Wikipedia:How to disable the VisualEditor

VisualEditor (VE) is an online rich-text editor for MediaWiki-powered wikis that provides a direct visual way to edit pages based on the "what you see is what you get" principle. The VE is turned off for users of older web browsers. If you don't want to use the VE on other browsers, for whatever reason, this page documents ways of avoiding the VE and how to turn the VE off.

Many Wikipedia users don't use VE while editing because to edit the code easier for them.

Ignoring VisualEditor while editing
One simple way to avoid the VE while editing 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 the VE. If you absolutely don't want that, for at least a period of time, then see the options below.

How to disable the VisualEditor for editing in Preferences
To disable the VE for editing you may check user preferences on the English Wikipedia. To disable the visual editior, go to the Editing section of Special:Preferences and check "Temporarily disable the VisualEditor while it is in beta" (or clear the box "Enable the visual editor" in the 2022 variant of Wikipedia. See illustration).

Options for IP users
The VE is not currently available to unregistered or logged-out users at the English Wikipedia. However, it is possible to access VE by manually editing the URL. To do so, append  to the end of the page name. For example, change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?veaction=edit to open a random page in VisualEditor.

Unsupported browsers
At the moment, the VE is turned off for users of Internet Explorer 9 and earlier. 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 an older version of Internet Explorer – you won't be offered the opportunity to edit with the VE.

At some point, IE 9 will in fact be supported by the 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 will not ever be supported by the VE.

Other (less-used) browsers may also not be supported by the 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 the VE, and the browser is supported by the VE.