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Yahoo! Mail: get the old interface back

Pier Francesco Piccolomini

Pier Francesco Piccolomini

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The restyling of Yahoo! Mail hasn’t been popular at all, especially with longstanding users. Here’s how to get the old interface back in less than a minute.

Yahoo! Mail, as you know, is one of the oldest email services still in existence. Millions of people used it for years and were perfectly satisfied. But things change and a few months ago, Yahoo! decided to have a bit of a graphical makeover.

Yahoo! Mail: get the old interface back

The aesthetic results were okay, but many aficionados turned their noses up at being deprived of some important functions, like tabs.

For those who don’t want to resign themselves to the new Yahoo! Mail interface, however, there’s good news: you can get the old one back with a few simple steps.

How to get the old Yahoo! Mail interface back if you use Internet Explorer

For those who browse with Microsoft’s browser, the procedure is simple. Sign in to your Yahoo inbox and select select Compatibility View Settings from the Tools menu.

Yahoo! Mail for IE

In the Add this website field, type yahoo.com, click on Add and then on Close.

Compatibility View Settings in IE

Your email page will be reloaded with the old interface, complete with tabs!

How to get the old Yahoo! Mail interface back if you use Chrome

If you use Google’s browser, you can use an extension that changes the user agent. The procedure is simple and totally legal.

First, go into your Yahoo! Mail inbox. Then install User-Agent Switcher.

Now simply click on the black mask that you’ll see to the right of the Chrome address bar.

User Agent Switcher in Chrome

User Agent Switcher in Chrome

On the next page, select version 9. Your email page will automatically reload with the old interface.

To return to the default user agent, select Chrome Default in the User-Agent Switcher menu.

Firefox and Opera

During our tests with these two browsers, we weren’t able to achieve any great results.

In the case of Firefox, using Internet Explorer 8 and 9 and the User-Agent Switcher, we managed to get the old Yahoo! Mail interface, but almost none of the elements were clickable.

With Opera, (again, using the User-Agent Switcher) the interface remained unchanged regardless of the user agent we selected.

It hard to say how long this trick will last, but for the moment, it’s the only way to immediately regain the old Yahoo! Mail interface!

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