Commons:Media help

Help pages for playing media files on Commons

To play sound and video files

File types

Wikimedia Commons uses Ogg Vorbis files for sound files and Ogg Theora or WebM for video files.
We prefer those file types to other, more common file types, because the Ogg file types are not encumbered with patents. You can learn in the following pages which software and which codecs you need to play our media files.

The latest versions of all major desktop web browsers are able to play sound files and videos without any additional codecs or software. Mobile browsers are not yet supported except on Android.

If you are looking for help creating or editing media files, see Commons:Software and Commons:Video/Commons:Audio.

Choose your operating system:

Windows

Mac OS X

Unix (Linux, BSD etc.)

iOS (iPhone, iPad etc.)

Android

Back to start page