards, --Sebastian Wallroth (talk) 12:38, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

@Sebastian Wallroth (and others): Please do file a subtask of phab:T419265 for any CSP issues in userscripts/gadgets that have started happening -- my comment here (on metawiki) has links to some partially-prefilled task templates I put together in case they're helpful, though it's not required to use them! Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten[meow] 14:09, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Thanks! I created a report and added @Sebastian Wallroth as a subscriber. Flexagoon (talk) 18:22, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Images seem to be broken

I'm into computer programming, and I've heard that wikimedia commons recently archived most of their images, but now none of them show up on my webpages. I don't know how to input images into my HTML code anymore.

here is a link that doesn't work.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Snowy_Mountain_Valley.jpg/1599px-Snowy_Mountain_Valley.jpg

pretty much all of the old images are broken like this, and they simply don't show up on my webpages. Dragonstudios36 (talk) 14:52, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

Use https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Snowy_Mountain_Valley.jpg/1920px-Snowy_Mountain_Valley.jpg instead. Try using one of the sizes from this list: 20px, 40px, 60px, 120px, 250px, 330px, 500px, 960px, 1280px, 1920px, 3840px [Personally I find it really silly we are just breaking everything instead of just using redirects]. Near the top of the image page there should be a button labelled "use this file" which will give you html code to include the file. Bawolff (talk) 19:24, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-13

MediaWiki message delivery 16:48, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

  • Can someone give a better explanation of the thing about notifications? I don't understand whether this is specific to notifications still on the user talk page or, if not, how it would affect already-archived talk pages. - Jmabel ! talk 20:07, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
    Don't know what you mean. Notifications are the thing that display in the dropdown in the top right. Info on the technical system it uses, Echo, can be found at mw:Extension:Echo. Apparently they want to delete notifications older than 5 years. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:44, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
    • Ah, so this is presumably about notifications one has long since dealt with. Got it. I knew those were called notifications, but presumed it had to be something else, because who on earth looks at a notification more than a few days, maybe a month, after the fact? Five years?? (I guess someone cares...). - Jmabel ! talk 00:44, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Annotations invisible for logged out users

Per title - COM:Image annotations are not displayed unless you are logged in. Qbli2mHd (talk) 01:11, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

Well that makes sense because only logged in users can use gadgets. Nemoralis (talk) 18:39, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
Hmm, it is actually loaded for all users via Common.js. It works for me in a private window (logged out). Nemoralis (talk) 18:47, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
I think I understand where this comes from - annotations won't work if page width (determined on load) leads to image being resized. This happens when the window is too narrow to fit an image; annotations will work if you reload the page with a wider window; they won't work again if you make the window even wider, because a sidebar is inserted to the right and image is resized; they will work again if you make window wide enough to fit both the image and the sidebar. Qbli2mHd (talk) 17:47, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Placeholder images

MOVED from COM:Help desk - Jmabel ! talk 05:37, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
On some image pages this placeholder image : https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/resources/assets/file-type-icons/fileicon-ogg.png is being incorrectly inserted into the html under the "use this file" link. example here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ravenscar_-_geograph.org.uk_-_401270.jpg Ndurgom (talk) 09:46, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
END MOVED - Jmabel ! talk 05:37, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

@Ndurgom: I've moved your question to this page where it is more likely to be addressed. - Jmabel ! talk 05:37, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
I don't see a "Use this file" link. Is it the one included by Help:Gadget-Stockphoto? I don't have that enabled. MKFI (talk) 18:35, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
@MKFI: It is.
ANOTHERWlKlPEDlAN wɑit thɑt’s ɑ typo 23:24, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
Its probably because the resolution is so low there are no "view in other resolution" links. User:Krinkle recently made a bunch of fixes to the gadget and i think one of them was to use those other resolution links to pick the download size. [Im guessing here, have not really looked into it]. Bawolff (talk) 09:08, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
@Ndurgom @Bawolff I filed T421557 and am implementing a workaround in the gadget. Krinkle (talk) 23:01, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Hi, this looked to be fixed but I just found a couple more examples of the fileicon-ogg.png appearing in the embed code of the "Use this file" option:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dale_House,_Chapel-le-Dale_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2499193.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ingleborough_summit_area_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3593674.jpg Ndurgom (talk) 17:43, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

State of Flickr2Commons?

Flickr2Commons is not working for me right now. I can work around it, but does anyone know what is going on? - Jmabel ! talk 20:02, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Same issues at April 8. 2026 6D (talk) 05:22, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

More precisely: everything seems normal along the way, but the actual upload never completes. - Jmabel ! talk 06:21, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Misfunction of "license reviewed failed, all right reserveds" on several pages.

Hello, MediaWiki:Gadget-LicenseReview.js cannot function properly when using license review failed, then select "All rights reserved" as the rational. For example, on this page, File:Angelica Bove Funweek.it 2024.jpg
This is a screenshot of a copyrighted video from youtube. Lemonaka (talk) 00:59, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-14

MediaWiki message delivery 19:22, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Did anyone else see this?

I went to Category:Tavares, Florida and on the {{Wikidata Infobox}} instance there I saw that the "official website" link read "Official Website of [somebody's name that started with I, think the second name started with H]". The link was correct and refreshing the page made it return to just "official website". Did anyone else see this or am I just losing my mind (small loss)? - The Bushranger (talk) 19:34, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Bug with Notices

Noticed (heh) this evening that the 'Notices' tab on Commons is not allowing you to clear notices from other Wikimedia projects unless you clear it from that project. - The Bushranger (talk) 01:36, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Ah that's great news since I recently accidentally clicked on one of these multi-notification items from another project (one from Commons while on English Wikipedia). Looks like I didn't lose my notifications then. I think this bug is good to have as a safeguard but it would be much better if there was a setting to require confirmation if one marks multiple or even all notifications as read (and then the issue you described was fixed). See wish W472: Confirmation dialog to prevent accidental clicks on Mark All As Read for notifications in the ongoing Community Wishlist. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:37, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Database servers in cluster31 are overloaded

I noticed today that when I try to access my watchlist page here in Commons from Edge (but the same problem also appears in Chrome - I see cluster26 mentioned there) an error message appears.

Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.

Try waiting a few minutes and refreshing.

(Cannot access the database: Cannot access the database: Database servers in cluster31 are overloaded. In order to protect application servers, the circuit breaking to databases of this section have been activated. Please try again a few seconds.)

The problem doesn't go away with waiting and refreshing, and can also appear when accessing Commons from the wikishootme tool. C messier (talk) 12:29, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Help to convert and upload 3 videos

Hi, I want to migrate these three videos to Commons, but both of the programs I use to convert .mp4 to webm are having trouble with them. Can someone help?

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/18004

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/16008

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/16277

Thank you! Victorgrigas (talk) 18:23, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

@Victorgrigas: you don't say what tools you have tried and failed with. Have you used https://video2commons.toolforge.org/? - Jmabel ! talk 19:57, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
Hi! I am using Miro Video Converter and Movavi Video Converter 7 (cause it's non-subscription), I'll try video2commons, i gave up on it years ago cause it fails for youtube now but I realize now that you mention it that it can be used for uploading a file directly. Thanks. Victorgrigas (talk) 23:10, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
@Victorgrigas: You may also find the VLC media player useful, it can re-encode stuff (including videos), is able to digest virtually all media formats that exist and is free and open source. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 00:20, 3 April 2026 (UTC)
@Victorgrigas you can do that using com:v2c like i just did File:The Grand Duchess of Luxembourg thanks the US, Luxembourg ; Civilians surrender arms, etc, Stendal, Germany.webm for https://catalog.archives.gov/id/18004 .
click "download", copy the mp4 link ( https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/mopix/111/adc/111-adc-4202.mp4 for 18004 that i already did), paste it in v2c, and proceed to upload. RoyZuo (talk) 10:52, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Action Required: Update templates/modules for electoral maps (Migrating from P1846 to P14226)

Hello everyone,

This is a notice regarding an ongoing data migration on Wikidata that may affect your election-related templates and Lua modules (such as Module:Itemgroup/list).

The Change:
Currently, many templates pull electoral maps from Wikidata using the property distribution map (P1846), combined with the qualifier depicts (P180): electoral result (Q19571328).

We are migrating this data (across roughly 4,000 items) to a newly created, dedicated property: apportionment diagram (P14226).

What You Need To Do:
To ensure your templates and infoboxes do not break or lose their maps, please update your local code to fetch data from P14226 instead of the old P1846 + P180 structure. A list of pages was generated using Wikimedia Global Search.

Deadline:
We are temporarily retaining the old data on P1846 to allow for a smooth transition. However, to complete the data cleanup on Wikidata, the old P1846 statements will be removed after May 1, 2026. Please update your modules and templates before this date to prevent any disruption to your wiki's election articles.

Let us know if you have any questions or need assistance with the query logic. Thank you for your help! ZI Jony using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:09, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Can SVGedit.js fix the image below?

When I open on Inkscape, it opens normally and the full image is shown, but when it's displayed on Wikipedia, part of the image doesn't show. If it's solved midway, disconsider. Candidyeoman55 (talk) 18:28, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

@Candidyeoman55: questions like this are usually better asked at Commons:Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop. - Jmabel ! talk 22:59, 3 April 2026 (UTC)
But how can I use the SVGedit.js to try to fix this file? Candidyeoman55 (talk) 23:15, 3 April 2026 (UTC)
I have no idea and, as I said above, this is not a particularly good place to ask. - Jmabel ! talk 03:49, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Page spaces in which to search

While people are reporting little glitches: Search here on Commons keeps losing my favored list of page spaces in which to search. Each time this happens I restore it without any great difficulty, but why would this keep getting lost? - Jmabel ! talk 17:00, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-15

MediaWiki message delivery 16:16, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

[Bug] Commons:Meet our photographers

Good evening everyone.

When viewing this page from a smartphone: , not all photographers appear. ComputerHotline (talk) 11:36, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Persistent 0x0 image size error for PDF files

Dear all technical users, Commons (as well as all other projects using files from Commons) has experienced a persistent 0x0 image size error for PDF files. In short, the system fails to generate thumbnails of pages for certain PDF files (typically larger ones). This has seriously affected works on Wikisource, where "Failed to initialize OpenSeadragon, no image found." is displayed on affected pages. OCR is also disabled.

While Yann reported that purging and uploading dummy files (then reverting to the old file) sometimes work, it is not effective for other cases. He also mentions that the problem worsens in the few days. While a Phabricator report is created, it has stalled for many weeks.

Comments from experienced users are appreciated, and follow-up measures on Phabricator are even more appreciated, thank you.廣九直通車 (talk) 11:45, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

There is no point in uploading pdf-files if they ar not usable. That raises the question if Commons should host pdf-files or stop allowing upload of new pdf-files. --MGA73 (talk) 08:50, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
@MGA73: (1) Most PDF files still work fine. (2) Even if not viewable on Commons, they can still be downloaded. (3) The problem here will presumably eventually be fixed.
So this is clearly not a reason to stop hosting PDFs. - Jmabel ! talk 18:43, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Image size issue

I just noticed that, apparently, on images, the links for "880 x 522 pixels" and "640 x 441 pixels" versions of images actually both link to the same size image ("960px-[imagename stuff]"). This can't be intentional, can it? The Bushranger (talk) 16:04, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: since not all files are going to have the same aspect ratios, can you link to a file that is an example of what you are talking about? - Jmabel ! talk 20:16, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
I do see something like this at File:En route from Mila 23 to Letea - 27 - water lilies.jpg: 640 × 427 pixels leads to "960...", 1,024 × 683 pixels and 1,280 × 853 pixels both lead to "1280...", "2,560 × 1,707" leads to "3840...". - Jmabel ! talk 20:21, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
@Jmabel: , heres two: File:Vickers Valiant B.2 4Sep53.png ("680 x 360" and "800 x 450" both lead to "960...") and File:Vulcan at Manston - Flickr - Elsie esq..jpg ("640 x 441" and "800 x 552" both link to "960..."). - The Bushranger (talk) 20:26, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
@Jmabel@The Bushranger The software only renders a fixed set of common sizes to reduce server loads - see mw:Common thumbnail sizes. Any usage of images loads one of these sizes and scales it in-page to the desired size. That's a change from a few months ago IIRC. It is somewhat frustrating that most of the default sizes listed on file pages don't match those sizes, so (as you experienced) the links are rather misleading. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:34, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
In short, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
Do we have any control over what sizes are offered on file pages, or do we have to wait for one set of WMF engineers to finally notice what another set of WMF engineers are doing? (If the latter, a phabricator report might speed this up.) - Jmabel ! talk 22:06, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
This is a known issue, but it's one of those where we were mostly waiting for the dust to settle on the other changes wrt to file sizing before dealing with it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:39, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
@Pi.1415926535 so someone changed how thumbs are created a few months ago and now we see a lot of problems because of that? I wonder if #Persistent 0x0 image size error for PDF files is one of the results. This problem pretty much closes down the use of pdf on Wikisource. --MGA73 (talk) 09:01, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
No it is not. it is totally unrelated. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:24, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-16

MediaWiki message delivery 15:16, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Commons:Picture of the Year/2025/Gallery/Other objects

In the description of some pictures, you can see a wiki code. How can I fix this? Futbollo (talk) 09:22, 14 April 2026 (UTC)