Firefox finally gets custom keyboard shortcuts, delighting long-time fans
Keyboards are a type of archaic manual input device dating back to before the iPhone, known to be popular with older people like me. If you’ve never encountered these antiques, you might be surprised to discover that they not only offer fast text creation, but also superior manual control of computer programs, like the Firefox browser, which just added custom keyboard shortcuts.
Okay, I’ll dispense with the irony. The latest nightly builds of Firefox for desktop platforms allow users to change existing keyboard shortcuts for actions like going back and forward in your history, opening a new tab or window, searching for text on the page, printing, and more. You can find the new options to edit or clear these shortcuts by typing about:keyboard in the URL bar of Firefox version 147.
As GHacks notes, custom keyboard shortcuts are available in some browsers that offer more advanced user control (like Opera or Vivaldi), but aren’t exactly a common feature. It is claimed that Firefox users have been asking for this feature for over 20 years now. I can’t independently verify this, other than a few old forum posts… although, knowing how far Firefox users have returned to the pre-Chrome glory days, it seems entirely possible. Various extensions have offered some of these features, but integrating them into the core of the browser is a big deal for a very particular type of internet user.
Other recent additions to Firefox include stricter anti-fingerprinting measures for user privacy. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point out that Mozilla is bringing a very different new feature to Firefox: an “AI window” that mirrors similar AI efforts like Copilot in Edge and Gemini in Chrome. In the wise words of Liz Lemon, an icon from when Firefox was young: “Blerg”.
Custom keyboard shortcuts are now available in versions of Firefox Nightly as Mozilla tests them. It’s not guaranteed that they’ll make it to the stable release (145, as of this writing), but it seems likely sooner or later.
