How to Exit Full Screen in Mozilla Firefox

Many apps, including popular Web browsers like Mozilla Firefox, have an option that lets you enter full screen mode.

This allows the browser to take up the full size of your monitor, thereby making your Web pages larger and easier to read, while also minimizing distractions from other applications

But you may be wondering how to exit full screen in Firefox if you are done, or didn’t mean to enable it in the first place.

We’ve all been in a situation with our computers where we accidentally hit a key and something changes on our screen. Sometimes it can be very easy to fix, but other times the solution for doing so might elude us.

If you hit a key on your keyboard and don’t know which key it was, and the result was that the tops and sides of your Firefox window went away, then you inadvertently entered full-screen mode.

As someone that sees people make this mistake on a regular basis, I can assure you that it is a very common accident. Fortunately, it also has a very simple solution.

How to Exit Full Screen Firefox

  1. Open Firefox.
  2. Press the F11 key.

Our article continues below with additional information on how to exit full screen in Firefox, including some pictures of these steps.

Return to Regular Screen View in Firefox (Guide with Pictures)

The purpose of full-screen mode in Firefox is to allow you to expand the content on a Web page so that it takes up as much of your screen real estate as possible, without wasting space with the top, sides and bottom borders and navigation. But since it is so simple to enter this mode accidentally, and often it is done by accident, you might not know how you did it.

Your regular Firefox screen should look something like this –

regular firefox view

But it now looks like this –

how to exit full screen view in mozilla firefox

To return to the regular view, simply press the F11 key in the row at the top of your screen.

This minor inconvenience aside, Firefox is a pretty great browser. You can customize it to do all sorts of interesting things, including the way that it starts. If you want Firefox to open with the last tabs and windows that you had open, read this article. This is a terrific alternative for people that dislike the monotony of always having their browser open to the same page.

More Information on How to Exit Full Screen Mode in Firefox

  • You can exit full screen mode in many other apps by using this same method. For example, Google Chrome is controlled in the same manner.
  • In newer versions of Firefox you can move your mouse to the top of the screen over the Firefox window, which will give you access to the menu by clicking the button with three lines. Next to the “Zoom” option is a button with two arrows pointing in opposite directions. You can click that button as well to exit full screen mode.
  • If you are using multiple monitors then putting Firefox into full screen will only take up one of those monitors. This means that you can have Firefox expand to fill that screen, while still working on the other one. But when you press the F11 key it is going to control whichever app is the one that is currently active. So it’s possible to put another app into full screen accidentally if your mouse is on one of your other screens.

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