Customizable hotkeys

[alefith]

It would be great if there was a way to customize hotkeys.
Here's how I see it:
 * Have a about:hotkeys panel, with all actions listed, and already mapped shortcuts shown.
 * Whether these should be modifiable or not is up to the dev community, ideally they'd be.
 * When clicking on a hotkey field, ideally, there would be a capturing hotkey feature, or, before this, an AHK like syntax to define hotkeys (not as complex, something like: CTRL+H means this and MAJ+ALT+END means that...)

 * a restore to default button.
 * Done.

It can't be done with an extension because some function can't be accessed by extensions (I'm actually looking for a way to send tab to other device while browsing with TST.). Anyway, I believe this should boost productivity in a number of ways. You guys are devs, you know keyboards are faster than mice. 😛

edit: Corrected the typos, it's been bugging me for months now😅

[STMurph6409]

With the recent self-inflicted wounded to the Chrome ecosystem by Google with it aggressive push of Manifest V3 and the damage its done to extension, this seems like an extremely prime time to implement a feature like this as soon as possible. 

The additional customization will allow former Chrome users to emulate parts of their old environment that they had committed to muscle memory and should drastically help retention of power users, who are more likely to recommend browsers and develop useful extensions or other features for the browser.

And that's to say nothing of the quality of life benefits for your current Firefox install base who get yet another customization feature to add to their toolkit and enjoy. A major selling point that differentiates yourself from Microsoft, Google, and Apple's "We know what you need best" approach.  

[vlexxx]

**bleep**, they changed the shortcut for Downloads (Ctrl + J) & this idea is still not in review...
Will switch to a different browser - really sad 😕

[David9]

<rant>

Ctrl + Shift + W is one of the stupidest keyboard shortcuts I have ever come across. Matched only by the Ctrl+Q of olden days

Imagine: you want to close a tab, so you go to press Ctrl+W - BUT WAIT - you're a millimetre off and depress the Shift key slightly while pressing Ctrl+W!

Poof, it's gone.

Oh, you had 30 tabs open? That's too bad, guess you'll have to reopen them all manually. Normally you'd restart the program and you tabs would be there. EXCEPT. You had more than one window open so it just closed all the tabs in that particular window without a way to restore them.

Oh, you were in private browsing mode? I guess you're **bleep** out of luck! Those tabs are gone forever, hope you remember the exact URLs of all those tabs because that's the only way you're ever going to see those pages again.

Is there something wrong with using Alt+F4 to close a window?

</rant>

In all seriousness, yes, an about:shortcuts page where you can toggle and/or customise your keyboard shortcuts would be HUGELY welcome. I strongly encourage the developers to consider exposing the keyboard shortcuts to users in this manner. Not just for the sake of convenience, but also for accessibility reasons.

I understand that the keyboard shortcuts internally are done in a way that might make it an unattractive job to do, but I beg you; at the very least give Ctrl+Shift+W a dialogue window like Ctrl+Shift+Q has.

However, considering the popularity of this idea over the last 2+ decades, and the obvious advantages in user experience, as well as reaching parity with other browsers in this regard. I hope it makes sense to rationalise the shortcut situation in the codebase.

Now it's time for a hero developer to bite the bullet and wrangle the code!

Reference Bug 57805, posted 25 (twenty five!!!) years ago.

[majesticmini471]

I agree with both of you newbies. When hotkeys cannot be made for users, by individual choice, the idea does not help. Who else still favors the hotkeys and commands from DOS 3.1, still? Right, C\C++?

[gigached]

I moved from Chrome because they become so trash, and now I'm feel bad that I spent time to setup Firefox and find out that hotkeys aren't customizable here.

[myspace]

yes stillwaiting for this. hope we get it soon! 

[Zerkoto]

I still can't believe that the option to configure Firefox shortcuts is not included by default. And even more disturbing is the fact that this thread has been going on for over 3 years and still not implemented 😨

[ebardie]

---

@Zerkoto wrote:

😅even more disturbing is the fact that this thread has been going on for over 3 years and still not implemented 😨

---

Spoiler

Seriously depressing content follows

Someone pointed out earlier in this three year old thread just how long the issue has been around for:  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57805

[Lokipuk]

Here adding my grain of sand to the subject. Please add custom hotkeys. I went straight to about:keymap and when I got error started wondering where was it. Can't belive they can't be changed

[CthosEris]

Can't believe this is still not a thing 3 years later.  Discord shift-esc marks all channels as read but also opens firefox task manager apparently?

[S3V3RIN]

What is the reason why it's been so long, and there still aren't customizable hotkeys after years of requests? Can y'all not explain or talk about it because it's a private internal thing?

& is it not possible to put a temporary solution like "turn off native shortcuts" setting in 'about:config' or something? At least that way, users could figure out workarounds on their own

[ebardie]

^ this.  So much ^ this

[asdf21]

The bloody tab management shortcuts are killing me. 

Please make this possible to disable/change them !!!

[christinwhite]

This issue is the primary reason I use Floorp (and sometimes Zen), I'd switch back to vanilla Firefox if this ever gets implemented. I'm not holding my breath Mozilla is going to start being responsive to requests like this after so long. One would think they'd like to retain their users 🤷‍♀️

[FailsWithTails]

It's really disappointing that this doesn't exist after... 25+ years.

There isn't really a good reason to have both Ctrl+W and Ctrl+F4 both close tabs. It just leads to more chances of accidents, sometimes irreversible.

I use all of the Ctrl+F# and Ctrl+Shift+F# keys for handling batch operations and integration of various applications that otherwise aren't willing to play nice with each others' APIs.

I have ADHD, and like the many, possibly millions of people who also do and browse the internet like I do, we have batches of tabs for entirely different topics - 50+ open at a time. Never, in any circumstance, do I have any desire to close the entire window, especially not without manually verifying that every tab is ready to be closed. I may be done with my Python or C# coding searches, but I don't want to lose my place shopping for a replacement for a leaky showerhead, or indulging in a cross-stitching hyperfixation, or the 6 miscellaneous Youtube videos I have open and paused. If I could, I would turn Alt+F4 into a tab closure, and unbind Ctrl+W and Ctrl+F4.