Wikipedia:How to disable the VisualEditor

If you don't want to use VisualEditor for whatever reason, this page documents ways of turning VisualEditor off. The simplest and preferred way is just to click "Edit source" instead of edit, but the support for editing sections of an article in source is poor.

The official opt-out of Beta

To use this option, Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing, and check the box labelled "Temporarily disable VisualEditor while it is in beta", then hit save. VisualEditor will be turned off until the end of its Beta.

This option is recommended, as it will automatically give you a chance to try VisualEditor again when it's more developed and fully-featured.

A gadget to hide VisualEditor

Another option is to use a user-created gadget to hide VisualEditor. However, as a user-created gadget, it's not supported by the VisualEditor team, and may break without warning should the code for VisualEditor be updated.

To activate the gadget, go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, tick the box for "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" (under "Editing"), then scroll to the bottom and click "save".

Options for IP users

It is impossible to make an officially supported way to turn off VisualEditor for anonymous users. However, the following methods are recommended by the user community. They may only work for certain browsers, or may require settings that disable other functionalities of Wikipedia or other websites, and the Wikimedia Foundation can offer no guarantees about the effectiveness, reliability, nor safety of these methods.

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