Switch Back to Yahoo Mail Classic – Another Alternative

In one of my previous posts, I talked about how you can switch back to Yahoo Mail Classic. Unfortunately, as Yahoo continues to change its methods, its getting harder for  users to switch back to their old mail. Well, for those of you who are having problems, I have an alternative solution that doesn’t involve changing screen resolutions.

For users of Firefox, you can install an add-on called “User Agent Switcher“. It’s a free add-on and will help you switch back to Yahoo Mail Classic in a round-about way. It changes the user agent of your browser, thereby tricking the web server into thinking that you’re using a different browser than you actually are. If you follow these steps, you should be able to switch back to Yahoo Mail Classic and enjoy all of the old features that you’re familiar with.

1. Install the User Agent Switcher

User Agent Switcher is a free add-on for Firefox that you can install once and then uninstall it once you’ve finished switching back to Yahoo Mail Classic. Download it here and restart your browser once it’s installed.

IMPORTANT: You don’t need the User Agent Switcher add-on once you’ve completed these steps, you will have browser compatibility issues if you don’t uninstall or disable the add-on after you’ve switched back to Yahoo Mail Classic.

2. Switch the User Agent

Under the Tools menu, you should now see a menu option called “Default User Agent”. Select Default User Agent > Internet Explorer > Internet Explorer 6. If you can’t find the Tools menu, click “ALT + T” on your keyboard and it should appear. You can also right-click near the top of your browser window and select “Menu Bar” to get the Tools menu to show up, but ALT + T seems to do the trick quite nicely.

3. Navigate to Yahoo Mail

Open a new tab and type http://mail.yahoo.com/ into the URL address bar (or click the link to the left). Type in your username and password as you normally would. After you click sign-in, you should be taken to an error screen. The Yahoo server now thinks that you’re using an outdated browser (in this case, Internet Explorer 6). Find the link that says “Return to a previous version of Yahoo! Mail” and left-click on the link.

Now you have set your Yahoo Mail preferences to Yahoo Mail Classic. The Yahoo Mail Classic option should now be the default across all of your computers and browsers. I recommend uninstalling the User Agent Switcher add-on, since you hopefully won’t need it in the future for this little trick (so long as you don’t click “Get the newest Yahoo! Mail” or a similar link. In the least, you need to set your User Agent back to the default setting.