Add chunked uploading to Special:Upload (Community Wishlist/W46)

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Description

There are currently several ways to upload files within Wikimedia; Special:Upload, Special:UploadWizard, UploadDialog, Upload a new version and the ChunkedUpload Commons JS utility. Each of these have their respective use cases, benefits and downsides.

I'd like to propose adding Chunked uploading to Special:Upload and further unifying the underlying APIs and backend used by these other tools.

This has the following benefits:

• Special:Upload would gain the ability to upload files over 100MB
• Upload a new version link, would gain the ability to upload files over 100MB. This would almost eliminate the need for Common's custom ChunkedUploading JS tool
• All WMF wikis would be able to use chunked uploading
• Sites/3rd party users without Special:UploadWizard gain the ability to handle larger file uploads. This strengthens MediaWiki as a platform for ALL users.
• Reduces the complexity for users. You will not need to think as much about which tool supports which files.
• Chunked uploading will be used more often, but in a less complicated environment than Special:UploadWizard. This makes it much easier and more likely that WMF/devs can detect and debug issues with the chunked upload flow.
• We can further centralise all the retry and resumption logic among Special:Upload, UploadDialog and Special:UploadWizard and make them better testable.
• Better and consistent usage in addition to more documentation of our capabilities makes it easier for 3rd party tools to provide bulk upload tooling, which is another widely desired community wish.
• Would be a good followup project to the work that is happening right now for UploadWizard. The knowledge about these topics will be present again with WMF, so lets' use that built up skill.
• Might provide opportunity to Codex'ify the Special:Upload form and make other minor long overdue improvements to its UI.

Downside:

• More non-advanced users might succeed at uploading files, which might require more review of files

Additional requirements:

• Basic form fallback remains in place for Special:Upload to retain capability to upload without JS being enabled.
• Chunked JS upload is only used for uploads over 100MB

Assigned focus area

Unassigned

Type of wish

System change

Tags

Multimedia and Commons, Wikisource

Affected users

uploaders of files within WMF wikis and those outside

Phabricator tasks

T26217, T74768

Other details

• Created: 15:03, 24 July 2024
• Last updated: 03:04, 2 October 2025
• Author: TheDJ (talk)

Voting

This wish currently has 2 supporters. Voting for this wish is open until it is completed.

Supporters of this wish

Support Pppery (talk) 16:46, 10 October 2025

Support Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 03:45, 23 October 2025