[Tip] Restore Classic Keyboard Behavior for Firefox Toolbar Navigation

In newer versions of Firefox (version 103 and later), the default behavior of Tab key press has been changed for toolbar navigation. If you want to restore the old classic keyboard behavior, this article will help you.

In older versions of Firefox, when we activated the address bar and pressed Tab or Shift+Tab keys on the keyboard, it used to cycle through the address bar (also known as URL bar) and the search box. But starting from Firefox 103, this default behavior has been changed.

Now in newer versions of Firefox, if you activate the address bar by pressing Ctrl+L or F6 key and press Tab or Shift+Tab keys, it cycles through all toolbar buttons such as Downloads, User Account icon, Back/forward buttons, Refresh, etc along with the address bar and Search bar.

If you don’t like this new feature and want to restore classic Tab key behavior on Firefox toolbar, here is a good news. Mozilla team has provided a hidden secret preference/flag in newer versions of Firefox which can be modified to force Firefox to use classic Tab keyboard shortcut on the toolbar again like previous versions.

If you also want to enable previous Tab key functionality on Firefox toolbar navigation, following steps will help you:

1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “Accept the Risk and Continue” button. It’ll open Firefox’s hidden secret advanced configuration page i.e. about:config page.

2. Now type toolbars in Search filter box and look for following preference in the window:

The preference value is set to true by default, which means the new Tab key behavior is activated and enabled in Firefox.

3. To disable the new behavior and restore classic Tab key behavior in Firefox toolbar, double-click on browser.toolbars.keyboard_navigation preference and set it to false. Alternatively, you can click on the Toggle icon given next to the preference name.

That’s it. Now Firefox will immediately start using the classic Tab key behavior on its toolbar like previous versions.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore default new behavior in Firefox, set the above mentioned preference to true again.

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