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Wikipedia:How to disable the VisualEditor

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If you don't want to use VisualEditor, for whatever reason, this page documents ways of avoiding VisualEditor and how to turn VisualEditor off.

Ignoring VisualEditor

The simplest way is avoid VE is to click the tab "Edit source", instead of the tab "Edit", if you are going to edit an entire article or a User page.

If you want to edit a section of a page with the old wikitext editor, you need to hover the mouse pointer over the "edit" link to the right of the section name (or over the section name itself), then click "edit source" when that link appears.

This approach keeps open the possibility - deliberate or accidental - of editing in VE. If you absolutely don't want that, for at least a period of time, then see the options below.

The official opt-out

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 click "Save".

As to how long this option will remain in place (that is, how long VisualEditor will be in beta), the Wikimedia Foundation has not officially offered any estimate. Looking at what the VE team expects to accomplish by the end of calendar year 2013 ("Q3 2013/2014"), it is quite possible that VE will continue to be classified as "beta" until sometime in calendar year 2014.

A gadget to hide VisualEditor

Another option is to use a gadget to hide VisualEditor. You should note that as a user-created-and-maintained gadget, it's not supported by the VisualEditor team. Thus it may break without warning (probably temporarily) after a VisualEditor code update.

To activate the gadget, go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, and in the "Editing section", tick the box for "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" . Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save".

You can do both the official opt-out and the gadget opt-out, if you're the belt-and-suspenders kind of person, or if you really, really dislike VE.

Options for IP users

Turning off VisualEditor for anonymous (IP) editors, using Wikipedia functionality, is not possible, because IP editors do not have preferences, nor do they have their own css or js pages. However, the following methods may work, if only for certain browsers. Please note that these methods may involve settings that disable some functionalities of Wikipedia, besides VE, and/or some functionalities of other websites. There is no promise, nor guarantee, being made here regarding the effectiveness, reliability, or safety of the methods listed below.

Any IP editor can, of course, become a registered editor (at no cost; only an email address is required), and then use the options above to block VE. (For more information on becoming a registered editor, see Wikipedia:Tutorial/Registration.

Stylish (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera)

Use the CSS customisation addon Stylish, which is available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. After you installed that addon, install the the "wikipedia-visualeditor-killer" user-style.

Firefox

Edit your UserChrome.css file to add the following user CSS rules. 

.mw-editsection-link-primary { display:none !important; }
.mw-editsection-divider { display:none !important; }
.mw-editsection-link-secondary { visibility: visible !important; }
.mw-editsection-bracket { display:none !important; }
a[href*="veaction=edit"] { display:none !important; }

Unsupported browsers (including Internet Explorer)

At the moment, VisualEditor is turned off for all Internet Explorer users. There are advantages and disadvantages to using IE as a browser, but if you're an anonymous editor who doesn't mind the disadvantages, and are using Windows, one option is to edit Wikipedia using IE - you won't be offered the opportunity to edit with VisualEditor.

At some point, IE 9 and 10 will in fact be supported by VE. When that happens, you can check back here for more alternatives. Or you can use an even older IE version (8 or earlier) to edit Wikipedia - older versions are not expected to be ever supported by VE.

Other (less-used) browsers may also not be supported by VE, now or in the future. You'll need to check each, individually, to see if the "Edit source" tab is visible on a Wikipedia article; if it is, then there will be an "Edit" tab to use VE, and the browser is supported by VisualEditor.

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