Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Why does it zoom in and out when I use the mouse to scroll up or down on a page?

  • 2 replies
  • 8 have this problem
  • 98 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

I have auto scroll selected in my settings, but when I scroll my scroll wheel on my mouse it zooms the page in/out. How can I fix this?

I have auto scroll selected in my settings, but when I scroll my scroll wheel on my mouse it zooms the page in/out. How can I fix this?

Chosen solution

Hello, in regards to your issue, perhaps one of your Ctrl button may be stuck in place. "Ctrl" + Mousewheel can change the zoom. So this may be the problem.

If this is not the case, it may be in the settings. (we'll get to that later)

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (2)

more options

Chosen Solution

Hello, in regards to your issue, perhaps one of your Ctrl button may be stuck in place. "Ctrl" + Mousewheel can change the zoom. So this may be the problem.

If this is not the case, it may be in the settings. (we'll get to that later)

more options

It is possible that some of the status keys have the wrong state and Firefox sees them as still pressed like posted above.

Try to press all the status keys (Shift, Ctrl, Alt) a few times to see if that helps to recover from this. If it doesn't help then close and restart Firefox or reboot the computer.


You can set mousewheel.with*.action prefs like the mousewheel.withcontrol.action pref (on Mac mousewheel.with_meta.action) prefs to 1 on the about:config page to avoid zooming if the Ctrl/Command key is pressed.

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.