Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons (English main page) is an online repository of free-use images, videos, sound, spoken texts, and other media files. It was launched on 7 September 2004.
As of 2024, it holds over 110,000,000 files (572 TB).
What is Wikimedia Commons?
The aim of Wikimedia Commons is to provide a media file repository "that makes available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content to all, and that acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation."
Wikimedia Commons is a multilingual project. The default language is English, but registered users can customize their interface to any other available user interface translations. Many pages have also been translated into various languages. Users are encouraged to help with translations.
Please see the Wikimedia Commons welcome page and the community portal for full details. For a list of current and potential uses of Wikimedia Commons, see Why Wikimedia Commons is useful. For historic details the historic project plan and the The Commons Log.
Central media repository
Formerly each of the many Wikimedia projects—every single Wikipedia and Wiktionary, as well as Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and Wikiquote—used their own image namespace. There was no reliable way to reference images on other projects. Many good, free uploads on one wiki could go unnoticed on another. Thus, there was needless duplication of intellectual and creative work, as well as unnecessary redundancy and increased maintenance.
One can use the {{Commons}} templates in the Wikimedia sister projects (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, etc.) to link to Commons. There also is a volunteer-run app for the platform.
Direct links to project
For the home page of this project, please see commons.wikimedia.org for more details.