Wikipedia:How to disable the VisualEditor
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At the moment, VisualEditor is turned off for all Internet Explorer users and users of older web browsers. Also, it is currently not available to unregistered users. If you don't want to use VisualEditor on other browsers, for whatever reason, this page documents ways of avoiding VisualEditor and how to turn VisualEditor off.
Ignoring VisualEditor
One simple way to 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
Access to VisualEditor is handled by Beta Features on the English Wikipedia. To remove your access to VisualEditor, go to the Beta Features section of Special:Preferences and uncheck the "VisualEditor" item.
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
VisualEditor is not currently available to unregistered or logged-out users at the English Wikipedia.
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.