Firefox causes entire screen to fade to black for 1 second
Hi, I'm trying to find out what's causing this behavior. My firefox sometimes, specifically when opening a second tab (doesn't happen on a third, fourth, fifth, etc. tab) and pressing F (like starting to type Facebook), makes my entire screen to fade to black for 1 second, and then comes back. If I do type facebook, it shows "acebook", ignoring the F entirely. It doesn't seem like a crash, it seems a lot like a functionality of sorts that's acting up, because it doesn't go black just like that, it fades. And it always takes the same amount of time with that fade.
What's worse, it doesn't always happen. If it happens once I can replicate it and keep doing it, but as I use the browser and it stops doing it, I can't do it again. Until, well, it does.
This is the weirdest thing. How does firefox control my entire screen like that? What's it doing? What instruction on my keyboard is F sending to firefox?
I haven't found anything like this happening to anyone online.
Any help please?
Chosen solution
I figured it out. Youtube is usually my first tab. I occasionally access facebook (usually when I'm not doing anything else, which is why this happens in my second tab, also because if I try a third tab, the first tab is no longer youtube). Sometimes when I open a second tab, firefox doesn't leave youtube's focus right away. Youtube's keyboard shortcut to make a video go full screen is F. When it focuses the second tab, it ends the fade-to-black animation that going full screen causes, which is why the full screen doesn't stay.
TL;DR: Firefox doesn't leave youtube's tab focus fast enough, and pressing F makes it go fullscreen, hence the black screen fade.
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Have you tried clearing up the browser cache? Or clearing up the ram memory? There are many tutorials online for cleaning up a browser... https://www.replicon.com/customer-zone2/kb-4928/ https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1223605#:~:text=To%20reduce%20the%20amount%20of,more%20RAM%20can%20utilize%20them.
Taimur Ahmad said
Have you tried clearing up the browser cache? Or clearing up the ram memory? There are many tutorials online for cleaning up a browser... https://www.replicon.com/customer-zone2/kb-4928/ https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1223605#:~:text=To%20reduce%20the%20amount%20of,more%20RAM%20can%20utilize%20them.
I clear the cache every time I close the browser. But even if I did I've no idea how that would help as I didn't report a memory or slowness issue.
You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.
- Options/Preferences -> General: Performance
remove checkmark: [ ] "Use recommended performance settings"
remove checkmark: [ ] "Use hardware acceleration when available" - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/performance-settings
Close and restart Firefox after modifying the setting for changes to take effect.
You can check if there is an update for your graphics display driver and check for hardware acceleration related issues.
cor-el said
You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.Close and restart Firefox after modifying the setting for changes to take effect. You can check if there is an update for your graphics display driver and check for hardware acceleration related issues.
- Options/Preferences -> General: Performance
remove checkmark: [ ] "Use recommended performance settings"
remove checkmark: [ ] "Use hardware acceleration when available"- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/performance-settings
Are you advising this by witnessing this situation before? If so, can you clarify what it is? This doesn't really bother me too much. I'm just trying to figure out what functionality is causing it. I doubt hardware acceleration is sending an instruction to a specific keypress.
Chosen Solution
I figured it out. Youtube is usually my first tab. I occasionally access facebook (usually when I'm not doing anything else, which is why this happens in my second tab, also because if I try a third tab, the first tab is no longer youtube). Sometimes when I open a second tab, firefox doesn't leave youtube's focus right away. Youtube's keyboard shortcut to make a video go full screen is F. When it focuses the second tab, it ends the fade-to-black animation that going full screen causes, which is why the full screen doesn't stay.
TL;DR: Firefox doesn't leave youtube's tab focus fast enough, and pressing F makes it go fullscreen, hence the black screen fade.
Found the cure. Set Chrome as default