On Mac, the ESC key cancels full-screen. This is true for Safari as well as other native applications like Finder, Keynote etc. The feature is documented here (search for "exit full-screen").

We should consider doing the same.

Comment via :mstange:

in Safari, ESC seems to cancel pageload when a page is loading, but if there's nothing to cancel, it exits fullscreen. Safari probably also checks whether the page handled the key event.

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/45c823bd6f28

Hello! Verified fixed with 92.0a1 (20210720215601) on macOS 10.15 and 11.4. Fullscreen is closed while using the ESC key. However, I have found that fullscreen is not closed if the Address bar is focused (bug 1720890) or if native-fullscreen is on false after an update (bug 1720889). Closing this as verified because we can track the remaining issues on the other bugs.

This change is so disruptive to my workflow that I'm on bugzilla at 2am looking for why it happened. Please make it configurable, suggest a reasonable workaround*, or revert it.

Safari is the odd browser here, as Chrome doesn't have this behavior either.

I've run Nightly for several years now and this is apparently what it takes to overcome the inertia and actually comment on a bug.

*In an attempt to be constructive: per the comment in the diff, I take issue with step 3. Can an extension bind a noop to the escape key in a way that happens after step 2 and prevents the key event from reaching step 3?

Thanks for the feedback. I'll discuss this with the team.

I have to agree with Colin in Comment #5, this has been very disruptive for my workflow as well. At this point, mashing the escape key to get out of modals or other page elements is muscle memory that continually resets my window layout. If this could be configurable or opt-in it would be greatly appreciated.

The feature doesn't behave as intended. It exists full screen situations where it shouldn't.

We'll move it behind a pref asap and will then revisit it.

How many times have I exited fullscreen while I just wanted to exit a popup, an image gallery or anything that is exited on other browsers when you hit escape.

I've used macs for years and never noticed that esc is used to exit fullscreen (I must admit I never used Safari 😄)

Please please please revert this change or at least make it a preference 🙏

(In reply to olivier.chirouze+github from comment #9)

How many times have I exited fullscreen while I just wanted to exit a popup, an image gallery or anything that is exited on other browsers when you hit escape.

I've used macs for years and never noticed that esc is used to exit fullscreen (I must admit I never used Safari 😄)

Please please please revert this change or at least make it a preference 🙏

It looks like this was already moved behind the browser.fullscreen.exit_on_escape preference.

Oh thanks!
I haven't used Bugzilla for a long time and couldn't make sure it was indeed fixed.
Life saver!

Any chance the default could be changed to false? For users like me where my device is managed by my organization, I don't have config access (it's ridiculous, I know), and thus I have to submit a request to IT to get this changed. I also don't understand why the default has been made to be opposite of what users are used to, seems counter-intuitive to me.