View the Original Version of A Wayback Machine Page

When you view a page from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, either directly through their interface, or through Google's search results where it's basically become the replacement for cache:, it's rewritten slightly to make it work in your browser.

For example links to other pages and resources are rewritten to point to the Wayback Machine, and the page's CSS and JavaScript are rewritten to be served from the Wayback Machine as well. This is done to ensure that the page is displayed correctly, even if the original resources are no longer available. Super handy!

But sometimes you want to view the page as it was originally, with all the original resources and links. This can be done by adding id_ to the URL. For example: https://web.archive.org/web/20240427003050/https://tamethebots.com/ would become https://web.archive.org/web/20240427003050id_/https://tamethebots.com/

Handy Bookmarklet

Here's a handy bookmarklet that will automatically add id_ to the URL for you:

        javascript: (function () {
            const currentOrigin = window.location.origin;
        if(currentOrigin === 'https://web.archive.org') {
            const currentPath = window.location.pathname;
        const currentPathEncoded = encodeURIComponent(currentPath);
        const parts = currentPath.split('/');
        parts[2] = parts[2].replace('if_','') + 'id_';
        window.location.href = currentOrigin + parts.join('/');
            }
        })();
    

Drag the link below to your bookmarks bar, and click it when you're viewing a page on the Wayback Machine: