Firefox hide everything except content area of the browser

Question

Is there a possibility to hide all borders and bars in firefox like address bar, navigation bar, window title and tabs, so the remaining area is just the content area of the browser?

I would like to make a movie of a web application I wrote, but have to film it in a bigger resolution than the app itself. I simply want to show the app on a background without all the browser stuff.

The best method would be via keyboard shortcut, so that I can reenable all the stuff again.

Answer 1

The easiest way is to install relevant add-ons in Firefox.

For any of the following setup, install the respective add-ons. Firefox may need to restart, but often unnecessary for Firefox Quantum. The shortcut key, if available, can be changed from Add-ons Manager > Extensions for respective add-on.

Firefox has a redesigned keyboard shortcuts section to manage all shortcuts in one place, which has been made available since Firefox 66.

For Firefox Legacy

Setup A uses the following add-ons:

• Hide Navigation Bar, last tested 1.41.1-signed
• Hide Tabbar, last tested 2.1.0.1-signed
• HideScrollbars, last tested 0.2.1-signed

For example, I have used separate keys F3 and F4 to toggle the navigation menu and tab bar (via Hide Navigation Bar and Hide Tabbar) respectively. To hide the bars, press the assigned keys one by one. This will give Firefox with visible title bar or window decoration only.

Limitation: Assigning the same key does not work well, because of some delay in between. The result is similar even if the separate keys were pressed at the same time. Either way, one of the bars will not hide and play hide-and-seek with the user.

Works with Firefox 56 and earlier (Deprecated), but no longer available from Firefox Add-ons. Tested altogether with Firefox 41.0 on Linux. No screenshot.

For Firefox Quantum

Setup B uses the following add-ons:

• New window without toolbar by tkrkt

Go to a web page on HTTP, HTTPS, or localhost, then use the keyboard shortcut or click the corresponding icon on toolbar or "New window without toolbar" in context menu. The web page will additionally open in a new window with visible title bar and vertical scroll bar only.

Keyboard shortcut: Shift+Alt+N (default in 1.3.0)

Limitation: This add-on does not open any page on local filesystem (file:///) and built-in pages (about:*) at all.

Works with Firefox 42 and later. Tested 1.3.0 with Firefox 69.0 on Linux.

Setup C uses the following add-ons:

• Popup window by Ett Chung

Go to a web page, then click the corresponding icon on toolbar or either "Move current tab to pop-up window" or "popup/merge current page" in context menu. The web page will move to a new window with visible title bar and vertical scroll bar only. To revert the new window to a normal tab, click again on "popup/merge current page" in the context menu.

Keyboard shortcut: Not assigned (default in 0.0.8)

Limitation: The pop-up window will always stay on top of original window of Firefox, which can not be changed.

Works with Firefox 53 and later. Tested 0.0.8 with Firefox 69.0 on Linux.

For Firefox without add-on

I have posted a separate answer at below (click or scroll down) that works for any release of Firefox, but not the easiest way and has no keyboard shortcuts.

Answer 2

The native way is to use the custom stylesheet in Firefox: userChrome.css

Firefox does not load userChrome.css by default in Firefox 69 and later. To make the custom stylesheet effective again, open about:config in Firefox and set the preference toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true

Before this answer was updated, Mike G wrote a follow-up answer earlier.

How it works

The following code block is the content of userChrome.css that will hide the tab bar, navigation bar and scrollbars in Firefox. Ensure to use valid element names and IDs.

/*
 * Do not remove the @namespace line -- it's required for correct functioning
 */
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* set default namespace to XUL */

/*
 * Hide tab bar, navigation bar and scrollbars
 * !important may be added to force override, but not necessary
 * #content is not necessary to hide scroll bars
 */
#TabsToolbar {visibility: collapse;}
#navigator-toolbox {visibility: collapse;}
browser {margin-right: -14px; margin-bottom: -14px;}

Limitation: No keyboard shortcuts. Tedious to enable or disable on-demand.

• To restore the default interface, rename userChrome.css to other name like userChrome.tmp and restart Firefox to take effect.

• To use side by side with another instance of Firefox with default interface, use a separate profile.

All profiles are stored in the profile folder, which can be located from Firefox using menu bar or toolbar, then navigate to Help > Troubleshooting Information.

How to setup and use

The following are generic steps regardless of system platform.

1. Run Profile Manager of Firefox, then create a new profile named 'hidebars' (any name of choice) and close the Profile Manager.

2. Run a file manager and open the profile folder that was created in step 1.

3. Under the new profile folder, create new files chrome/userChrome.css including the parent folder chrome if does not exist.

4. Copy and paste the content of userChrome.css from above into the created file in step 3.

5. Finally, save and close the file.

To start using, run an instance of Firefox with the new profile.

The following screenshot combo shows Firefox Legacy (left) and Firefox Quantum on Linux, each browsing in small window size when the custom stylesheet is used.

Works with all releases of Firefox, except Firefox 69 and later now disregard userChrome.css by default. Tested with Firefox 10, 20, 50 (Firefox Legacy) and 60, 63, 69 (Firefox Quantum) on Linux and all seemed to work as expected.

References

• This answer by by user1929 on Firefox Support Forum mentioned #TabToolbar element name and ID for modifying tab bar.

• This custom file by Timvde on GitHub mentioned #navigator-toolbox element name and ID for modifying navigation bar.

• This answer by by cor-el on Firefox Support Forum mentioned #content browser element name and ID for modifying scrollbars.

• CSS overflow on w3schools to understand overflow is not necessary.

• CSS visibility Property on w3schools to understand value for visibility.

• What are the implications of using “!important” in CSS? on Stack Overflow to understand !important is not necessary.

• Firefox 60 broke hide scrollbar css and Hide Scrollbar Firefox 60 : FirefoxCSS on reddit.com both suggested to remove #content and leave only browser to properly hide the scollbar.

• Firefox 69: userChrome.css and userContent.css disabled by default on ghacks.net and PSA: Firefox v69 users will have to set a pref to enable userChrome.css and userContent.css on reddit.com both have noted a new preference toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets in about:config.

---

Answerer's note: This answer was written two years later, only after I had suggested using add-ons in the first answer. Since then, several more answers based on userChrome.css were written instead of improving this answer. Hence this answer is now a community wiki, so that anyone with minimum reputation can improve this post to keep up with latest changes in Firefox.

Answer 3

I know this is super late, but I made a bookmarklet for this, it requires no add ons, and no downloads :)

Save the following JavaScript code as a bookmarklet, and click on it on the page which you want to view in a new minimal window:

javascript:void%20function(){window.open(window.location.href,Math.random(),%22menubar=1,resizable=0%22)}();

Click here to make the process easier! | JSfiddle

Note: This should work in all browsers

Answer 4

I love Firefox and Vivaldi. One of the best features of Vivaldi (me being a user of mouse gestures) is that it has so many options (sidebars, bookmarks, addressbar, status bar etc) that can be adjusted and moved...

One shortcut says 'Hide UI'. Everything disappears... so when you don't need to see tabs/addy bar etc then I just do a mouse squiggle and am left with the page and the window.

Magic.

Even better, the window colour takes hints from the webpage and works very well - blends in nicely.

Answer 5

I know it's late, but maybe someone will like.

If you just want to hide the Firefox UI elements until they are needed then maybe my userChrome.css is for you. (working on FF 70.0.1)

• Tab-bar is hidden if only one tab
• Address-bar is hidden until focused with Ctrl-L, F6, and the like
• Scroll-bars on the right are removed

To hide the tab-bar you'll need to use Firefox's customize (just right-click on the tab-bar) to pull the newtab (+) button off the tab-bar, and make sure you're using the system's Titlebar (so that the window min, max, and close buttons aren't on the tab-bar). Otherwise, those buttons will hinder the hiding.

Instructions on where to put the userChrome.css file and how to active it can be found in this excellent post: https://superuser.com/a/1269912/1107142

My quick summary:

• on about:config page toggle toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true
• get Profile Directory from about:support page
• create a directory called chrome in your Profile Directory
• put userChrome.css file in that chrome directory

My userChrome.css, copy and paste at will:

/* namespace required, do not remove */
@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);

/* hide tabbar if only one tab */
/* note: won't hide unless newtab (+) button is removed from tabbar and */
/* the system title bars are used (use window manager to disable window */
/* titlebar decorations if desired). */
/* use 'customize' from menu and just drag the (+) button off the tabbar */
/* on the bottom options bar make sure titlebar is on */     
/* setting density to compact is also nice */
#tabbrowser-tabs, #tabbrowser-tabs > .tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox {
    min-height: 0 !important;
}
#tabbrowser-tabs tab {
    min-height: var(--tab-min-height)
}
#tabbrowser-tabs tab[first-visible-tab="true"][last-visible-tab="true"] {
    visibility: collapse;
}

/* autohide addressbar */
/* will show address bar when focused with alt-d,ctrl-l,ctrl-k, or f6 */
/* I don't like the mouse hover activation, but follow comments below */
/* if that's something you'd like. */
/* Also,can change nav-bar to navigation-toolbox to autohide all toolbars */
#nav-bar {
    height: 0px !important;
    min-height: 0px !important;
    overflow: hidden !important;
    /* for mouse hover activation would need some height */
    /* disable above height: 0px line and add: */
    /* height: 3px !important; */
}
/* for mouse hover activation need to add: */
/* #nav-bar:hover, */
#nav-bar:focus,
#nav-bar:focus-within,
#nav-bar:active {
    height: auto !important;
}

/* remove right hand scrollbar */
browser {
    margin-right: -15px;
}

Answer 6

The best option I know of is the full-screen mode, which is toggled using F11 in all modern browsers. That will hide your desktop background and other apps, though, which may not be what you want. It will simply fill the space around the web application's content with white (or whatever the background color / image in the web app's stylesheet is).

Answer 7

You can run your app window from the command line

"c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox"\firefox.exe -chrome "http://www.example.com"

and place on an extended desktop with a background of your choice.

Answer 8

The questions on how to do this in Firefox Quantum (>=57) maybe answers this question (Firefox Quantum (>=57) How to toggle all toolbars? (with a keyboard shortcut, like F11 but in a window, not fullscreen))

F11/Fullscreen is sometimes impractical.
If you just want to toggle the toolbars in Firefox versions previous to 57 it is possible with the addon "Dorando keyconfig":

1. specify a script in the Dorando "Key Editor":

var s = document.getElementById('status-bar');
s.hidden = !s.hidden;
var b = document.getElementById('PersonalToolbar');
b.collapsed = !b.collapsed;
var nb = document.getElementById('nav-bar');
nb.collapsed =!nb.collapsed
var tb = document.getElementById('TabsToolbar');
tb.collapsed =!tb.collapsed

2. map it to a keyboard shortcut via the Dorando addon-interface

Answer 9

you should try new command param --kiosk from new Firefox v.71

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/71.0a1/releasenotes/

Answer 10

Note that the answer from clearkimura above, which suggests using a stylesheet, needs a little tweak in later versions of Firefox. The solution worked for me once I did this. From the this web page:

Set Firefox to look for userChrome.css at startup (updated 5/24/2019)

To make startup faster for most users, Firefox 69 will no longer look for this file automatically. You need to tell it to look. Here's how:

1. In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.
2. In the search box above the list, type or paste userprof and pause while the list is filtered. If you do not see anything on the list, please ignore the rest of these instructions. You can close this tab now.
3. Double-click the toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets preference to switch the value from false to true.

That change should take effect on your next startup.