How to maximize video without Firefox going into F11 (full screen mode)?
This is a relatively recent but extremely annoying problem that i have been having with Firefox on Windows PC, perhaps in the past few months or so.
When on youtube i click the maximize video button (the button next to the theater mode button) the video will normally maximize over the entire screen.
However it seems the entire Firefox browser also automatically goes into F11 (full screen mode) which is something that i extremely do NOT want.
Aside from the annoyance of the mouse-wheel-scroll being able to move the maximized video up & down, through some combination of alt-tab or windowskey+D the Firefox will sometimes exit the maximized video (to normal size) but Firefox itself will still stay in "F11 mode" - forcing me to manually exit Full Screen Mode by pressing F11.
As someone who has never used F11 mode (especially because i find the Menu Bar toolbar mandatory) its very disruptive to the general use/workflow to sometimes randomly get Firefox stuck in F11 mode, especially because i have at no point requested nor desired for the entire Firefox browser to enter F11 mode.
In other words please let me maximize videos (such as those on youtube) without Firefox going into F11 mode. I never want Firefox to go into F11 mode unless i manually press the F11 button.
All Replies (6)
To maximize a video in Firefox without entering full screen mode, you can try the following steps:
Click on the video to bring up the video controls. Look for the "Maximize" button on the video controls. This is usually represented by a square icon with an arrow pointing diagonally outward. Click on the "Maximize" button to expand the video to fill the available space in the browser window. This will make the video larger without going into full screen mode. If there is no "Maximize" button on the video controls, you can try resizing the browser window manually to make the video larger. You can do this by clicking and dragging the edges of the browser window to expand it. Keep in mind that this may not work for all websites or videos, as some may be designed to enter full screen mode when maximized.
Thank you for replying but i dont think that is the solution.
Youtube has a maximize video option and it worked the way i describe for decades (just maximizes the video).
But for some reason Firefox now automatically chooses to put the entire BROWSER into F11 (full screen mode) instead of just maximizing the youtube video.
And under some conditions (unknown exactly) i can exit the maximized video but the Firefox will still be in F11 mode, requiring me to press F11 to regain normal control of the browser.
Please implement an option to just maximize the video across the screen - without Firefox automatically entering F11 mode.
Bogdanov89, what you describe is the way that Youtube works for me too.
I press F to make the video fullscreen and instead of the video going into an exclusive fullscreen mode, this puts Firefox into fullscreen mode while at the same time resizing the video to cover the screen. But the rest of the website is still there under the video, and can be scrolled down to. Pressing F again or otherwise cancelling video fullscreen will actually cancel Firefox's fullscreen and then restore the player to the standard size.
Possibly someone might know how to force Youtube to use an exclusive fullscreen mode for videos, but I think that this is a Youtube design / option, rather than a Firefox issue, as the site also behaves like this in Edge.
Ilungisiwe ngu TechHorse
Forgot to mention that I have not experienced the issue where cancelling Youtube video fullscreen only resizes the player, but without cancelling Firefox's fullscreen.
How do you cancel video fullscreen? I always use the escape key.
You can switch to PiP (picture-in-picture) mode and drag the player window to occupy the full screen.
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-picture-picture-firefox
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/turn-picture-picture-mode
You can set media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.improved-video-controls.enabled = true on the about:config page to get more player controls.
Thank you for replying, but the PIP mode is imho awful and i do not want to use it.