Where Wikipedia Is Read Screensaver
The Where Wikipedia Is Read screensaver shows wikipedia readership by country, key-less. Wikimedia deliberately publishes country totals as ranges rather than exact figures, because a precise per-country number is a step towards identifying who read what. The board draws the ceiling and labels it as one. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Where Wikipedia Is Read screensaver works
The saver reads the source described above and draws it on a canvas — no account, no tracking.
Wikipedia readership by country, key-less. Wikimedia deliberately publishes country totals as ranges rather than exact figures, because a precise per-country number is a step towards identifying who read what. The board draws the ceiling and labels it as one.
It refreshes on a schedule, so what you see stays current.
Colours and any options can be changed in settings; nothing is stored beyond your own browser.
How Wikimedia counts readers by country
The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, publishes pageview data through its Analytics API so that researchers can see how the encyclopedia is used. Because location data raises privacy concerns, the Foundation follows its Data Publication Guidelines and keeps a Country and Territory Protection List.
For country page views, the published values are bucketed rather than exact. The documentation's example shows a figure like 7,876,451 reported only as the range 1000000-9999999. Only countries with more than 100 page views in the requested period are returned, and zero values are not reported. A separate rank field still shows which country has more views, even when two fall in the same bucket. The saver draws the upper end of the range and labels it as a ceiling, which is why bars that look different may in reality be close together, or the same.
A country's readership depends on population, internet access and language, not on interest alone, and country is not the same as language: the English edition is read all over the world. The result is a picture of broad geographic reach, not a precise count.
A worked example
Wikipedia readership by country, key-less. Wikimedia deliberately publishes country totals as ranges rather than exact figures, because a precise per-country number is a step towards identifying who read what. The board draws the ceiling and labels it as one.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display.
- Every value on screen comes from the live source — nothing is simulated.
- Press ESC to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real data?
- Yes — it comes from the source named on this page and is refreshed on a schedule.
- Is a key needed?
- No. This source is fully key-less.
- Is it free?
- Yes, and it runs entirely in your browser.
- Why are the values ranges and not exact counts?
- Wikimedia buckets country-level data as part of its privacy approach to publishing location data, so the exact figure is not released.
- Does the country mean the language of the article?
- No. Country describes where views came from, not the language of the article, so people in many countries read the English edition.