When Yahoo! Mail doesn't work. Ideally, there would be an easy way to tell when the Yahoo Mail service is down or in trouble. Unfortunately, as of early 2019, Yahoo! Mail does not provide system status information for its free email service.
Unlike many other web service providers, this means you can't quickly identify the status of your Yahoo service. The following sequence of steps can help you identify and/or resolve problems with Yahoo! Mail doesn't work.
Basic Yahoo Mail
If you can connect to Yahoo! Mail but it doesn't look like you expect, you may be seeing basic Yahoo Mail. Yahoo Mail may automatically switch you to basic Yahoo Mail when you have a slow connection, use an unsupported browser, use a device with a lower screen resolution, or have JavaScript disabled. When you return to a device and connection that can resolve these issues, Yahoo Mail should automatically return to "full-featured" Yahoo Mail.
Check X (formerly Twitter) for tweets from @YahooMail, @YahooCare or even the main @Yahoo account. While rare, a tweet from any of these accounts can serve as official confirmation that Yahoo! The mail service is experiencing a problem.
You need an X account to view tweets.
Additionally, a quick search for X can help you determine if others are having trouble connecting to Yahoo! mail. Search for terms like Yahoo! Mail, YahooMail, or #yahoomail. Click the link for each term to see the X most recent search results for each item. If you see a few recent tweets from people mentioning issues with Yahoo! Mail, any issue you encounter could affect many accounts, not just yours.
Check third-party status services to see if other websites are unable to access Yahoo Mail. For example, open a browser and access the https://isup.me service, then enter mail.yahoo.com to see if the website can connect to Yahoo Mail. Alternatively, DownDetector maintains a status page for tracking and reporting Yahoo Mail connection and outage issues at https://down detector.com/status/yahoo-mail. At any given time, you should see at least a few issues reported. However, if you find that you are discovering hundreds or thousands of problems, the problem is almost certainly beyond your control.
If any of these status services indicate a problem, you can stop troubleshooting. This is an issue that the Yahoo Mail team needs to work on.
If these tools don't report any issues, you'll need to troubleshoot your setup.
Turn the device off, wait a minute, and then turn it back on. Often, restarting your system will resolve various application, memory, and/or connection issues. On laptops and desktop devices, a restart can often resolve temporary issues with an application as well. On mobile devices, restarting allows your device to reestablish a network connection.
Open a web browser on your device and see if you can connect to other websites, such as google.com. If you can't connect to the Internet, you might have a network connection problem.
If you're using a laptop, tablet, or phone, you may be trying to connect to a different network. For example, try connecting to another nearby Wi-Fi network, such as a local library, coffee shop, or workplace. Alternatively, if your device has a cellular connection (such as a smartphone), turn off Wi-Fi so your device connects to your mobile provider's network. After switching networks, try connecting to Yahoo! before sending emails.
Try a different way to connect to Yahoo Mail. If you usually use an application to access Yahoo! Mail, give the browser a try. Or, if you usually log in to Yahoo! and send mail using one browser, try using a different browser. You can install and try using Chrome, Firefox or Brave to access Yahoo! Mail. All three browsers offer versions for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. Or, if you typically use one of these three browsers, switch to Safari (on macOS and iOS) or Edge (on Windows, iOS, or Android).
Choose one of the above browsers, install it on your device, open it, then go to https://mail.yahoo.com and log in.
If you have an Android, iPhone, or iPad, you can install the Yahoo Mail app to connect directly to Yahoo Mail. Unlike mobile mail apps, which may require some adjustments to settings or configuration customization, Yahoo's mobile app is expressly designed to provide access to Yahoo Mail on mobile devices. Install Yahoo Mail for Android or Yahoo Mail for iOS and log in to your account.
If you have access to another Internet-connected device, try accessing your Yahoo! email on that device. For example, if you're having trouble accessing Yahoo Mail on your desktop computer, use a laptop, tablet, or smartphone instead. Open a browser on this different device, then go to https://mail.yahoo.com and log in to your account.
When the system does not accept your account name and/or password, please initiate the password recovery process.
On the Yahoo Mail login page, click or click the "Trouble signing in?" link. This will take you to begin the account access recovery process. On this page, enter any of the four pieces of information to begin the recovery process:
- email address
- a mobile phone number
- recover email address
- recovery phone number
Please follow the instructions, which will vary depending on the recovery method and the information you provide.
If none of the above methods allow you to access your Yahoo Mail account, you may need to contact Yahoo Support for assistance.
