How To Disable Firefox Gestures

Firefox has been driving me crazy for months now as the “back” action seems to trigger at random and return to the previous page, losing whatever I was working on. I use a Wacom Bamboo tablet pen but I have disabled the touch gestures on the pad. Somehow it still seems that the normal pen cursor is enough to trigger the gestures although it is not 100% reproducible. Tonight I have finally exercised the gremlin which turns out to be down to Firefox having built in gesture support enabled as default. To turn off the problem gestures is simple:

  • In the address bar type: about:config
  • In the Search filter type: gesture
  • Double click “browser.gesture.swipe.left” and delete the default value “Browser:BackOrBackDuplicate”, just leave it blank
  • Do the same for any of the other string type entries that are bugging you, I cleared them all
  • Changes are automatically saved as you make them
  • Close the page and you are done
  • If you change your mind later on you can return to the same page/filter and right click each modified row and choose Reset which will return it to the default value

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  • m.
    m.

    Thank you, David ?

    THIS was driving me crazy whenever I was watching tutorials on Udemy and tried to switch to software to actually practice. Many times, unintentionally I was reversing to my previous lesson.

  • CJ
    CJ

    Not all heroes wear capes. Thank you David!!

  • JN
    JN

    I was having a similar problem; it is a gross UX problem. Thank you for disclosing the (involved) way to solve the problem. Speaking of irritating, though – a background that ripples upon various mouse actions? Is that meant to illustrate the sort of problem that Firefox has given us?

  • UN
    UN

    Your website is beautiful. Gives me 90s vibe

You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise, Leon. It’s crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back, Leon. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping. I mean you’re not helping! Why is that, Leon?

— Holden, Blade Runner