Option to disable Firefox's shortcut keys

[DigiFluid]

Howdy,

Ancient Firefox user who went Chrome for a long time and have returned as of yesterday. Happy to be back, but routinely frustrated that textbox shortcuts like ctrl-b and ctrl-i on certain (but not all!) websites, per Firefox programming, triggers the bookmark sidebar / page info (respectively). In decades of computer use, these shortcuts have always always always meant applying bold and italic to highlighted text, making Firefox's functionality completely counterintuitive. I can honestly say I have never once used these shortcuts to intentionally pull up bookmarks or page info.

Having had a look around online it seems that the only ways to turn off these Firefox functions are either writing some javascript personally, or installing an extension which is not supported by Mozilla. As neither of these are especially palatable choices, and the existing regime is in defiance of 40ish years of keyboard convention, I'd like to propose the simplest of solutions: an option in Firefox's settings to turn off keyboard shortcuts.

That way, folks have the choice. If, like me, you find the defiance of keyboard convention frustrating, you'll have an option to turn it off. Or alternatively, if you like Firefox's keyboard functions as-is, you don't have to do anything at all, and things stay the same. Everybody wins.

[KimB]

Hello!! Making sure all y'all are aware an MVP for Customizable Hotkeys is live (including support for disabling 70 Firefox keyboard shortcuts), and we need your real-world feedback to help us scope version 2 (coming later this year). Learn more and please join in the discussion here.

Help us keep the momentum going, and decide what would be most helpful and feasible to do next!

[fabrice34]

Give possibility to disable / and ' shortcuts

Hi

Outside of a textbox when cliking on/ or ' firefox open directly the fast search.

But when you program in Scratch, it prevents the key pressed detection to work with / and '

It would be a good idea to allow people to disable those shortcuts.

Thanks

[doney]

Yeah, thanks to and as @KimB updated, customize built-in keyboard shortcuts feature is released live now!
Starting in version 147, now we have about:keyboard settings page.

[doney]

I disabled (clear) these default shortcuts, and I'm glad. 😀

• Switch Text Direction (which was Ctrl+Shift+x)
• AI Chatbot (which was Ctrl+Alt+X)
• DOM and Style Inspector (which was Ctrl+Shift+C)

[Jon]

(Note: similar ideas have been merged into this thread)

[gcvsa]

This idea that "Up-to-date sites should know how to prevent Firefox from receiving Ctrl+b and Ctrl+i. Sites that have not been updated for a long time might have older code that doesn't do it effectively." is absolutely an unacceptable answer. The problem is not with "old websites", the problem is Firefox hijacking a user interface standard that was widespread over a decade before Netscape Navigator even existed.

[gcvsa]

What actually brought me to this thread was the frustration I have had with the fact that the are SO MANY keyboard shortcuts mapped, and no one at Mozilla seems to have done any kind of study on their appropriateness, much less the unintended consequences that can result from accidentally mistyping or ones hands slipping while attempting to reach for a key. These conseuqences can result in irretreivable loss of data, or simply a complete disruption of one's working environment by accidentally opening or closing windows or tabs.

Apple did a ton of research on user interface in the early 1980s, and concluded that keyboard shortcuts and multiple mouse buttons often cause more problems than they solve, which is why they purposely omitted those things from early versions of the Macintosh. Especially in this era where so many of the laptop keyboards we all use aren't even 100% full size, and when (shockingly) older people are using computers, who do not have the same manual dexterity we had 40 years ago, the ability to have all keyboard shortcuts turned OFF by default would be very helpful. We can enabled those we feel are essential, like Undo, Cut. Copy, and Paste (although I still find it annoying that these aren't separate keys).