Mozilla Firefox has long offered the ability to press Backspace to go back to the previous page and Shift+Back to navigate forward. But that changes with Firefox 86. In the latest Firefox 86 Nightly, the company has disabled the feature by default. If you’re a Firefox user who wants to re-enable undo browsing, read on to find out how.
Re-enable Undo Navigation Key in Firefox
1. Open the Firefox browser and visit about:config. In the search preference name text box, Type ‘browser.backspace_action’. When the preview appears, click the pencil icon in the right corner to edit the value.
2. You will notice that by default, the value of ‘browser.backspace_action’ is ‘2’. Change the value to ‘0’ and click the Save button. This much. You can now continue to use the keyboard shortcuts Backspace and Shift+Backspace to browse the web.
Why Did Firefox Remove Undo Navigation?
Now that you know how to re-enable undo navigation, you may be wondering why Mozilla decided to remove this feature. After all, there is an undo back navigation shortcut 40 million unique users per monthit’s significantly higher than similar shortcuts like Alt + Left/Right arrow, which basically serves the same purpose.
The developers in Firefox decided to disable this functionality because many novice users accidentally go to the previous page when typing on websites or filling out forms without highlighting the input field. Also, some suspect the increased use of Backspace is due to accidental triggers.
Use the Undo Navigation Key in Firefox
Whatever the decision to change the default behavior, you can follow the steps above to bring it back. This will come in handy if you’ve always relied on Backspace and Shift+Backspace to navigate between web pages. You can also consider using the Keyboard shortcuts Alt+Left/Right arrow keys instead. For more such tips, be sure to check out our article on Firefox incognito settings you should use and how you can clear telemetry data in Firefox.