How do I remove "Esc" shortcut to exit Full Screen application mode?

Sorry, I don't know how to disable that, but I want to thank you for pointing it out the shortcut.

Esc has never been used for functions like that, that I can remember. Cmd-. will stop most processes, including loading a page. Cmd-w will close a window, including popups.

How did you make it close windows and stop pages loading?

The Esc key is still the default for Cancel in dialogs.

I too would like to know if this is possible. I use Chrome which now has a Fullscreen mode in Lion, but I also use YouTube which sometimes uses the HTML5 player. If I put the video in fullscreen and use Escape to exit out of the player fullscreen, it not only exits the player fullscreen but also Chrome fullscreen. If I press escape to exit out of a Flash fullscreen, it does not because Flash is a separate process. This is annoying because I can't always tell when I'm in an HTML5 player or a Flash player until my Chrome window is suddenly removed from fullscreen requiring me to have to put it back into fullscreen again. If I could kill Escape as the "Exit out of fullscreen in Lion" command I'd be happy as a clam. I never use Escape to exit fullscreen.

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I want to know how to do this too. Escape exiting full screen drives me nuts and it is so unnecessary.

Voting to have a 'disable escape key to exit full screen' option in preferences. It is quite annoying, indeede

Thankfully the application I originally had a gripe with regarding this feature recently (As of a few months ago) removed "escape" as a key that exits out of fullscreen. Google Chrome. It kept exiting out of fullscreen whenever I was watching an HTML5 YouTube video and wanted to exit fullscreen for the video. They fixed it thankfully.

The same for me - Voting to have a 'disable escape key to exit full screen' option in preferences.

You can use Ctrl+Esc insted. Better than nothing.

It is working fine in Mountain Lion, Safari 6.0.2.

I'll add my voice to this "petition." Escape is already used to interrupt certain things, and people commonly press it two or more times when the computer isn't being responsive. The exit from full screen takes a few seconds during which nothing else can happen. This just harms usability. At the very least "Exit Fullscreen" should be one of the options that we can set in the Keyboard preference pane. In the meantime, I will see if I can find a hidden defaults setting to turn off this bothersome shortcut.

Same for me.

I really don't understand why Safari uses ESC key to exit full screen mode while the key performs different kind of functions such as stopping page loading, closing popup dialogs, quitting fullscreen video playing, etc.

I don't use ESC key to quit full screen mode, instead I use toggle button on menubar when I very occasionally need to do so. Also I use the button whenever I switch to fullscreen mode. Isn't it common for most people?

I think it's a bad idea that OSX sticks to current ESC key policy.

Since I use Lion(and Mt. Lion, Mavericks), I never seen those apps which uses ESC key to exit full screen mode except Safari. For me, the 'quitting fullscreen mode by ESC key' accident not occurs often, but when it occurs, it's really annoying. Sometimes it also makes me crazy.

I found a solution to this problem. You need to install NinjaKit:

https://github.com/os0x/NinjaKit

Once this is installed you need to install this script:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/178642

Here you can click the install button to the top right of the screen. You'll get a dialog where you need to press install once again.

Once this is complete you may need to restart Safari. Now you can enjoy esc as it was meant to be used!

+1 for this problem still present on Mavericks with Safari 7. Please remove the Esc shortcut from the Exit Fullscreen action.

I use "escape" in Excel to get out of a dialog quite often, and if esc gets hit twice, you are automatically "exited" from full screen mode on the Mac. Very annoying. MAC OS needs to fix this BUG, thanks!