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

Screensaver comes on while Firefox is in fullscreen

  • 1 ŋuɖoɖo
  • 0 masɔmasɔ sia le wosi
  • 4 views
  • Nuɖoɖo mlɔetɔ zeroknight

more options

I use Firefox to watch movies on YouTube, Netflix, and many other sites.

I always make these movies full screen. Usually, that means that my computer will stay awake while the movie plays. But after 4 years of this working without issue, I started having problems last November.

Since then, whenever I make videos fullscreen, they'll display as normal, but after a few minutes, my computer's screensaver will come on. It's like my computer can't recognize that the videos are fullscreen. It treats them as regular videos and kicks into whatever power management settings I've set up

I've tried disabling all my add-ons. I've tried changing all my power settings. (Whatever power setting I choose, that's what ends up happening: screensaver at 10 min, 15 min, etc.) But nothing I do can get my computer to recognize fullscreen videos from Firefox .

This only happens with Firefox. When I play full screen videos in VLC, my computer does not go into screensaver/sleep/etc.

I'm running Firefox 123.0 on Linux Lite (Ubuntu).

The only way I get this to work-- and it doesn't always work-- is if I restart my computer, Firefox will sometimes behave as expected. But if I finish a movie and let my computer go to sleep, then the next time it wakes, I'll have the same problem again.

All help appreciated. Thank you!

I use Firefox to watch movies on YouTube, Netflix, and many other sites. I always make these movies full screen. Usually, that means that my computer will stay awake while the movie plays. But after 4 years of this working without issue, I started having problems last November. Since then, whenever I make videos fullscreen, they'll display as normal, but after a few minutes, my computer's screensaver will come on. It's like my computer can't recognize that the videos are fullscreen. It treats them as regular videos and kicks into whatever power management settings I've set up I've tried disabling all my add-ons. I've tried changing all my power settings. (Whatever power setting I choose, that's what ends up happening: screensaver at 10 min, 15 min, etc.) But nothing I do can get my computer to recognize fullscreen videos from Firefox . This only happens with Firefox. When I play full screen videos in VLC, my computer does not go into screensaver/sleep/etc. I'm running Firefox 123.0 on Linux Lite (Ubuntu). The only way I get this to work-- and it doesn't always work-- is if I restart my computer, Firefox will sometimes behave as expected. But if I finish a movie and let my computer go to sleep, then the next time it wakes, I'll have the same problem again. All help appreciated. Thank you!

All Replies (1)

more options

It works for me on Ubuntu 23.10 after resuming from deep sleep, it could be a bug with Linux Lite.

Are non-fullscreen videos unaffected?

Does it still happen with the flatpak package?

You can see inhibitors with:

dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.gnome.SessionManager /org/gnome/SessionManager org.gnome.SessionManager.GetInhibitors