Re: Firefox: tab closing strangeness
On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 09:23:53 +0100, Loris Bennett wrote:
> 2. If I close a tab via the keyboard shortcut 'Ctrl-w', this works but not if
> the page on the tab contains a text field.
What matters is whether the application's focus is currently inside that
text field. When you're focused on the text field, the cursor should be
visible (and possibly blinking), and Ctrl-W will act as an emacs editing
command. Specifically, it means "delete the word before the cursor".
If focus is NOT inside the text field, then Ctrl-W will close the tab.
Try it on https://google.com/ for example. If you click on the big
ol' text entry box in the middle of the page, you'll get editing behavior.
Try typing a few words into the entry field, then press Ctrl-W and it
should delete the most recently typed word.
If you click on the vast white background outside the entry field,
then Ctrl-W will close the tab.
The same behavior used to happen in Chrome/Brave, but recent versions
of Brave broke it. Now, Ctrl-W in Brave always closes the tab, even if
you're editing a text/entry, and Ctrl-U always opens a new tab with the
"page source" (except it's not the source of the page you're currently
looking at), even if you're editing. I wish they'd revert this change.
I opened an issue for it on their forum, but got no response. I was
able to disable Ctrl-W and Ctrl-U entirely through preferences, but I
was unable to find any way to restore their context-sensitive behavior.
At least I won't accidentally close or open tabs now, but having to
whack the Backspace key many times instead of pressing Ctrl-W, or hold
down the Backspace key instead of pressing Ctrl-U, is obnoxious.
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