Automatically sign in to Hotmail (bypass/skip login screen)
By default, Windows Live Hotmail is designed for security, and will ask you to sign in every time, and to manually retype your login information (full live.com / hotmail.com email address, and your account password). But it is possible to automatically sign in to Hotmail with a couple of clicks to set that up. Hotmail sign in automatically is obviously less safe, and should only be used from your home computer, or a laptop that only you access (that itself ideally requires a user name / password to login). From that point on, you will be able to access your inbox and emails without seeing any login screen!
Hotmail sign in automatically (Hotmail auto-login)
Follow these steps to automatically sign in to your Hotmail account and load your inbox, and make Hotmail remember your email address and/or password for future login sessions: ("Hotmail auto-login")
- You need to access Hotmail sign in: you may first need to logout first. To force Windows Live Hotmail to completely sign out of your account, see "Confirm Hotmail sign out" - but try to click on the "sign out" link in the top right corner of the screen - usually does the trick!
- Once you have signed out, type www.live.com or www.hotmail.com in your web browser's address bar and hit Enter to go to the sign in screen and login with different options.
- Now that you logged out and are back on the sign in screen, you'll see two checkboxes: check both "Remember me" and "Remember my password", and click on the "Sign in" button.
- We're not quite done yet: navigate to your inbox, or the page in your Windows Live Hotmail account you typically go to after you have signed in (like Hotmail Today or the Calendar). Once that page has loaded, either bookmark it / add it to Favorites, or set it as your homepage. Optionally change the default name to something more meaningful, like "Hotmail Inbox":
- By checking these two login options, Hotmail will automatically remember you and sign in to your account; by making your inbox (or other folder / screen you chose to bookmark), you will not only login automatically, but the page you came to look for will automatically load for you!
Tip: Windows Live Hotmail will still check behind the scenes that you are logged in to your account when you try to access your inbox through a bookmark or favorite, or by having it set to your homepage, but you won't see it happen.
To see how to leverage Hotmail auto-login and set Windows Live Hotmail as your homepage, please see:
| ‣ Make Hotmail your homepage in Internet Explorer |
| ‣ Make Hotmail your homepage in Mozilla Firefox |
| ‣ Make Hotmail your homepage in Google Chrome |
| ‣ Make Hotmail your homepage in Apple Safari |
New Hotmail, MSN Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail & Live email are all referring to the same free webmail service offered by Microsoft and Windows Live Team (works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X). Microsoft Corporation, Apple, and other companies own the copyright or trademark to these and other terms mentioned.