This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How to disable the sidebar in Firefox?

  • 2 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

Since there is no longer a way to disable ctrl+b for bookmarks sidebar and ctrl+h for history sidebar, how does one completely disable the sidebar where nothing comes up no matter what is pressed? I want to completely trash the sidebar.

OS: Debian 10 DE: xfce FF: 68.11.0esr (64-bit)

Since there is no longer a way to disable ctrl+b for bookmarks sidebar and ctrl+h for history sidebar, how does one completely disable the sidebar where nothing comes up no matter what is pressed? I want to completely trash the sidebar. OS: Debian 10 DE: xfce FF: 68.11.0esr (64-bit)

All Replies (2)

more options

I can't think of any setting in Firefox to completely disable the sidebar. You can use an extension to intercept and throw away certain keyboard shortcuts. They work by injecting keyboard listening scripts in every page. This is one the extensions for that:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/saka-key/

more options

You can possibly use code in userChrome.css to hide the sidebar.

Add code to the userChrome.css file below the default @namespace line.


@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* only needed once */

#sidebar-box { display: none !important; }

It is not that difficult to create userChrome.css if you have never used it.

The first step is to open the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" page and find the button to access the profile folder.

You can find this button under the "Application Basics" section as "Profile Folder -> Open Folder". If you click this button then you open the profile folder in the Windows File Explorer. You need to create a folder with the name chrome in this folder (name is all lowercase). In the chrome folder you need to create a plain text file with the name userChrome.css (name is case sensitive). In this userChrome.css text file you paste the text posted above. You need to close (Quit/Exit) and restart Firefox when you create or modify userChrome.css.

See also:

In Firefox 69 and later you need to set this pref to true on the about:config page to enable userChrome.css and userContent.css in the chrome folder.

  • toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets = true

See: