15 Must Know Firefox Shortcuts
May 18, 2007 - 24 Comments
For many years I was a die-hard Safari fan, you couldn’t have pulled me away from it… that is, until Firefox came along.
Firefox is speedy, secure, and entirely cross platform compatible, and is now my primary web browser of choice. One of the better ways to improve the user experience with any application is by learning some essential keyboard shortcuts, so here are fifteen such shortcuts for Firefox.
Whether you are new to Firefox or a long time user, this list of keyboard shortcuts will likely be useful to you.
Must Know Firefox keyboard shortcuts
- Spacebar (page down)
- Shift + Spacebar (page up)
- Command + D (bookmark current page)
- Function + F5 (reload current page)
- Command + T (open new tab)
- Command + W (close current tab or window)
- Control + Tab (navigate forward through browser tabs)
- Control + Shift + Tab (navigate backward through browser tabs)
- Command + K (go to search box)
- Command + L (go to address bar)
- Command + Enter (auto-complete URL within address bar)
- Command + = (increase screen text size)
- Command + – (decrease screen text size)
- Command + F (find text)
- Control + N (find next occurrence of text)
These commands are aimed at Mac OS X, but they will work on Linux and Windows versions of Firefox as well, simply use the Control key in place of the Command key where appropriate.
Good list of the bare essential shortcuts to know, check out a complete list here
http://lesliefranke.com/files/reference/firefoxcheatsheet.html
Geared towards Windows users but I’m sure you Mac nerds can figure it out
For “find next” you’d better get used to another shortcut, which will work in most other applications as well (where command+n means “new”).
The generally working shortcut for find next is:
command+G (ctrl + G on windows or linux)
ps. maybe the easiest way to remember it is that the letter G is next to F (Find)
What I would “love” for is the ability to quickly access the address bar. On Windows, I can press Alt+D and bam, I can begin typing my URL. I have yet to find a way to do this on OS X =(
Try command+L
works for me!
“# Control + Tab (navigate forward through browser tabs)
# Control + Shift + Tab (navigate backward through browser tabs)”
You can also use Ctrl + Page Down/Page up (Command for Mac OS X then I guess), to switch forward and back between tabs.
Also to go to the Addressbar you can also use F6 (and with another F-Key you can access the Searchbar as far as I remember).
And another good one is with Ctrl + 0 (Command + 0 then on Mac OS X) you can set the screen text size back to default.
The Ctrl + PgUp/PgDn works for me in Linux to switch between tabs. Ctrl + tab switches between desktops for me.
Yet another way to navigate tabs:
Option-Command + left/right arrow.
Similar to Shift-Command-arrow in Safari.
Firefox Keyboard Shortcut To Retrieve Closed Tabs
We’ve all done it. Accidentally closed a Firefox tab that we were still using. I know now that you can right click another tab and choose Undo Close Tab to bring it back. But another great way to do the same thing is to use Command-Shift-T (M…
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My favorite Firefox shortcut is the delete key to go back a page. It’s much quicker than any other method I’ve tried so far.
Control-tab does not switch between tabs in Firefox 1.5.0.1 for OS-X. Instead it switches between the browser window & address bar.
Control-pagedown & control-pageup are fairly useless, since you can’t do them left-handed; which, overall, makes tabs themselves fairly useless, since you can’t switch between them in any kind of efficient manner (whereas you *can* do so for separate browser windows).
– Callaway
In firefox you can use “Command + L” to access address-bar..
(Haven’t figured out similar to “Alt+D” directly in OS X )
Fn+F6 also goes directly to address bar.
Plus to change between spaces quickly you can use CTRL+page up or page down. If you use spaces this is essential.
Thanx a lot. It help me alot. Especially shortcut to address bar ;)
Hi,
here are some additional and relectured info:
Reload a page:
CMD + R = Reload / MacOS + Win + Linux / Everything else is lame :-)
Reopen closed Window:
Shift + CMD + N
Reopen closed Tab:
Shift + CMD + T
Open History:
Shift + CMD + H
Open Bookmarks Library:
Shift + CMD + B
SPACES and switching Tabs:
——————————–
I use Spaces, but have the trigger key chosen to be not CTRL but CMD.
Works well with all applications like Photoshop, Textmate, etc…
Forward and Backward Paging in a Tab:
CMD + left arrow/right arrow
Switching between Tabs:
CTRL + Tab
Bye then,
Dennis
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts?style_mode=inproduct&s=keyboard%20shortcut
I’m surprised no-one has brought up —in my opinion— on of the best features of firefox.
Press “/” to bring up a temporary in-page search: That goes away after you use it. Pressing Cmd+F and having to take your hands from the board to close it again is just terrible.
that’s wonderful! i use that all the time in vim, but never knew it is there in Firefox as well.
I am using a friends mac for the first time so this really helps. Thanks – made my life easier!
Thanks for the tips I’m new at the mac and was looking for these shortcut :)
these dont work for me, i get a “fail” noise when i try any of them. kind of like a “duhn” noise..
thnx everyone for all the input! It’s always fun to use shortcuts.
Surprised I haven’t seen it anywhere… But from OS X.7.4 & Safari 6.0, I just changed over to Firefox 12, and happy so far, except I haven’t seen how to use a [COMMAND + #] to access my menu bar options (eg. #1 is Google translate, #2 is Google, #3 is a weather site, #4 is NYTimes, #5 is Facebook, etc…).
Anyone up on this?
I’m running Firefox 26 with Snow Leopard (10.6.8) but the Firefox browser window has completely vanished — and when I try to access the Deck, it sometimes spazzes out. My mistake was probably changing the resolution of the screen, as that often “throws off” one of the open apps so it’s hard to retrieve. How do I restore Firefox to its former glory? I had the same thing happen with Apple Mail but that time I was able to extract the .plist file and then restart. Is there a similar procedure for Firefox? Thanks so much!