Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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

Wannan tattunawa ta zama daɗaɗɗiya. Yi sabuwar tambaya idan ka na bukatar taimako.

Hotkeys not working on Firefox.

more options

I use a public computer often, and I would like to use certain customizations while remaining anonymous. Rather than going through and clicking a bunch of checkboxes, I decided to have a hot key combination to enter in order to obtain my desired options. For example, I want to allow new windows to open normally, I want to choose where files are saved, and I want to turn off Firefox's recommendations. The underlined hotkeys are, respectively, ALT+W, ALT+A, and ALT+R ALT+F. So rather than a bunch of scrolling and clicking, I could just type ALT+WARF, and get the options I want quickly.

However, pressing the hotkeys while in the settings does not seem to do anything. In particular, pressing ALT+WARF only succeeds in pressing the ALT+F, which opens the File menu. Pressing these keys without an ALT key sends them automatically to the search bar -- which is also not what I want. Pressing ALT+SHIFT focuses in on the checkbox -- but does not press it. For example, ALT+SHIFT+W focuses on the checkbox, but I still have to click SPACE after it to press it.

Is this a bug? If not, how can I make the underlined keys press the respective checkboxes?

I use a public computer often, and I would like to use certain customizations while remaining anonymous. Rather than going through and clicking a bunch of checkboxes, I decided to have a hot key combination to enter in order to obtain my desired options. For example, I want to allow new windows to open normally, I want to choose where files are saved, and I want to turn off Firefox's recommendations. The underlined hotkeys are, respectively, ALT+W, ALT+A, and ALT+R ALT+F. So rather than a bunch of scrolling and clicking, I could just type ALT+WARF, and get the options I want quickly. However, pressing the hotkeys while in the settings does not seem to do anything. In particular, pressing ALT+WARF only succeeds in pressing the ALT+F, which opens the File menu. Pressing these keys without an ALT key sends them automatically to the search bar -- which is also not what I want. Pressing ALT+SHIFT focuses in on the checkbox -- but does not press it. For example, ALT+SHIFT+W focuses on the checkbox, but I still have to click SPACE after it to press it. Is this a bug? If not, how can I make the underlined keys press the respective checkboxes?

All Replies (1)

more options

There is no bug here. Alt activates the main menu using the accelerator keys, as it does in any application. The Settings page has some special logic to allow Alt+Shift to search on it, and it works similarly to accelerator keys, namely:

  • if there is only a single match, then it activates it at once
  • if there are multiple matches, then it selects the next one (first, second, etc.), but does not activate it

So in short, it does not activate them because there is a key collision.