How to access Yahoo Mail using Pop3 or Imap

Martin Brinkmann
Oct 10, 2013
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Yahoo! launched a redesigned version of Yahoo Mail two days ago and it caught part of the user base of the service by surprise. While the changes look good on paper for free users, as they do get access to several features that were reserved for premium members previously, not all users are happy with the new interface.

It is possible to change some settings back to - close to - old values, but some features like tabs seem to be gone forever. While it is currently possible to switch back and forth between the new interface and the basic interface in the settings to get tabs back eventually (since Yahoo seems to offer two different basic versions right now, you may need to try multiple times), it is likely that this option will be gone in the near future as well.

Accessing Yahoo Mail using Pop3 or Imap

One of the benefits of the changes over at Yahoo Mail is official support for Pop3 and Imap connections for free account users of the service. What this means is that you can connect to Yahoo Mail using third party tools like Thunderbird, Outlook, or other mail services that support these protocols.

If you are missing tabs for instance, you may want to consider using Mozilla Thunderbird to access your Yahoo Mails when you are working on your computer, as tabs are supported by the cross-platform program.

Good news is, it is really easy to set up Yahoo Mail in an email client. Let me show you how that is done using Thunderbird.

Note: Setup in other clients may vary a bit, but the values that you need to enter do not really change at all, so that you can use the information provided in this guide to set it up in any email client, desktop, mobile or web.

The information you need

You need the following information to set up your Yahoo Mail account in an email program:

  • Your Name: A name
  • Email address: username@yahoo.com
  • Password: your Yahoo Mail password

Pop3 incoming server:

  • Server hostname: pop.mail.yahoo.com
  • Port: 995
  • SSL: SSL/TLS
  • Authentication: normal password

IMAP incoming server:

  • Server hostname: imap.mail.yahoo.com
  • Port: 993
  • SSL: SSL/TLS
  • Authentication: normal password

Outgoing server SMTP:

  • Server hostname: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
  • Port: 465
  • SSL: SSL/TLS
  • Authentication: normal password

Configuring Thunderbird

yahoo mail setup pop3 imap

  • You can download Mozilla Thunderbird from the official website of the project. It is a free download.
  • Once you have installed it and ran the default setup, select File > New > Existing Mail Account.
  • Enter the Yahoo email address in the Your Name and Email Address field, and your Yahoo Mail password in the password field.
  • Click continue.
  • You can then decide whether you want to use IMAP (remote folders) or POP3 (keep mail on your computer).
  • The default settings that Thunderbird proposes are working right out of the box and there is no need to change them.

Thunderbird will test the password one last time after you hit the done button. If everything turns out alright, you should see the new Yahoo Mail account listed in the left sidebar in the email client. Click on Inbox to display all messages. You can open messages in tabs by middle-clicking them, or Shift-left-clicking, or by right-clicking them and selecting to open them in new tabs.

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Comments

  1. Ira said on September 21, 2017 at 3:43 am
    Reply

    I have used pop3 with Thunderbird for years. All of a sudden it stopped working. I got a password failed server error try again later error. Took me a while to figure out. My email address was .co.uk. My server was set up as pop.mail.yahoo.co.uk. That is no longer supported it needs to be pop.mail.yahoo.com. Presumably the same error happens if you have your server set to anything other than .com.

  2. wkristen said on February 5, 2017 at 12:29 pm
    Reply

    I prescribe you likewise double tap the YPOPs! System tray symbol to change various number settings. The access to Yahoo mail become easy and expressive by adding Mozilla thunderbird.

  3. Asok Asus said on March 26, 2014 at 5:04 am
    Reply

    Based on this article, I configured thunderbird for a client to access her email via IMAP, and the tbird connections to the yahoo IMAP server threw continuous errors and then nuked ALL of her email. We logged onto yahoo via the web interface, and indeed ALL of her thousands of emails had been deleted.

    Further investigation shows yahoo STILL warns people against doing this as follows:

    “NOTE: These settings are only meant to be used on a mobile device and are not supported on a desktop email client. If you decide to use IMAP on a desktop email client, we will be unable to provide support. Some email clients do not allow the ability to disable ActiveSync, which can cause emails to be deleted. If emails are deleted from the desktop email client while using IMAP, they cannot be recovered.”

    (https://help.yahoo.com/kb/yahoo-business-mail/imap-settings-sln17502.html)

  4. Terry Hollett said on March 8, 2014 at 12:11 pm
    Reply

    Just a note. I had to change my old account settings to the newer ones after the new year when I realized I wasn’t getting any new emails in my Yahoo account. I’ve had no problems since then.

  5. Maria said on January 14, 2014 at 4:08 pm
    Reply

    Is anyone having this problem with Digbsy?? I download Digsby and added my accounts to it. I was able to connect flawlessly until 6 days ago. Now once I log in to Digsby, I have to log in yet again, because it throws me to yahoo sign in page. so I have to sign in 20 times if I check my emails that much? Even when I log in, stay logged in and close the window, 5 seconds later i open the page and again! I have to sign in…..It will not connect directly to my accounts as it has in the past. HELP….it is so very annoying!

    1. gil said on January 20, 2014 at 8:29 am
      Reply

      Same here, I’m having issues when it comes to new mails on yahoo using imap settings through yahoo mail. I’ve used the yahoo account settings but since they’ve added websense restriction I need to use other means.

  6. kc said on November 1, 2013 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    How do I get rid of the pane view in THunderbird? I don’t want this.

    Also, how do I make it show the date/time stamp in each email’s header? Unless I’m looking at the inbox, it doesn’t tell me what the date of the message is.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 1, 2013 at 3:44 pm
      Reply

      Use the View menu up top to modify the layout.

  7. Herb said on October 27, 2013 at 1:31 am
    Reply

    I am still finding the message below and pop still isn’t working.

    Important: Due to an unforeseen bug, the POP and Forwarding options aren’t currently available to all free mail users. We’re working to return these features as quickly as possible.

    It seems that 18 working days isn’t quickly enough to fix something as important as being able to get your mail in other places. I have both paid and free Yahoo accounts. I want to pop my free accounts to my paid accounts so I can see everything in one place, and it isn’t even working from Yahoo to Yahoo. I am so disappointed that I am not sure I want to keep paying Yahoo. This is suppose to be the easy part. Wow.

  8. Dan said on October 26, 2013 at 9:46 am
    Reply

    I found one that works with yahoo email
    zimbra desktop

  9. Leslie said on October 21, 2013 at 1:31 am
    Reply

    Important: Due to an unforeseen bug, the POP and Forwarding options aren’t currently available to all free mail users. We’re working to return these features as quickly as possible.

    1. smaragdus said on October 21, 2013 at 7:45 am
      Reply

      @Leslie
      Thanks for the explanation.
      By the way I meant ‘Send’, not ‘Save’…

  10. smaragdus said on October 21, 2013 at 1:23 am
    Reply

    Martin, when I save a mail via Thunderbird there is no copy on Yahoo mail server, I have never had a similar problem with Gmail, GMX and Zoho, do you have any idea why the sent message is stored only locally?
    Thanks in advance!

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on October 21, 2013 at 7:47 am
      Reply

      That’s really strange. I just checked it using my account, and all my sent emails are listed on the Yahoo web page as well.

      1. smaragdus said on March 8, 2014 at 4:26 am
        Reply

        Martin,
        I supposed that the problem might be caused by Thunderbird, so I decided to test sending messages using another mail client- Koma-Mail, and sending was successful again but no messages in Yahoo web Sent folder.

      2. smaragdus said on March 8, 2014 at 3:34 am
        Reply

        Martin,

        Getting messages from Yahoo through POP3 works fine for me, but when I send a message through SMTP:
        smtp.mail.yahoo.com – port 465 – SSL
        the messages are successfully sent, but they do not appear in Yahoo web-mail. I did many tests, all messages are sent but never show up on Yahoo web-mail. This is a mystery to me.
        By the way my mail address is not name@yahoo.com but name@ymail.com.

  11. Nebulus said on October 18, 2013 at 8:57 am
    Reply

    It seems that there are problems on the Yahoo! side:
    http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?locale=en_US&y=PROD_ACCT&page=content&id=SLN22038

    Important: Due to an unforeseen bug, the POP and Forwarding options aren’t currently available to all free mail users. We’re working to return these features as quickly as possible.

  12. anhhangxomonline said on October 14, 2013 at 11:31 am
    Reply

    Hi all,
    If you want to access Yahoo!Mail using Pop3, there are two things that you must to do first :

    1. Go to account.yahoo.com and “Set up your second sign-in verification”
    2. When you done the first step above, you will see the link “Manage your app passwords” > click on it and create an app password > Using this password to login Yahoo!Mail in Outlook or Thunderbird (using POP3)

    You can see my post at (It’s in Vietnamese language but you can translate it into English) : http://anhhangxomonline.net/2013/10/cau-hinh-su-dung-yahoomail-tren-outlook-va-thunderbird/

    1. Nebulus said on October 16, 2013 at 2:35 pm
      Reply

      Why would I need to enable two-way authentication to access POP3?

  13. Nebulus said on October 12, 2013 at 8:25 pm
    Reply

    I can also confirm that Yahoo! POP3 is not working, neither on Thunderbird not in Sylpheed. This is really disappointing… I’m starting to believe that this is related to the location/country from where you want to access the account.

  14. Peter Buyze said on October 12, 2013 at 7:19 am
    Reply

    I tried Terry’s suggestion using port 110, but still no success. Then I tried the IMAP route and it worked :-)
    Here are instructions to set it up:
    http://pop2imap.com/yahoo_thunderbird.php

  15. Terry Hollett said on October 11, 2013 at 11:07 pm
    Reply

    I’ve been accessing Yahoo POP3 for years. At one time time you could still get Free POP3 email by signing up on their mailing list. But the port I have set up is 110. And in my case here in Canada the server in my account is listed as pop.mail.yahoo.ca

    I use the email client in the Seamonkey suite.

  16. Eric said on October 11, 2013 at 3:27 pm
    Reply

    NOPE, Doesn’t work for Outlook as well.

  17. DutchPete said on October 11, 2013 at 9:41 am
    Reply

    Nobody seems to have a complete solution for Thunderbird. When are we going to get a complete solution from Yahoo? They put something out but it does not work :-((

  18. DutchPete said on October 11, 2013 at 9:41 am
    Reply

    Nobody seems to have a complete solution for Thunderbird. When are we going to get a complete solution from Yahoo? They put something out but it does not work :-((

  19. Xmetalfanx said on October 11, 2013 at 2:51 am
    Reply

    Thank you for this information. I am going to try it as soon as I finish this post. I have been using “webmail” with thunderbird to get pop3 access until now and I do notice that in the past week I can not SEND any email. I have (with that TB addon) my server settings to “Localhost” so maybe that is the problem with Yahoo changes

    -Xmetalfanx

    1. Xmetalfanx said on October 11, 2013 at 3:03 am
      Reply

      It worked (settings for SMTP listed here) … no need for those other Addons for Thunderbird (when it comes to Yahoo) anymore. I was using Webmail once “YahooPop!” (close enough) stopped working with Yahoo.

  20. Blue.bsod said on October 10, 2013 at 6:56 pm
    Reply

    I agree, while Yahoo allows other e-mail protocols in their inbox, they don’t allow theirs to be sent to others (pop3) for free users. When I tried to set it up all the did was stick me with a note how that service is only available if I upgrade (pay). I had that service previously prior to deactivating my Yahoo account and who would of thought re-activating it would mean a tiered system were stuff we once knew of were now paid services. So I now de-activated the account once more. I don’t really use it, but I needed it to answer questions in their user based forums, “Yahoo Answers”. Besides the only thing I ever got on that account was spam and I never used the account (never gave out the address), which is a wonder why I even got spam. Besides I use an Android phone and I use Chrome on both my phone and my home computer so I am relatively happy with Gmail. I wish they would adapt the folder filing system…*sigh*

    1. theory said on November 3, 2013 at 9:30 pm
      Reply

      My theory is that some spammers send to list of easily generated email addresses.
      So, your adress should not be easily guessed, like:
      john@yahoo.com
      Instead, create email address like:
      0586_5r974v8o75fu_66tclw025o5pv53k7pbno7_9@yahoo.com

      I now use password generator to create password and any other name.

  21. Arrrgh said on October 10, 2013 at 5:04 pm
    Reply

    Outgoing works fine, Incoming does not.

    I tried all the variations of settings just in case, but none worked. I guess there’s still a bug, but it will be wonderful when it does work.

  22. DutchPete said on October 10, 2013 at 3:39 pm
    Reply

    I agree with Dan above, it just does not work. Seems there is still a bug in Yahoo’s system.

  23. martinkem said on October 10, 2013 at 12:36 pm
    Reply

    It worked for me, I use k-9 mail and it was automatically configured (same applies to the built-in email client). My only problem with Yahoo mail is the fact every day or so my old emails come back as new emails (and am talking about it emails from 2010)

  24. Dan said on October 10, 2013 at 10:24 am
    Reply

    Nope, it still won’t work. I tried using all of my Yahoo accounts and it just won’t work. Click my name to see the screenshot. And I double and triple checked the spelling and the password which I copied to the clipboard.

    1. Ken Saunders said on October 11, 2013 at 4:25 am
      Reply

      Did you try using your full email as the user name?

      You can try getting some help at either of the following.
      http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=39
      and
      https://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/new

      Also,
      I have no problems with sending or receiving.

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