Starting from the version 71 of the Firefox web browser, a new feature called the kiosk mode is available for the users. In the kiosk mode, Firefox browser will run in the full-screen mode and will disable certain features. This new kiosk mode is designed for the computer screens that are often accessed by the public such a vending machines, informational screens, public libraries, metro train kiosks and more.
In the kiosk mode Firefox disables the menubar, address bar, toolbar, statusbar, context-menu, etc. There is only one tab visible at any time and you cannot create a new tab using Ctrl+T or switch between tabs using the hotkey Ctrl+Tab. If you right-click anywhere on the screen, it will have no effect and the right-click menu will not be shown. There is no way to turn off the full-screen mode in the kiosk mode.
In order to run Firefox in the kiosk mode, you have to use the command line parameter –kiosk when launching Firefox. It is pretty easy in Windows to launch Firefox in the kiosk mode:
- Close all the Firefox windows if open.
- Press the hotkey Win+R to open the Run dialog.
- In the Run dialog, type firefox –kiosk www.trishtech.com and press Enter. Change the address of the website according to which site you want to open in Firefox.
Instead of –kiosk, you can also use -kiosk switch. And if you have been using the portable version of Firefox, then you will have to specify the full path of Firefox browser, for example, if you have portable Firefox located in the folder C:\portable-firefox\ then the following command will do the trick:
C:\portable-firefox\firefox.exe -kiosk trishtech.com
If you do not want to give this command each time you want to launch Firefox in the kiosk mode then you can create a shortcut or BAT file with this command. For example, the following BAT file can be used to launch Firefox in the kiosk mode and open trishtech.com:
These simple steps will launch Firefox and load trishtech.com in its only visible tab. You can use it as usual, despite all the restrictions and disabled features. You cannot switch between the windowed mode and the full-screen mode since F11 is disabled in the kiosk mode. In case you are wondering how can we close Firefox browser running in the kiosk mode, you can simply use the hotkey Alt+F4 to close the Firefox instance that was used for running the Firefox windows.
For more information about Firefox Kiosk mode, you can visit https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-enterprise-kiosk-mode.