Page MenuHomePhabricator

Help button is missing on mobile Special:Watchlist but present on desktop
Open, In Progress, Needs TriagePublicBUG REPORT

Description

Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

  • Open Special:Watchlist on desktop (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmcloud.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist).
  • Observe the presence of the Help button/link on the page.
  • Switch to mobile view (using a mobile device or browser dev tools).
  • Navigate to Special:Watchlist in mobile view.
  • Compare the UI elements with the desktop version.

What happens?:

  • On desktop, the Help button is visible and accessible on Special:Watchlist and directs to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Watchlist when clicked on .
  • On mobile, the Help button is missing entirely.
  • There is no alternative way for users to access the Watchlist help documentation from the mobile interface.

What should have happened instead?:

  • The Help button should be available on both desktop and mobile versions of Special:Watchlist and direct to the same link.
  • Mobile users should have equivalent access to Watchlist help content as desktop users.
  • The Help button placement and behavior on mobile should be consistent with mobile UI patterns (e.g., within an overflow menu if needed).

Software version (on Special:Version page; skip for WMF-hosted wikis like Wikipedia):

Other information (browser name/version, screenshots, etc.):

DesktopMobile
2026-02-05_17-24-52.png (987×1 px, 251 KB)
2026-02-05_16-32-39.png (1×1 px, 115 KB)

Event Timeline

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald Transcript

Hi, I just tried to replicate the issue on my system but I do not see any problem with the visibility of the Help button on the mobile interface. Below are the screenshots.

Desktop

image.png (866×1 px, 139 KB)

Mobile

image.png (631×737 px, 72 KB)

@Complicatedintegral: That's because your "Mobile" screenshot is not the Mobile View. See the link at the bottom of that page

@Aklapper Yes, you're right. I just looked into it again and I could replicate the issue. I will start by checking whether there is any inconsistency with the MinervaNeue skin which is leading to the Help button not being visible on mobile and will post a patch or update here once I have made progress. Any feedback is welcome!

Hi, i just wanted to share what I have tried so far and wanted to get your insight on whether I am proceeding in the right direction.

The help link added through OutputPage::addHelpLink() appears fine on desktop, i.e. the Vector skin but the link does not appear when the Minerva skin is used. I tried to expose the link using SkinMinerva::getSecondaryActions() but I found out that Minerva does not rely on sidebar/toolbox APIs there, so I assumed it was not the right layer to work in. I also checked the PageActionsMenu.mustache page but I did not make any progress that way either so I wanted to ask for help on how this should ideally be approached. Any feedback is welcome!

@GMikesell-WMF, it looks like the task you merged in is slightly different than this one. That task refers to the general editing help page in the main menu (accessible from any page), whereas this task is about the specific help for watchlists (accessible from the watchlist page). Would it make sense to undo the merge?

the general editing help page in the main menu

I'm not sure which link you mean. Could you share a screenshot?

I think this task refers to the help link in general, which is set for lots of special pages and not just Special:Watchlist. For example, desktop Special:Contributions links to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:User_contributions but the mobile version of the same page doesn't link to that help page anywhere.

@Samwilson, sure, see here for the version that appears on desktop, leading to Help:Contents on en-wiki:

Foobar-Wikipedia-02-09-2026_10_16_AM.png (869×1 px, 256 KB)

There is no equivalent version on the menu on mobile as screenshotted in the description of T252796, which is what that task is about.

Thanks! Yeah, that is a different help link (it's part of MediaWiki:Sidebar).

But I wonder if the two should be thought about together? On desktop there are often two help links on a page, but because there's less space on mobile it might be more confusing to do that.

image.png (600×1 px, 112 KB)

But yeah, it looks like these tasks aren't duplicates (sorry, I suggested to @GMikesell-WMF that they were!).

Samwilson changed the task status from Open to In Progress.Wed, Feb 11, 2:53 AM