True Full Screen in Firefox?

Question

In OSX, how do I have a true full screen? When I go to full screen mode, the tab and navigation bar are still showing. Those toolbars are annoying when I try to watch a movie, etc.

This is the shot of the top of the screen:

EDIT: I realized this may apply to other browsers such as Safari

Answer 1

I'm on MacOS, January 2022. To accomplish what we want:

1. Go to Firefox "full screen" mode as normal (e.g. Ctrl-Cmd-F)

2. On upper right of the screen is the "hamburger menu" (three horizontal lines); right-click it, then select "Hide Toolbars".

No Firefox extension needed.

Answer 2

On the about:config page search for the following key

full-screen-api.allow-trusted-requests-only

and set it to false

Then you can create a bookmark 'link' with the following 'location':

javascript:document.documentElement.requestFullscreen()

Edit: new FF supports shorter syntax, thanks @trss for suggestion

Answer 3

2022 update

This answer is no longer correct due to native integration of this feature into Firefox. Look to other answers for better options.

Original answer

By default there's no way to do this in native Firefox, but there is an extension called Toolbar Autohide that should do exactly that! It allows you to use your mouse to make it appear again by hovering at the top of the screen where the toolbar would normally be.

Simply install the extension at that link and restart Firefox when it prompts you to do so. After Firefox restarts, right-click the toolbar and select Maximized Autohide; you should then be ready to go!

I would recommend changing an option for the add-on in the add-on manager (command + shift + a), though: under General, change Transition Type to Slide-in to make it a little prettier.

Lastly, keep in mind that hovering your mouse at the top of the screen can make the OS X bar appear as well, which can be mildly annoying (which would happen for almost any extension that does this type of thing). To get around this, make good use of key commands!

• command + l brings up the address bar so you can immediately start typing in a new URL
• command + k brings up the Firefox menu so you can select your print options, preferences, etc.
• command + t creates a new tab and focuses on it
• control + tab and control + shift + tab allows you to cycle through tabs just like command + tab and command + shift + tab allows you to cycle through windows in OS X

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

I solved this by using Automator to create an Application that makes use of an Action > Utilities > Run Shell Script:

open -a Firefox
sleep 1
lsappinfo setinfo -app Firefox ApplicationType=UIElement
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Firefox" to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to true'
sleep 0.5
for f in "$@"; do open -a Firefox "$f"; done

I set the shell script Shell: to /bin/sh and Pass input: to as arguments, save it as "Firefox Full Screen" in /Applications, change its icon as explained here and add it as an exception in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy Tab > Accessibility.

I then can click the application icon or run any of the following and it works:

• open -a "Firefox Full Screen"
• open -a "Firefox Full Screen" --args "https://google.com"
• open -a "Firefox Full Screen" --args "https://google.com" "https://twitter.com"

I'm using this coupled with the following userChrome.css to both evade a well known issue with the macOS menu bar on full screen applications and another long standing address bar and tab auto-hide bug that Firefox have with macOS native full screen.

userChrome.css

#navigator-toolbox[inFullscreen] {
    position: relative;
    z-index: 1;
    height: 3px;
    margin-bottom: -3px;
    opacity: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
}

#navigator-toolbox[inFullscreen]:hover {
    height: auto;
    margin-bottom: 0px;
    opacity: 1;
    overflow: show;
}

#content-deck[inFullscreen]{
    position:relative;
    z-index: 0;
}

For a generic approach, check my other answer.

TIP

• Firefox, by default, does not have any issue on Linux or Windows to auto-hide address bar and tabs in full screen as expected. With that said, I grabbed this userChrome.css from my ArchLinux setup. I use it on i3 and sway tiling window managers, with all the [inFullscreen] removed, to get address bar and tabs to auto-hide in normal bordless windows.

Answer 5

One way to do this is by using JavaScript. For Firefox, execute this code:

document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0].mozRequestFullScreen()

On Safari, put this in a button href attribute:

javascript:if(!document.webkitFullscreenElement){document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0].webkitRequestFullscreen();} else{document.webkitExitFullscreen()}

Obviously, this isn't very graceful unless in an extension or bookmarklet.

Answer 6

On about:config, set browser.fullscreen.autohide to true 1.

Bonus: also set ui.prefersReducedMotion to 1 and you'll have a slightly faster animation on macOS (or a hugely faster animation on Windows or Linux).

Answer 7

The only way I was able to get this working on FF Developer Edition v80 was the combination of:

1. Installing the plugin @Paul mentioned: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fullscreen_plus/

2. Setting full-screen-api.allow-trusted-requests-only: false in about:config

Answer 8

The Firefox add-on recommended by pat-s https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fullscreen-any-site/ doesn't work for me as of this date--it doesn't do anything.

I found a workaround to get a full screen with no search bar and related stuff at the top, suitable for those websites that don't have a full-screen button. Click the PIP button on the right side of the screen, and then double click the PIP screen, and it will make it a full screen without any search bar or bookmark toolbar. It has its own stop and start button, but it is not suitable for websites that have their own full screen button because, although it works for that, you lose the native controls of the websites full screen. To get out of it, click the X in the upper left corner and then click the PIP button on the right of the screen and you will be back to the original screen.

Answer 9

One way to do this that is handier than a bookmarklet and does not require fiddling with userChrome.css is to install Tampermonkey, then create an user-script with these contents:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Fullscreen
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      0.1
// @description  Add fullscreen to every website!
// @author       You
// @match        *://*/*
// @icon         data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';
    document.addEventListener("keydown", (e) => { if (e.ctrlKey && e.key == "F") {
        let button = document.createElement("button");
        button.innerHTML = "Switch to full screen";
        button.style.position = "fixed"
        button.style['z-index'] = "9999";
        button.style.left = "50%";
        button.style.top = "50%";
        button.style.width = "50%";
        button.style.height = "50%";
        button.style.transform = "translate(-50%, -50%)"
        button.style.background = "yellow";
        button.style.color = "black";
        button.style.border = "solid 10px green";
        button.onclick = (e) => {
            document.documentElement.requestFullscreen();
            button.remove()
        };
        document.documentElement.appendChild(button)
    }}, true);
})();

Then, Control+Shift+F will display a big button that you can click to make any page fullscreen.

The "button" step is needed because otherwise Firefox will refuse to switch to fullscreen as it believes the fullscreen request was not triggered by an user's action.

Answer 10

The extension Fullscreen Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fullscreen_plus/) worked for me, for making full-screen of any website (note extensions do NOT function on mozilla extension web site, so you have to go to a different page). CTRL-SHIFT-F full screens the current web site, including making the URL bar, tabs bar, and menu bar go away.

I did set full-screen-api.allow-trusted-requests-only to false and full-screen-api.macos-native-full-screen to true. I don't think either of those were required.

Answer 11

For me, this addon currently works: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fullscreen-any-site/

Currently fixed to command + shift + o but maybe custom hotkeys are supported in future versions.