Help:Options to hide an image

Some people do not wish to see some images on Wikipedia for various reasons – images may not be suitable for a work environment; they may wish to prevent their children from seeing such images; their religion may forbid it; and so on.

Wikipedia is not censored, and the community will in general not be prepared to remove content on grounds of being objectionable to some people. Wikipedia will also not use specific disclaimers within articles warning readers of such content. All articles fall under the site-wide Content disclaimer. However, readers who do not wish to be exposed to certain content have a number of options to selectively prevent Wikipedia content from being displayed on their screen.

This page is more suitable for you if:

1. you still want to visit Wikipedia (rather than creating a fork or simply staying away) and,
2. you find an image offensive but, apart from your perception of its offensiveness, have nothing more to add, within the premises of Wikipedia policies, to the discussions pertaining to replacement or removal of images by building consensus.

Wikipedia readers can influence how Wikipedia content is displayed on their screens in two ways:

1. By creating an account and reading Wikipedia while logged in. Logged-in users can use personal cascading style sheets to display images selectively (explained below).
2. By filtering content locally, either by configuring their web browser (including the possibility to display no images at all), or by setting up a proxy (such as Privoxy) (explained below).

Wikipedia user preferences

Further information: Help:Cascading style sheets

To create an account, visit Special:Userlogin.

People with an account on the Wikipedia website are able to use features of the wiki software to disable the display of specific images or sets of images:

Hide all images until click to view

All images will be replaced by this Battenburg pattern, until you click to see

Once you have an account, you can hide all images and view them by clicking on the placeholder. You need to install a user script (see User:Anomie/hide-images):

First, copy this to your common.js:

importScript('User:Anomie/hide-images.js');

Then copy this to your common.css:

@import url('//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&title=User:Anomie/hide-images.css&ctype=text/css');

Click on the checkered placeholder to show the image in the page. Reload the page to hide again. You can turn off this entire feature by undoing the changes above ("deleting" your scripts).

Disable images on specific pages

Once you have an account, you can disable the images on a specific page by changing your personal settings at your CSS page. This allows you to avoid images that offend you without affecting other users. To do this, create a page at Special:MyPage/common.css and add the following line:

.page-(page name) img {display: none;}

Remove the parentheses around the page's name, e.g.

.page-Muhammad img {display: none;}

If the page name includes spaces or punctuation marks, use underscores instead:

.page-Muhammad_name img {display: none;}

instead of

.page-Muhammad (name) img {display: none;}

Disable specific images

You can also disable specific images by filename. Also at Special:MyPage/common.css, add the following line:

body a[href="/wiki/File:(file name)"] {display: none;}

once for each image you wish to disable, e.g.

body a[href="/wiki/File:Erection_Development.jpg"] {display: none;}

or

body a[href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:(file name)"] {display: none;}

for images on Commons, e.g.

body a[href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_patriotic_open_osteosynthesis.jpg"] {display: none;}

Bear in mind that the images included in any given article, and their filenames, are subject to change over time as the article develops.

Here is an example file addressing content preferences with regard to depictions of Muhammad aimed at moderately strict Sunni Muslims. It's an example. Individual content preferences may vary.

Disable all images of the "bad image list"

MediaWiki:Bad image list restricts specified images from being seen except on its image page and certain articles. It is possible to prevent these images from being viewed at all by changing your account's javascript page. See User:Mr.Z-man/badimages for details.

Note that this has limited utility as images are added to the bad image list because of concerns about disruptive use and vandalism, not because someone finds the image objectionable. Many images that some readers may find objectionable are not eligible for the list.

Go to the mobile Wikipedia site (en.m.wikipedia.org) and disable all images

This option currently does not work, see [1] for details

At the bottom of an Wikipedia article page you click on "mobile view"...

This is a simple workaround for readers that don't want to or cannot change settings or reconfigure their browser.

Every Wikipedia article has a link at the bottom of the page to "Mobile view", which brings you to the Wikipedia version optimized for mobile devices (only reading, no editing). You can also go there directly: en.m.wikipedia.org (other language versions too). On mobile Wikipedia you go to "settings" and choose "images off". Done. All images are disabled (without placeholders) while you browse the site. You can enable images again at the same place.

Configure your browser

How to block images site-wide (all Wikimedia projects)

Mozilla Firefox

Recent versions (e.g. 39.0)

1. Right-click on the example image to the right.
2. Click on View image info from the pop up menu. If this option does not show, click on the icon to left of the address in the address bar (a globe, triangle or padlock icon) and click more information.
3. Under the media tab, The image should be already selected. If not, select your image from the list underneath the word address.
4. Check the box that says Block images from....
5. Close the window

More Information

How to set up your browser not to see images at all

User scripts

If your browser supports Greasemonkey user scripts, you can install the "Wikipedia Image Hider".

Google Chrome

1. Click top right icon on Google Chrome browser, then choose "Settings".
2. Click "Show advanced settings" below, scroll to Privacy column, then click on "Content settings".
3. On Images, either "Show all images" and click "Manage exceptions", then key in Wikipedia, or simply choose "Do not show any images".

Mozilla Firefox

With add-on

There are add-ons which provide image hiding functionality https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/image-block/

All Mozilla-based browsers

Enter about:config in the location box, and change permissions.default.image to 2 to disable image downloads. To restore the default behavior, change it back to 1.

Opera

Settings → websites → images → select "do not show any images."

Internet Explorer 7 and onward

1. Click the "Tools" button.
2. Select "Internet Options".
3. Click the "Advanced" tab.
4. Scroll down to "Multimedia" and uncheck "Show pictures".

Safari 3

1. On Mac OSX, select the "Safari" menu.
2. Click "Preferences".
3. Click on the "Appearance" button.
4. Uncheck "Display images when the page opens."

Lynx

The use of a text-based web browser such as Lynx will allow you to view Wikipedia without seeing any images at all, unless explicitly downloaded and shown in a separate application.

Install the Adblock Extension (Firefox)

Further information: Adblock

Open Tools and click the "Add-Ons" button in the "Main" Tab. Select and install "Adblock Plus". After restarting your browser, you have a menu labelled with an "ABP" icon in the top right of your browser window. From this menu, you can define precisely what content should be suppressed by your browser.

Do not use a predefined filterset, which may be configured to allow (whitelist) all Wikimedia content. Instead, use the "open blockable items" option to review whitelisted content on the current page, and disable filter rules as desired.

To block a specific image, right-click on it and select "Adblock image" from the context menu. For example, right-clicking on the top image at Penis, you get the option to block "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1d/Labelled_bw_flaccid_penis.jpg/*". This will block all scaled-down versions of File:Labelled_bw_flaccid_penis.jpg. If you want to filter all images containing "penis" as part of the filename, use the rule "http://upload.wikimedia.org/*penis*".

Once you have defined a filterset, you can distribute it to interested parties sharing your content preferences.

Use a proxy filter

You can selectively block content by using a web filter program. Freely available examples include Privoxy, SafeSquid and DansGuardian. Once you have installed such a program, you can exert fine-grained control over what content is received by your web browser.

See also

• Help:Preferences
• MediaWiki:Bad image list
• Wikipedia:Profanity
• Wikipedia:Tools
• Meta:Image filter referendum
• mw:Personal image filter
• mw:Extension:ImageFilter