Incredible Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts Which You Probably Don’t Know About
As my search for methods to increase my browsing productivity continues, I have come across some excellent keyboard shortcuts for Firefox (my preferred browser) which I will discuss here .
I am sure you’ll benefit from it if you use Firefox as your browser .
1: Automatically complete .org and .net addresses
Yes, we know that if we type ‘google’ in the address bar and press Ctrl+Enter it directly goes to www.google.com . But what about .org and .net addresses? . In Firefox, Shift+Enter takes you to .net and Ctrl+Shift+Enter takes you to .org addresses automatically . So if you wanna go to Problogger , just type the word in firefox address bar and press Shift+Enter .
2: Alt + D
You can use this to navigate directly to the browser address bar of firefox. Very useful.
3: Ctrl+T and Ctrl+Shift+T
Ctrl+T helps you to open a new tab and Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last closed tab.
This comes quite handy in case you accidently close a tab. Another way to do this would be go to History -> Recently closed tabs.
4: Alt+Enter
This can be an extremely useful shortcut. It automatically opens a website in another tab when you highlight it in the autocomplete list. For example you want to go to Facebook and you start typing www.face…, in the address bar and it starts showing the list below. You just need to use the down arrow key to highlight the selection (facebook.com in this case ) and press Alt+Enter so that it opens in a new tab.
5: Use of Delete Key
The Delete key can be pretty useful because it helps you delete specific addresses in browser history or autocomplete forms. For example in the diagram below, when I type ‘a’ in google search I get 3 entries . If I want to delete the 2nd entry from autocomplete history , I’ll just point to it and press Delete key . Simple,isn’t it .
6: Ctrl+Tab
Ctrl+tab helps you to navigate between different firefox tabs quite easily.
7: Ctrl+[1,2....9]
Ctrl+tab can help you navigate alternate tabs but if you are a heavy tab user like me and want to go to a specific tab then just use Ctrl+corresponding tab number. Ex:To go to the 3rd tab use Ctrl+3 .
8: Spacebar and Shift+Spacebar OR PageDown and PageUp
Spacebar or PageDown key scrolls down the webpage you’re on and Shift+Spacebar or PageUp scrolls up the webpage you’re on .
9: The Middle Mouse Button
This is not a keyboard shortcut but it is an excellent shortcut . Just point to a link anywhere on a webpage and press the middle mouse(scroll) button . It opens the page in a new tab .
I hope these shortcuts will enhance your browsing productivity with Firefox . Do you know about other interesting shortcuts which I may have missed ?
. It just that I am too impressed with this shortcuts after reading it at JeetBlog. Actually he talks more on keyboard shortcuts which is very useful. I just want to concentrate more [...]
Abhijeet Mukherjee is a blogger & web publisher. This is his personal blog about blogging, internet marketing, writing and other random stuff. 
I finally decided to write a comment on your blog. I just wanted to say good job. I really enjoy reading your posts.
Tina Russell
Good post Abhijeet. Keep up the good work.
Cheers!
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Thanks Tina and Mani
I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t know #9, but that is very helpful. Thanks.
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#4 you don’t need to hit alt+enter, enter will do just fine.
Also there’s a keyword feature in bookmarks that is under discussed. Bookmark an item, then right click on it and under keyword enter the title of the page or some unique tag that would identify that site to you. Then when you want to visit that site without having to go through your bookmarks, just type the keyword in the addressbar and hit enter. You will be taken immediately.
Thanks! you have a new subscriber, btw the site layout is excellent
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@Watch TV- ‘Enter’ opens the website in the same tab. Hence ‘Alt+Enter ‘
@Steven and Rytis- Thanks for the comments
ctrl+d to add bookmark quickly
ctrl+w to close tab or window if one one tab is open
you have a real nice list.. i learned like 3 or 4 from ur list. thanx!
You forgot one for tab manipulation.
Ctrl+t opens a new tab,
Ctrl+w closed your current tab
Also, ctrl+l gets to the address bar if your keyboard is awkwardly arranged for alt+d.
I didn’t know about using the delete key to clear autocomplete, thanks.
You have a new subscriber.
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Very nice blog. Actually though. For switching between tabs, you can do CTRL+PG-UP or CTRL+PG-DOWN. I find this to be easier on my fingers and hands.
Also a mouse shortcut, middle-clicking a tab with the mouse closes the tab.
* Mouse Scroll Button on a tab: Closes the tab (Or left+right mouse click)
* Mouse Scroll: Quickly move along your row of tabs (if you have more than will fit)
* Ctrl+Shift+Tab: Move to the previous tab (goes with Shift+Tab to move to the next tab)
And if you middle-click on the empty space in the tab bar, it’ll open the most recently closed tab.
RE #2: F6 highlights the address bar as well.
Here’s a comprehensive list of firefox keyboard short cuts.
http://tinyurl.com/3452t4
ctrl + left click also opens a link in a new tab. Useful for people without a middle mouse button.
It’s a good post…
FYI
Alt + D == F6
Thomas H.
Nice post, love the ALT+ENTER one. You can use CTRL+L (same as ALT+D) as well to jump to the address bar
Not a keyboard shortcut, but highlighting a url that is not clickable and dragging it to an empty spot on the tab bar opens it in a new tab as well.
And Alt+Enter doesn’t require the url be in the autocomplete, anything you type in there will be opened in a new tab with alt+enter.
I just learned a really useful one earlier today. Not exactly a ‘keyboard’ shortcut though. If there’s a website address typed on the page but not linked to, you can highlight the address and then drag it onto the current page’s tab or into the empty space to the right of the current tabs to open it in a new tab. In fact, this will even work if you highlight and drag just the name of the website onto the tab bar, for instance highlighting and dragging google will take you to their site (Only works with .com I believe).
That reminds me that you can also open a new tab by double clicking in an empty space on the tab bar.
Actually, if you right-click on any of your bookmarks, it opens the site in a new tab too.
Ctrl + L also takes you to the address bar.
Ctrl + K automatically takes you to the search (google) bar
F6 takes you to the address bar too.
Middle-clicking a tab also closes it.
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#1 is to some degree useless. Firefox is pretty good at finding webpages without even the .com/.org/.net. YOu can just type in “problogger” and it redirects you to the correct page. you can even type in keywords with spaces and everything to redirect you to the correct subpages. [ie. "digg gadgets" etc.]
i know all of them.. :p
there’s another one, but i dunno how that happened..
in my firefox address bar, type a query you want to find in google (like, icanhascheezburger, for example’s sake).. if it is a website name, it will (most of the time) redirect you to that site, else it will show all the hits..
Alt + D doesn’t work on Mac.
I have my bookmarks arranged in folders for easy opening by pressing my middle mouse button. This is great, but it also removes all of the existing tabs too. Now it’s ok if I have 3 tabs open and I open 3 more because then I can just use the history back on each tab. However if I have 10 tabs open and I open a folder containing 2 it removes 8 of them, using shift ctrl+t doesn’t restore them.
Does anyone know how to ‘undo’ it?
Well these are the Windows-specific keyboard shortcuts. on a mac the address bar isn’t alt-d, it’s command-l (location)
command-1,2,3….. for the tabs
I’ve heard if you accidentally close a tab, like with a control-w, hitting control-shift-t will reopen last closed tab.
Ctrl + W closes the current tab, I find it useful with digg
superb article… helped a lot… thanx…
MIDDLE CLICK on a LINK to open it in a new TAB.
MIDDLE CLICK on a TAB to close it.
#1 – CTRL + Mouse Scroll
Increase and decrease text size (CTRL + 0=Normal size).
#2 – CTRL + PageUp
Go to previus tab.
#3 – CTRL + PageDown
Go to next tab.
#4 – F6
Go to address bar
#5 – CTRL + F4
Close current tab.
#6 – F11
Full screen.
#7 – CTRL + F
Find
Ctrl+F brings up a search at the bottom of the page that allows you to search webpages.
the “/” (backslash) if you hit that once will bring up a simplified version, a quick find.
Nice. Use Ctrl+L to get to the address bar too.
Oh and drag the Favicon into tabs, new tabs, current page and bookmark bar, and new windows, and even text editors, and even MSN chat boxes all do cool stuff.
There’s loads if you really get used to browsing in it… you’ve barely scratched the surface of the UI guidelines.. you’ve just hit a couple of consistency based shortcuts.
Oh and yes I’m a Safari on Windows user now, not as many shortcuts exist on here…
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For the record this is a backslash “\” and this is just a slash “/” Microsoft has poisoned your mind.
Why press the awkward Alt+D when you can press Ctrl+l ?
Also Ctrl+k brings you to the “Google” search on the upper right hand side…
-C
Great article, didn’t know #8
for #9, the middle button can also be used to close tabs, when you hover over a tab and click it
Cheers
Ctrl+L, Alt+D, F6 – all does the same thing. Go to the URL bar.
I dont know how come I never used the spacebar to scroll down.
the only place i used it was on google reader.
My favorite firefox shortcut only works in linux, as far as I can tell. Hilight a url anywhere in X, which places it in the clipboard, and then middle click anywhere in firefox to open it. Very useful for opening URLs in webpages that aren’t links, or in a terminal, or an IM conversation, or … whatever else.
Many of these shortcuts also work in IE.
I use “Alt+D” instead of “Ctrl+L” to focus to the address bar, so that my habits work on both browsers.
thanks! I learn another one!
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A little bit easier (for me) way to get to the address bar is F6. It works in Firefox and that other major browser nobody likes but has to use at work sometimes.
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nice one on reload closed tab
ctrl + l – address bar
ctrl + k – search part
ctrl + shift + tab – go back in the tabs
ctrl + f4 – close tab
Ctrl-Shift-Tab toggles thru the tabs in reverse order
to go to google you don’t need to hit Ctrl+Enter, you can just hit Enter.
the same goes with org and net
Awesome article! Learned a few tricks here, to be sure. However, the feature that I find most useful about Firefox is the ability to not only use keywords to open particular bookmarks (see #5 above) but to parametrize those keywords. This process allows you to create custom commandline-esque macros that you can execute from your addressbar. For instance, if I type "gi the pyramids" into my adddress bar, I'm taken to the google image search page with a bunch of pictures of the pyramids in egypt, as if I had entered "the pyramids" into the search box on the site. The process is as follows:
1) Bookmark a site. Typically, you'll want to search for something on the site and bookmark that search page. (http://images.google.com/images?q=the%20pyramids)
2) Edit the properties of the bookmark (right-click).
3) Put your desired keyword in the keyword field (gi).
4) In the location field, find the keyword that you searched for and replace it with "%s". (http://images.google.com/images?q=%s)
5) Save the bookmark and test it out. Type "gi hoover dam" into the address bar. Then repeat for all of your favorite sites. w00t!
CTRL+SHIFT+T: Lets say you had 20 tabs and you closed 19 of them. If you want to see those tabs again, keep pressing Ctrl+Shift+t and all the tabs will appear one by one in the same order that you closed them. It works infinitely. So, you never lose any sites you visit in case you want to go back and see it again.
Once the cursor is in the search bar, you can use ctrl+up and ctrl+down to change search engines, and alt+down to access the list of search engines.
It seems that if you can do it in Firefox, you can find a keyboard shortcut for it by trying random key combinations.
ALT+HOME will take you to your specified home page.
Nice post. I guess most of shortcuts are already discussed.
ctrl+Plus sign to increase font size.
ctrl+Minus sign to decrease font size.
/ for quick find.
F11 for full screen mode.
didn't read all the above comments so this could already have been posted:
these are my favorite ones and i use them all the time:
ctrl+W: closes the tab (and the window if theres only one tab)
ctrl+L takes you to the location bar
ctrl+E takes you to the search bar at the top right
ctrl+T opens a new blank tab.
alt+home: takes you to the home page.
I didnt know about the spacebar and shift space. That is kind of handy
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Rather then CTRL + F use / , this is my new favorite firefox shortcut. Just press "/" with out the speech marks of course
I hate to disappoint you, but these shortcuts work on Internet Explorer. In fact, some of these shortcuts appeared in Internet Explorer before Firefox was even released. Microsoft even has a knowledge base article listing all the keyboard shortcuts for IE 5.5: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/3068...
middle mouse button over a tab will close the tab
Instead of Alt + D
F6 does the same thing… 1 key
Thanx. Super helpful…
Thanks!!
Umm I thought this was common knowledge…
I do hate people who think they know everything.
Steve, you really think every user of Firefox is going to know these shortcuts? NO. Most users will hardly know any, which is why the article is so popular.
One of the exceptional advantages of Mozilla Firefox , which is not fully appreciated by i.e. users , is the great availability and versatility of the firefox Add-ons
Its just great all the functionalities you can add on . It used to be , not too long ago , that these open source software projects were mainly for developers to endless tinker and play with. Now many are very simply functional yet elegant
Thanks all for the comments. I appreciate that.
I would like to add that on laptops where there is no middle mouse button, clicking both left and right buttons will work in the same way.
Incredible FireFox keyboard shortcuts that also work in Internet Explorer.
You can use this to navigate directly to the browser address bar of firefox. Very useful. Really useful. Also F6 key does it
Alt + F4
Closes Firefox and gives you your life back
hey cool man. din know most of em.
2 can be done with F6. This works on other browsers aswell.
Thanks for your post. We transleted it for our german firefox user.
Thanks
what about the "?/" key?
Great shortcut to quickly find something on a website.
i use almost all of these shortcuts. surprised people dont know these already.
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Too many people don't know about this one but it's quite handy for people who don't like using the mouse to browse the Web.
Firefox has a quick find feature that allows you to quickly search for text within a document. If you have turned on the "Automatically start searching as I type" feature in Firefox Preferences/Options, all you need to do is start typing when the page is in focus.
However, not always will you want to search all text. Sometimes you just want to search the links.
Type ' (apostrophe) and then type the text you want to search for. Note that only links will be searched.
Type / (solidus/forward slash/slash) and then type the text you want to search for to search throughout the document including the links. The / shortcut comes from *nix-ish editors like Vim which allow you to search for text in a similar manner.
To search for selected text, simply press Ctrl-F.
I knew all but one, but still great information and a good reminder.
Also:
Ctrl-G seems to choose the last used find method (quick find or regular find).
Ctrl-I shows up page information about links, images, encryption and so on.
Ctrl-U shows the source code for the Web document.
Ctrl-K goes to the search bar.
Ctrl-B shows the bookmarks sidebar.
Ctrl-Shift-S shows the NoScript menu if you have that installed.
Ctrl-Shift-J shows up the error console.
Alt-A selects all text.
Alt-LeftArrow or Ctrl-[ goes back in history.
Alt-RightArrow or Ctrl-] goes forward in history.
Ctrl-Home goes to the top of the Web document or field.
Ctrl-End goes to the bottom of the Web document or field.
Ctrl-= increases the font size.
Ctrl-Minus decreases the font size.
Ctrl-0 restores font size to normal.
Ctrl- seems to select all text in a field.
Shift-Insert pastes as well.
F3 to find next.
Shift-F3 to find previous.
Ctrl-R to reload page from the Web server bypassing a stale browser cache.
There's tons more.
This is wonderful! Thank you! Many of these will be useful, but I've been especially annoyed at the various addresses, etc. piling up in my browser history and other blanks. Turns out I just have to make the mouse hover there. So simple.
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STUMBLED!
Fantastic post. No matter how many of these lists I see, there always seems to be something new on one of them.
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Cool shortcuts thanks for the tips
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Now if only you could browse the entire web, including javascript onaction menus using ONLY THE KEYBOARD. This is one reason why winamp was such an amazing player.
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Thanks for the tips, especially Number 5.
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You can use Control+Shift+Delete to pop up the Clear Private Data instead of having to go up to tools. Great read. Like Alt+D (which i just now learned about), F6 and Control+L (my fav) also puts the address bar in focus (and it's easier on your hands)
Looking forward to more…
no doubt about it – what a great list
it this news ?
how can someone not know about these keys ?
some of them were in IE 5 and most of the others are actually written in ff menus.
@Justin Goldberg
you can browse the web using only the keyboard with opera (has been so for years) also lynx, links, elinks offer keyboard browsing.
1) Middle mouse click on a tab closes off that said tab.
2) Double click the grey bar were tabs sit and you will get a new blank tab.
Cool tip Jeet. Nice Digg numbers too! I really did not know no.1 !
Thanks so much great shortcut!
I stumble your blog from problogger.net and digg you.
I learn a lot about shortcut here
I have gained a lot from this post and I want to share a shortcut which I have recently known.
Keywords for quick searches (e.g., type "goo xml tutorial" into the location bar and get a Google search page on "xml tutorial" in one step).
@onan: yes, but those just plain suck™, which is why I'll build the utorrent of browsers, someday.
Good tips! Thank You!
congratulations, very useful.
Nice to learn something every day. Now I can jump to the address bar without any mouse clicks with Alt-D. Awesome.
"Watchtv" left out a step when loading a 'keyword': "Bookmark an item, then right click on it [SELECT PROPERTIES] and under keyword enter the title of the page or some unique tag that would identify that site to you…
ALT + K goes to the search bar … really helpfull .. at least I use it all the time instead of going to google.com for searches.
good post!
wow this is amazing i never use firefox keyboard key till now!
its much fun but also i need to get use on them!
#1 actually gets on my nerves all the time I press the wrong combination when trying to do cntrl + enter and it goes to .net
It's really useful for me,Support Firefox
Thanks for sharing this, it really will boost my browsing productivity with firefox.
Good compilation of keyboard tweaks would like to 2 more from my end.
ctrl+tab – to switch through tabs
ctrl+k – to go to search box
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Hi! Just would like to add to the never-ending list…
Although it's not really a keyboard shortcut, but if you hold CTRL while running your mouse wheel, the font is adjusted. I usually use this to overcome websites with really tiny fonts. Hope you find it useful!
Btw, nice site!
Cheers.
Didn't know some of that. Quite useful shortcuts for people addicted to FF
Thnx for sharing.
troccna
Interesting collection of shortcuts listed here. I am more of a mouse person myself and very rarely use the keyboard shortcuts unless absolutely necessary.
Great tip thanks for sharing with us.
Very cool design! Useful information. Go on!"
The one with browsing history delete is my favorite here
ala lng…….testing…hehehehehe
Hi,
Could you tell me the keyboard shortcut to open Mozilla browser window?
Appreciate the great list of shortcuts. Every little bit helps to increase productivity. A just learned about the middle mouse button opening a new tab a few weeks ago, amazed I hadn't known that one before.
Its amazing all these little tips that you do not know
The beauty of firefox is a virtual army of interested real people are at work on the project of firefox putting their passions into it
Msoft watch out
Sri Ram
this isn’t exactly a shortcut but a quick way to open your internet browser is to press the windows key then press down then enter
i would also like to know this shortcut but i’m not sure it exists
What a bunch of great ideas
every time i read the posts with amazement i just think – wow i did not even think or know of that
Guess it that its the beauty of open source projects with 1000′s of minds thinking differently and with different perspectives
Sure beats a bunch or a few microsoft yes men bill clones
Really nice tips.. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you, very useful information!
Thanks Jeet for the shortcuts, I wish I had seen them months ago when I first switched to Firefox–could have saved a lot of time. I like reading your blogs.
Wow, a really nice guide!
Nice article Abhi