Yahoo Mail Redesign Ditches Passwords

Yahoo has unveiled a major redesign of its Yahoo Mail mobile app as it looks to take on the likes of Gmail and Hotmail.

The company is marking the 18^th birthday of Yahoo Mail by making it easier to use on mobile than ever before, revealing new mobile device functions and greater interoperability with some of the larger email providers on the market.

And the service will now no longer passwords to access, as a new feature called Yahoo Account Key lets users log in just by entering their email and tapping a push notification to get into their account.

Account Key

Yahoo Account Key needs the user to link their Yahoo account to a mobile device, then, when accessing the log in page, users simply enter their email address, and select the Account Key function, which then sends a push notification to your device to approve or deny the login directly.

Yahoo is hoping that the new feature will help with some of the common problems people have using passwords to log in to multiple accounts – namely, reusing the same passwords for multiple accounts, therefore adding a second layer of authentication if another service gets hacked and your details are stolen.

All-new

The new app also includes multiple mailbox management, meaning users can manage email accounts from Outlook, Hotmail and AOL Mail directly on the app, although Gmail still isn’t supported.

The app also keeps your contact list up to date by connecting to social media networks to bring in current pictures of your contacts, which appear alongside your messages, as well as real-time contact details from those networks, so you can tap on any of your friends and see their phone number and other details, if they’ve shared them.

Yahoo has also taken inspiration from some of the other apps on the market to add in swipe gestures for deleting and marking messages as unread, as well as highlighting multiple messages by long-pressing on any of them.

The app also has an improved search box, which organises results into separate fields of messages, photos, and non-picture file attachments when you enter in just a few letters.

The app is available for iOS and Android users to download now.

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