We’re going to learn about some of the more obscure features in Firefox, my personal browser of choice. These are features are exclusive to Firefox and you’re not going to find anything like them in most other browsers. If you download Firefox right now, you can use some cool things to get around the annoying things you might encounter online.
The Right to Right Click
Did you know there are some websites that take away your ability to
right-click? Some websites like Discord and Google Drive abuse this and
even override your context menu altogether! Okay, for those, it’s not
that bad, because some websites just want to give you a cool context
menu. However, some websites (for example, Squarespace
websites)
might abuse this to prevent you from copying text or downloading images.
Don’t think about using Shift + F10 either, because websites block
that one too.
Firefox provides an easy way to bypass this, where you can always get
your ability to right-click using Shift + Right-Click. This will
always give you access to your ability to right-click, even if websites
try to prevent you from doing so. I learned this by accident years ago
and no matter where I search, this appears to be undocumented. The next
time a website blocks you from copying text or right-clicking, make them
regret it.
Mastering Picture-in-Picture
One of the standout features of Firefox is Picture-in-Picture. Any video, on any website, DRM-protected or not, can be popped out into a floating window where you can watch it in the background. It’s super useful if you are trying to follow a tutorial or multi-task.
The real benefit of Picture-in-Picture isn’t just it’s background playing; Picture-in-Picture allows you to gain more control over a website that might try to take that control from you or have functionality not available in their player.
The most common workaround I found was live streams on news websites. Many news websites use a different third party player system and Picture-in-Picture works in all of them. One example is TikTok. First off, TikTok requires you to use Firefox with minimal configuration, so don’t think you can use the Mullvad Browser or Arkenfox (both Resist Fingerprinting and without) to get out of it. What’s more, using the Picture-in-Picture player unlocks controls when TikTok seems to inconsistently apply to videos like the player bar. Giving you the ability to fast forward, but adds in the feature of moving forward and back 5 seconds, even if the player bar is unlocked.
Another workaround is Twitch. Twitch injects ads into the livestreams of your favorite streamers, including streamers who aren’t even running ad breaks. But you’ll notice at the top right corner, you can still watch the stream and Firefox will still offer you the Picture-in-Picture button. It’s an inconvenience, but it’s back to business as usual.
Advanced about:config: Picture-in-Picture Settings
The most obscure way I took use of this was our HR training. Every year, our HR department starts having us take boring, canned training videos, hosted by one of the big business training solutions. Now what’s most interesting is many of these services will block you from fast-forwarding videos and you are forced to sit there.
Since I normally use Microsoft Edge on my work computer (and the site blocked Chromium’s Picture-in-Picture player), I wanted to see what the site would do with Firefox and I noticed that the Picture-in-Picture button only appeared with longer videos. Activating Picture-in-Picture also presented me with a warning telling me that Picture-in-Picture was “not recommended.”
According to Mozilla’s documentation, the default settings do not show Picture-in-Picture for videos shorter than 45 seconds. The “not recommended” warning was because the training site blocks Picture-in-Picture, but Firefox will not fully block you from doing so. That way, you always have full control over the content you watch.
To lift the 45 second limit, navigate to Firefox’s about:config by typing it in the URL bar. Given you made it this far, click “Accept the Risk and Continue.” Type the following into the search bar and set the following values either manually in about:config or in your Firefox user.js:
user_pref("media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.video-toggle.always-show", true);
user_pref("media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.respect-disablePictureInPicture", false);
This allows you to always be presented with the Picture-in-Picture button, despite what the website’s developers demand and regardless of length. Using this hack, I effectively skipped the entire HR training because the player checks if you finished watching the video, but not if you watched all the way through.
Note: This will show the Picture-In-Picture button on everything. You can skip this if this annoys you.
Closing
While the right-click freedom and the Picture-in-Picture player are pretty cool, Firefox is losing market share drastically and estimates hover at less than 3% across desktop and mobile. The reason I may have gotten away with skipping the HR videos is because developers don’t program their websites with Firefox in mind anymore. They just use Google’s Lighthouse and call it a day.
When you critically examine Firefox, features like the universal right-click bypass and Picture-In-Picture are why I promote Firefox so hard. These are features are only in Firefox, but it solves some of the slimy problems out there in the wild web. I hope they help make your experience online a little better.
Featured Creators:
- Deep Tom Cruise on TikTok
- Nate from The New Oil on TikTok (also on YouTube, Odysee, PeerTube, and his podcast)
- Rogue Ren on Twitch (also on YouTube)