Phones and tablets

Updated 2026-08-14

Most wiki readers arrive on a phone, mid-game, looking for one number. A page that works there is closer to your desktop page than you would expect: the gap is four specific things rather than a second design.

The three widths

The switches on the toolbar. Not a preview: the canvas becomes that width and the same rules fire that fire on a real device.

Build on desktop, then look at the phone before you save. It takes a second and catches almost everything.

What handles itself

Columns stackA two-column row becomes two stacked blocks. You do not set it up and cannot forget it.

Pictures fitAn image scales to its container rather than pushing the page sideways.

The sidebar foldsInto a menu, and the reader gets the whole width for the content.

A page built from headings, text, pictures and columns is usually already fine. What breaks is where you overrode the default.

The four that break

A fixed width600px is 600px on a 416px screen and the page scrolls sideways. Use a maximum width, or let the block fill its container.

Big textA 48px heading is four words per line on a phone. The heading sizes handle this; a hand-set font size does not.

Wide tablesShow the three columns that matter. Or let the table scroll sideways inside its own box, which is fine as long as the PAGE does not.

Anything needing hoverThere is no pointer on a phone, so a hover note is invisible. Never put something a reader needs in one.

Check the sparse entry too

For pages built from a shared layout, switch the preview entry as well as the width. A template can look right on a phone with a well-filled entry and fall apart on a sparse one, where a condition should have collapsed a section and did not.

Two switches, four seconds, and it is the difference between a wiki people use on their phone and one they stop using on their phone.